# The Will to Power

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE THE WILL TO POWER: AN ATTEMPTED REVALUATION OF ALL VALUES TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
PREFACE
FIRST BOOK. EUROPEAN
A PLAN I. Nihilism 1. Nihilism as an Outcome of the Valuations and Interpretations of Existence which have prevailed hitherto. 2. Further Causes of Nihilism 3. The Nihilistic Movement as an Expression of Decadence 4. The Crisis: Nihilism and the Idea of Recurrence
II. CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN NIHILISM (a) Modern Gloominess (b) The Last Centuries (c) Signs of Increasing Strength
SECOND BOOK. A CRITICISM OF THE HIGHEST VALUES THAT HAVE PREVAILED HITHERTO.
I. CRITICISM OF RELIGION 1. Concerning the Origin of Religions 2. Concerning the History of Christianity 3. Christian Ideals
II. CRITICISM OF MORALITY
1. The Origin of Moral Valuations 2. The Herd 3. General Observations concerning Morality 4. How Virtue is made to Dominate 5. The Moral Ideal A. A Criticism of Ideals B. A Criticism of the " Good Man," of the Saint, etc. C. Concerning the Slander of the so-called Evil Qualities D. A Criticism of the Words: Improving, Perfecting, Elevating 6. Concluding Remarks concerning the Criticism of Morality
III. CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY 1. General Remarks 2. A Criticism of Greek Philosophy 3. The Truths and Errors of Philosophers 4. Concluding Remarks in the Criticism of Philosophy
THIRD BOOK. THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW VALUATION.
I. THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE
(a) The Method of Investigation (b) The Starting-Point of Epistemology (c) The Belief in the " Ego." Subject (d) Biology of the Instinct of Knowledge. Perspectivity (e) The Origin of Reason and Logic (f) Consciousness (g) Judgment. True False (h} Against Causality (i) The Thing-in- Itself and Appearance (j) The Metaphysical Need (k) The Biological Value of Knowledge (l) Science
II. THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE 1. The Mechanical Interpretation of the World 2. The Will to Power as Life (a) The Organic Process (b) Man 3. Theory of the Will to Power and of Valuations
III. THE WILL TO POWER AS EXEMPLIFIED IN SOCIETY AND IN THE INDIVIDUAL 1. Society and the State 2. The Individual
IV. THE WILL TO POWER IN ART
FOURTH BOOK. DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING.
I. THE ORDER OF RANK 1. The Doctrine of the Order of Rank 2. The Strong and the Weak 3. The Noble Man 4. The Lords of the Earth 5. The Great Man 6. The Highest Man as Lawgiver of the Future
II. DIONYSUS
III. ETERNAL RECURRENCE
PREFACE.
1. CONCERNING great things one should either be silent or one should speak loftily: loftily that is to say, cynically and innocently.
2. What I am now going to relate is the history of the next two centuries. I shall describe what will happen, what must necessarily happen: the triumph of nihilism. This history can be written already; for necessity itself is at work in bringing it about. This future is already proclaimed by a hundred different omens; as a destiny it announces its advent everywhere for this music of to-morrow all ears are already pricked. The whole of our culture in Europe has long been writhing in an agony of suspense which increases from decade to decade as if in expectation of a catastrophe: restless, violent, helter-skelter, like a torrent that will reach its borne, and refuses to reflect yea, that even dreads reflection.
3. On the other hand, the present writer has done little else, hitherto, than reflect and meditate, like an instinctive philosopher and anchorite, who found his advantage in isolation in remaining outside, in patience, procrastination, and lagging behind; like a weighing and testing spirit who has already lost his way in every labyrinth of the future; like a prophetic bird-spirit that looks backwards when it would announce what is to come; like the first perfect European nihilist, who, however, has already outlived nihilism in his own soul who has out grown, overcome, and dismissed it.
4. For the reader must not misunderstand the meaning of the title which has been given to this evangel of the future. "The Will to Power: An Attempted Revaluation of All Values" with this formula a counter-movement finds expression, in regard to both a principle and a mission; a movement which in some remote future will supersede this perfect nihilism; but which nevertheless regards it as a necessary step, both logically and psychologically, towards its own advent, and which positively cannot come, except on top of and out of it. For, why is the triumph of nihilism inevitable now? Because the very values current amongst us today will arrive at their logical conclusion in nihilism, because nihilism is the only possible outcome of our greatest values and ideals, because we must first experience nihilism before we can realize what the actual worth of these "values" was. . . . Sooner or later we shall be in need of new values.
FIRST BOOK. EUROPEAN NIHILISM
1. A PLAN. 1. Nihilism is at our door: whence comes this most gruesome of all guests to us? To begin with, it is a mistake to point to "social evils," "physiological degeneration," or even to corruption as a cause of nihilism. This is the most straightforward and most sympathetic age that ever was. Evil, whether spiritual, physical, or intellectual, is, in itself, quite unable to introduce nihilism, i.e., the absolute repudiation of worth, purpose, desirability. These evils allow of yet other and quite different explanations. But there is one very definite explanation of the phenomena: nihilism harbors in the heart of Christian morals. 2. The downfall of Christianity, through its morality (which is insuperable), which finally turns against the Christian God Himself (the sense of truth, highly developed through Christianity, ultimately revolts against the falsehood and fictitiousness of all Christian interpretations of the world and its history. The recoil-stroke of "God is Truth" in the fanatical belief, is: "All is false." Buddhism of action. . . .). 3. Doubt in morality is the decisive factor. The downfall of the moral interpretation of the universe, which loses its raison d’etre once it has tried to take flight to a beyond, meets its end in nihilism. "Nothing has any purpose" (the inconsistency of one explanation of the world, to which men have devoted untold energy, gives rise to the suspicion that all explanations may perhaps be false). The Buddhistic feature: a yearning for nonentity (Indian Buddhism has no fundamentally moral development at the back of it; that is why nihilism in its case means only morality not overcome; existence is regarded as a punishment and conceived as an error; error is thus held to be punishment a moral valuation). Philosophical attempts to overcome the "moral God " (Hegel, Pantheism). The vanquishing of popular ideals: the wizard, the saint, the bard. Antagonism of "true" and "beautiful" and "good" 4. Against "purposelessness" on the one hand, against moral valuations on the other: how far has all science and philosophy been cultivated hereto fore under the influence of moral judgments? And have we not got the additional factor the enmity of science, into the bargain? Or the prejudice against science? Criticism of Spinoza. Christian valuations everywhere present as remnants in socialistic and positivistic systems. A criticism of Christian morality is altogether lacking. 5. The Nihilistic consequences of present natural science (along with its attempts to escape into a beyond). Out of its practice there finally arises a certain self-annihilation, an antagonistic attitude towards itself a sort of anti-scientificality. Since Copernicus man has been rolling away from the centre towards x. 6. The Nihilistic consequences of the political and politico-economical way of thinking, where all principles at length become tainted with the atmosphere of the platform: the breath of mediocrity, in significance, dishonesty, etc. Nationalism. Anarchy, etc. Punishment. Everywhere the deliverer is missing, either as a class or as a single man the justifier. 7. Nihilistic consequences of history and of the "practical historian," i.e., the romanticist. The attitude of art is quite unoriginal in modern life. Its gloominess. Goethe’s so-called Olympian State. 8. Art and the preparation of Nihilism. Romanticism (the conclusion of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung).
I. Nihilism.
1. NIHILISM AS AN OUTCOME OF THE VALUATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF EXISTENCE WHICH HAVE PREVAILED HERETOFORE.
2. What does nihilism mean? That the highest values are losing their value. There is no borne. There is no answer to the question: "to what purpose?"
3. Thorough nihilism is the conviction that life is absurd, in the light of the highest values already discovered; it also includes the view that we have not the smallest right to assume the existence of transcendental objects or things in themselves, which would be either divine or morality incarnate. This view is a result of fully developed "truthfulness": therefore a consequence of the belief in morality.
4. What advantages did the Christian hypothesis of morality offer? (1) It bestowed an intrinsic value upon men, which contrasted with their apparent insignificance and subordination to chance in the eternal flux of becoming and perishing. (2) It served the purpose of God s advocates, inasmuch as it granted the world a certain perfection despite its sorrow and evil it also granted the world that proverbial " freedom ": evil seemed full of meaning. (3) It assumed that man could have a know ledge of absolute values, and thus granted him adequate perception for the most important things. (4) It prevented man from despising himself as man, from turning against life, and from being driven to despair by knowledge: it was a self- preservative measure. In short: Morality was the great antidote against practical and theoretical nihilism.
5. But among the forces reared by morality, there was truthfulness: this in the end turns against morality, exposes the teleology of the latter, its interestedness, and now the recognition of this lie so long incorporated, from which we despaired of ever freeing ourselves, acts just like a stimulus. We perceive certain needs in ourselves, implanted during the long dynasty of the moral interpretation of life, which now seem to us to be needs of untruth: on the other hand, those very needs represent the highest values owing to which we are able to endure life. We have ceased from attaching any worth to what we know, and we dare not attach any more worth to that with which we would fain deceive ourselves from this antagonism there results a process of dissolution.
6. This is the antinomy: In so far as we believe in morality, we condemn existence.
7. The highest values in the service of which man ought to live, more particularly when they oppressed and constrained him most these social values owing to their tone-strengthening tendencies, were built over men’s heads as though they were the will of God, or "reality," or the actual world, or even a hope of a world to come. Now that the lowly origin of these values has become known, the whole universe seems to have been revalued and to have lost its significance but this is only an intermediate stage.
8. The consequence of nihilism (disbelief in all values) as a result of a moral valuation: We have grown to dislike egotism (even though we have realized the impossibility of altruism); we have grown to dislike what is most necessary (although we have recognized the impossibility of a liberum arbitrium and of an " intelligible freedom "). We perceive that we do not reach the spheres in which we have set our values at the same time those other spheres in which we live have not thereby gained one iota in value. On the contrary, we are tired, because we have lost the main incentive to live. "All in vain hitherto!"
9. Pessimism as a preparatory state to nihilism.
10. A. Pessimism viewed as strength in what respect? In the energy of its logic, as anarchy, nihilism, and analysis. B. Pessimism regarded as collapse in what sense? In the sense of its being a softening influence, a sort of cosmopolitan befingering, a "tout comprendre," and historical spirit. Critical tension: extremes make their appearance and become dominant.
11. The logic of pessimism leads finally to nihilism: what is the force at work? The notion that there are no values, and no purpose: the recognition of the part that moral valuations have played in all other lofty values. Result: moral valuations are condemnations, negations; morality is the abdication of the will to live. . . .
12. THE COLLAPSE OF COSMOPOLITAN VALUES. A. Nihilism will have to manifest itself as a psycho logical condition, first when we have sought in all that has happened a purpose which is not there: so that the seeker will ultimately lose courage. Nihilism is therefore the coming into consciousness of the long waste of strength, the pain of "futility," uncertainty, the lack of an opportunity to recover in some way, or to attain to a state of peace concerning anything shame in one s own presence, as if one had cheated oneself too long. . . . The purpose above-mentioned might have been achieved: in the form of a "realization" of a most high canon of morality in all worldly phenomena, the moral order of the universe; or in the form of the increase of love and harmony in the traffic of humanity; or in the nearer approach to a general condition of happiness; or even in the march towards general nonentity any sort of goal always constitutes a purpose. The common factor to all these appearances is that something will be attained, through the process itself: and now we perceive that becoming has been aiming at nothing, and has achieved nothing. Hence the disillusionment in regard to a so-called purpose in existence, as a cause of nihilism; whether this be in respect of a very definite purpose, or generalized into the recognition that all the hypotheses are false which have hitherto been offered as to the object of life, and which relate to the whole of "evolution" (man no longer an assistant in, let alone the culmination of, the evolutionary process). Nihilism will manifest itself as a psychological condition, in the second place, when man has fixed a totality, a systematization, even an organization in and behind all phenomena, so that the soul thirsting for respect and admiration will wallow in the general idea of a highest ruling and administrative power (if it be the soul of a logician, the sequence of consequences and perfect reasoning will suffice to conciliate everything). A kind of unity, some form of "monism": and as a result of this belief man becomes obsessed by a feeling of profound relativity and dependence in the presence of an all which is infinitely superior to him, a sort of divinity. "The general good exacts the surrender of the individual ..." but lo, there is no such general good! At bottom, man loses the belief in his own worth when no infinitely precious entity manifests itself through him that is to say, he conceived such an all, in order to be able to believe in his own worth. Nihilism, as a psychological condition, has yet a third and last form. Admitting these two points of view: that no purpose can be assigned to becoming, and that no great entity rules behind all becoming, in which the individual may completely lose himself as in an element of superior value; there still remains the subterfuge which would consist in condemning this whole world of becoming as an illusion, and in discovering a world which would lie beyond it, and would be a real world. The moment, however, that man perceives that this world has been devised only for the purpose of meeting certain psychological needs, and that he has no right whatsoever to it, the final form of nihilism comes into being, which comprises a denial of a metaphysical world, and which forbids itself all belief in a real world. From this stand point, the reality of becoming is the only reality that is admitted: all bypaths to back-worlds and false godheads are abandoned but this world is no longer endured although no one wishes to disown it. What has actually happened? The feeling of worthlessness was realized when it was understood that neither the notion of "purpose" nor that of " unity" nor that of "truth" could be made to interpret the general character of existence. Nothing is achieved or obtained thereby; the unity which intervenes in the multiplicity of events is entirely lacking: the character of existence is not "true," it is false; there is certainly no longer any reason to believe in a real world. In short, the categories, "purpose," "unity," "being," by means of which we had lent some worth to life, we have once more divorced from it and the world now appears worthless to us. ... B. Admitting that we have recognized the impossibility of interpreting the world by means of these three categories, and that from this standpoint the world begins to be worthless to us; we must ask ourselves whence we derived our belief in these three categories. Let us see if it is possible to refuse to believe in them. If we can deprive them of their value, the proof that they cannot be applied to the world, is no longer a sufficient reason for depriving that world of its value. Result: The belief in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism we have measured the worth of the world according to categories which can only be applied to a purely fictitious world. Conclusion: All values with which we have tried, hitherto, to lend the world some worth, from our point of view, and with which we have therefore deprived it of all worth (once these values have been shown to be inapplicable) all these values, are, psychologically, the results of certain views of utility, established for the purpose of maintaining and increasing the dominion of certain communities: but falsely projected into the nature of things. It is always man’s exaggerated ingenuousness to regard himself as the sense and measure of all things.
13. Nihilism represents an intermediary pathological condition (the vast generalization, the conclusion that there is no purpose in anything, is pathological): whether it be that the productive forces are not yet strong enough or that decadence still hesitates and has not yet discovered its expedients. The conditions of this hypothesis: That there is no truth; that there is no absolute state of affairs no " thing-in-itself." This alone is nihilism, and of the most extreme kind. It finds that the value of things consists precisely in the fact that these values are not real and never have been real, but that they are only a symptom of strength on the part of the valuer, a simplification serving the purposes of existence.
14. Values and their modification are related to the growth of power of the valuer. The measure of disbelief and of the " freedom of spirit " which is tolerated, viewed as an expression of the growth of power. " Nihilism viewed as the ideal of the highest spiritual power; of the over-rich life, partly destructive, partly ironical.
15. What is belief? How is a belief born? All belief assumes that something is true. The extremest form of nihilism would mean that all belief all assumption of truth is false: because no real world is at hand. It were therefore: only an appearance seen in perspective, whose origin must be found in us (seeing that we are constantly in need of a narrower, a shortened, and simplified world). Nihilism. This should be realized, that the extent to which we can, in our heart of hearts, acknowledge appearance, and the necessity of falsehood, with out going to rack and ruin, is the measure of strength. In this respect, Nihilism, in that it is the negation of a real world and of being, might be a divine view of the world.
16. If we are disillusioned, we have not become so in regard to life, but owing to the fact that our eyes have been opened to all kinds of "desiderata." With mocking anger we survey that which is called "ideal": we despise ourselves only because we are unable at every moment of our lives to quell that absurd emotion which is called "idealism." This pampering by means of ideals is stronger than the anger of the disillusioned one.
17. To what extent does Schopenhauerian nihilism continue to be the result of the same ideal as that which gave rise to Christian theism? The amount of certainty concerning the most exalted desiderata, the highest values and the greatest degree of perfection, was so great, that the philosophers started out from it as if it had been an a priori and absolute fact: "God " at the head, as the given quantity truth. "To become like God," "to be absorbed into the Divine Being" these were for centuries the most ingenuous and most convincing desiderata (but that which convinces is not necessarily true on that account: it is nothing more nor less than convincing. An observation for donkeys). The granting of a personal-reality to this accretion of ideals has been unlearned: people have become atheistic. But has the ideal actually been abandoned? The latest metaphysicians, as a matter of fact, still seek their true "reality" in it the "thing-in-itself" beside which everything else is merely appearance. Their dogma is, that because our world of appearance is so obviously not the expression of that ideal, it therefore cannot be " true " and at bottom does not even lead back to that metaphysical world as cause. The unconditioned, in so far as it stands for that highest degree of perfection, cannot possibly be the reason of all the conditioned. Schopenhauer, who desired it otherwise, was obliged to imagine this metaphysical basis as the antithesis to the ideal, as " an evil, blind will ": thus it could be " that which appears," that which manifests itself in the world of appearance. But even so, he did not give up that ideal absolute he circum vented it. ... (Kant seems to have needed the hypothesis of " intelligible freedom," in order to relieve the ens perfectum of the responsibility of having contrived this world as it is, in short, in order to explain evil: scandalous logic for a philosopher!).
18. A general sign of modern times: in his own estimation, man has lost an infinite amount of dignity. For a long time he was the centre and tragic hero of life in general; then he endeavored to demonstrate at least his relationship to the most essential and in itself most valuable side of life as all metaphysicians do, who wish to hold fast to the dignity of man, in their belief that moral values are cardinal values. He who has let God go, clings all the more strongly to the belief in morality.
19. Every purely moral valuation (as, for instance, the Buddhistic) terminates in nihilism: Europe must expect the same thing! It is supposed that one can get along with a morality bereft of a religious background; but in this direction the road to nihilism is opened. There is nothing in religion which compels us to regard ourselves as valuing creatures.
20. The question which nihilism puts, namely, "to what purpose?" is the outcome of a habit, hitherto, to regard the purpose as something fixed, given and exacted outside that is to say, by some super natural authority. Once the belief in this has been unlearned, the force of an old habit leads to the search after another authority, which would know how to speak unconditionally, and could point to goals and missions. The authority of the conscience now takes the first place (the more morality is emancipated from theology, the more imperative does it become) as a compensation for the personal authority. Or the authority of reason. Or the gregarious instinct (the herd). Or history with its immanent spirit, which has its goal in itself, and to which one can abandon oneself. One would like to evade the will, as also the willing of a goal and the risk of setting oneself a goal. One would like to get rid of the responsibility (Fatalism would be accepted). Finally: Happiness, and with a dash of humbug, the happiness of the greatest number. It is said: (1) A definite goal is quite unnecessary. (2) Such a goal cannot possibly be foreseen. Precisely now, when will in its fullest strength were necessary, it is in the weakest and most pusillanimous condition. Absolute mistrust concerning the organizing power of the will.
21. The perfect nihilist. The nihilist s eye idealizes in an ugly sense, and is inconstant to what it remembers: it allows its recollections to go astray and to fade, it does not protect them from that cadaverous coloration with which weakness dyes all that is distant and past. And what it does not do for itself it fails to do for the whole of mankind as well that is to say, it allows it to drop.
22. Nihilism. It may be two things: A. Nihilism as a sign of enhanced spiritual strength: active nihilism. B. Nihilism as a sign of the collapse and decline of spiritual strength: passive nihilism.
23. Nihilism, a normal condition. It may be a sign of strength; spiritual vigor may have increased to such an extent that the goals toward which man has marched hitherto (the "convictions," articles of faith) are no longer suited to it (for a faith generally expresses the exigencies of the conditions of existence, a submission to the authority of an order of things which conduces to the prosperity, the growth and power of a living creature . . .); on the other hand, a sign of insufficient strength, to fix a goal, a "wherefore," and a faith for itself. It reaches its maximum of relative strength, as a powerful destructive force, in the form of active nihilism. Its opposite would be weary nihilism, which no longer attacks: its most renowned form being Buddhism: as passive nihilism, a sign of weakness: spiritual strength may be fatigued, exhausted, so that the goals and values which have prevailed hitherto are no longer suited to it and are no longer believed in so that the synthesis of values and goals (upon which every strong culture stands) decomposes, and the different values contend with one another: Disintegration, then everything which is relieving, which heals, becalms, or stupefies, steps into the foreground under the cover of various disguises, either religious, moral, political or aesthetic, etc.
24. Nihilism is not only a meditating over the " in vain! " not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one s shoulder to the plough; one destroys. This, if you will, is illogical; but the nihilist does not believe in the necessity of being logical. ... It is the condition of strong minds and wills; and to these it is impossible to be satisfied with the negation of judgment: the negation by deeds proceeds from their nature. Annihilation by the reasoning faculty seconds annihilation by the hand.
25. Concerning the genesis of the nihilist. The courage of all one really knows comes but late in life. It is only quite recently that I have acknowledged to myself that heretofore I have been a nihilist from top to toe. The energy and thoroughness with which I marched forward as a nihilist deceived me concerning this fundamental principle. When one is progressing towards a goal it seems impossible that "aimlessness per se" should be one’s fundamental article of faith.
26. The Pessimism of strong natures. The "wherefore" after a terrible struggle, even after victory. That something may exist which is a hundred times more important than the question, whether we feel well or unwell, is the fundamental instinct of all strong natures and consequently too, whether the others feel well or unwell. In short, that we have a purpose, for which we would not even hesitate to sacrifice men, run all risks, and bend our backs to the worst: this is the great passion.
2. FURTHER CAUSES OF NIHILISM
27. The causes of nihilism: (1) The higher species is lacking, i.e., the species whose inexhaustible fruitfulness and power would uphold our belief in man (think only of what is owed to Napoleon: almost all the higher hopes of this century). (2) The inferior species ("herd," "mass," "society ") is forgetting modesty, and inflates its needs into cosmic and metaphysical values. In this way all life is vulgarized, for inasmuch as the mass of mankind rules, it tyrannizes over the exceptions, so that these lose their belief in themselves and become nihilists. All attempts to conceive of a new species come to nothing ("romanticism," the artist, the philosopher; against Carlyle’s attempt to lend them the highest moral values). The result is that higher types are resisted. The downfall and insecurity of all higher types. The struggle against genius ("popular poetry," etc.). Sympathy with the lowly and the suffering as a standard for the elevation of the soul. The philosopher is lacking, the interpreter of deeds, and not alone he who poetizes them.
28. Imperfect nihilism its forms: we are now surrounded by them. All attempts made to escape nihilism, which do not consist in revaluing the values that have prevailed hitherto, only make the matter worse; they complicate the problem.
29. The varieties of self-stupefaction. In one’s heart of hearts, not to know, whither? Emptiness. The attempt to rise superior to it all by means of emotional intoxication: emotional intoxication in the form of music, in the form of cruelty in the tragic joy over the ruin of the noblest, and in the form of blind, gushing enthusiasm over individual men or distinct periods (in the form of hatred, etc.). The attempt to work blindly, like a scientific instrument; to keep an eye on the many small joys, like an investigator, for instance (modesty towards oneself); the mysticism of the voluptuous joy of eternal emptiness; art "for art’s sake" ("le fait"), "immaculate investigation," in the form of narcotics against the disgust of oneself; any kind of incessant work, any kind of small foolish fanaticism; the medley of all means, illness as the result of general profligacy (dissipation kills pleasure). (1) As a result, feeble will-power. (2) Excessive pride and the humiliation of petty weakness felt as a contrast.
30. The time is coming when we shall have to pay for having been Christians for two thousand years: we are losing the equilibrium which enables us to live for a long while we shall not know in what direction we are travelling. We are hurling our selves headlong into the opposite valuations, with that degree of energy which could only have been engendered in man by an overvaluation of himself. Now, everything is false from the root, words and nothing but words, confused, feeble, or over strained. (a) There is a seeking after a sort of earthly solution of the problem of life, but in the same sense as that of the final triumph of truth, love, justice (socialism: "equality of persons"). (b) There is also an attempt to hold fast to the moral ideal (with altruism, self-sacrifice, and the denial of the will, in the front rank). (c) There is even an attempt to hold fast to a "beyond ": were it only as an antilogical x; but it is forthwith interpreted in such a way that a kind of metaphysical solace, after the old style, may be derived from it. (d) There is an attempt to read the phenomena of life in such a way as to arrive at the divine guidance of old, with its powers of rewarding, punishing, educating, and of generally conducing to a something better in the order of things. (e) People once more believe in good and evil; so that the victory of the good and the annihilation of the evil is regarded as a duty (this is English, and is typical of that blockhead, John Stuart Mill). (f) The contempt felt for "naturalness," for the desires and for the ego: the attempt to regard even the highest intellectuality of art as a result of an impersonal and disinterested attitude. (g) The Church is still allowed to meddle in all the essential occurrences and incidents in the life of the individual, with a view to consecrating it and giving it a loftier meaning: we still have the "Christian state" and the "Christian marriage."
31. There have been more thoughtful and more destructively thoughtful times than ours: times like those in which Buddha appeared, for instance, in which the people themselves, after centuries of sectarian quarrels, had sunk so deeply into the abyss of philosophical dogmas, as, from time to time, European people have done in regard to the fine points of religious dogma. "Literature" and the press would be the last things to seduce one to any high opinion of the spirit of our times: the millions of Spiritists, and a Christianity with gymnastic exercises of that ghastly ugliness which is characteristic of all English inventions, throw more light on the subject European pessimism is still in its infancy a fact which argues against it: it has not yet attained to that prodigious and yearning fixity of sight to which it attained in India once upon a time, and in which nonentity is reflected; there is still too much of the "ready-made," and not enough of the "evolved " in its constitution, too much learned and poetic pessimism; I mean that a good deal of it has been discovered, invented, and "created," but not caused.
32. Criticism of the pessimism which has prevailed hitherto. The want of the eudaemonological standpoint, as a last abbreviation of the question: what is the purpose of it all? The reduction of gloom. Our pessimism: the world has not the value which we believed it to have, our faith itself has so increased our instinct for research that we are compelled to say this today. In the first place, it seems of less value: at first it is felt to be of less value, only in this sense are we pessimists, that is to say, with the will to acknowledge this. Revaluation without reserve, and no longer, as heretofore, to deceive ourselves and chant the old old story. It is precisely in this way that we find the pathos which urges us to seek for new values. In short: the world might have far more value than we thought we must get behind the naiveté of our ideals, for it is possible that, in our conscious effort to give it the highest interpretation, we have not bestowed even a moderately just value upon it. What has been deified? The valuing instinct inside the community (that which enabled it to survive). What has been calumniated! That which has tended to separate higher men from their inferiors, the instincts which cleave gulfs and build barriers.
33. Causes effecting the rise of pessimism: (1) The most powerful instincts and those which promised most for the future have hitherto been calumniated, so that life has a curse upon it. (2) The growing bravery and the more daring mistrust on the part of man have led him to discover the fact that these instincts cannot be cut adrift from life, and thus he turns to embrace life. (3) Only the most mediocre, who are not conscious of this conflict, prosper; the higher species fail, and as an example of degeneration tend to dispose all hearts against them on the other hand, there is some indignation caused by the mediocre positing themselves as the end and meaning of all things. No one can any longer reply to the question: "Why?" (4) Belittlement, susceptibility to pain, unrest, haste, and confusion are steadily increasing the materialization of all these tendencies, which is called" civilization," becomes every day more simple, with the result that, in the face of the monstrous machine, the individual despairs and surrenders.
34. Modern pessimism is an expression of the uselessness only of the modern world, not of the world and existence as such.
35. The "preponderance of pain over pleasure" or the reverse (hedonism); both of these doctrines are already signposts to nihilism. . . . For here, in both cases, no other final purpose is sought than the phenomenon pleasure or pain. But only a man who no longer dares to posit a will, a purpose, and a final goal can speak in this way according to every healthy type of man, the worth of life is certainly not measured by the standard of these secondary things. And a preponderance of pain would be possible and, in spite of it, a mighty will, a saying of yea to life, and a holding of this preponderance for necessary. "life is not worth living"; "resignation"; "what is the good of tears?" this is a feeble and sentimental attitude of mind. "Un monstre gai vaut mieux qu’un sentimental ennuyeux."
36. The philosophic nihilist is convinced that all phenomena are without sense and are in vain, and that there ought to be no such thing as being without sense and in vain. But whence comes this "there ought not to be?" whence this "sense" and this standard? At bottom the nihilist supposes that the sight of such a desolate, useless being is unsatisfying to the philosopher, and fills him with desolation and despair. This aspect of the case is opposed to our subtle sensibilities as a philosopher. It leads to the absurd conclusion that the character of existence must perforce afford pleasure to the philosopher if it is to have any right to subsist. Now it is easy to understand that happiness and unhappiness, within the phenomena of this world, can only serve the purpose of means: the question yet remaining to be answered is, whether it will ever be possible for us to perceive the "object" and "purpose" of life, whether the problem of purposelessness or the reverse is not quite beyond our ken.
37. The development of nihilism out of pessimism. The denaturalization of values. Scholasticism of values. The values isolated, idealistic, instead of ruling and leading action, turn against it and condemn it. Opposites introduced in the place of natural gradations and ranks. Hatred of the order of rank. Opposites are compatible with a plebeian age, because they are more easy to grasp. The rejected world is opposed to an artificially constructed "true and valuable" one. At last we discover out of what material the "true" world was built; all that remains, now, is the rejected world, and to the account of our reasons for rejecting it we place our greatest disillusionment. At this point nihilism is reached; the directing values have been retained nothing more! This gives rise to the problem of strength and weakness: (1) The weak fall to pieces upon it; (2) The strong destroy what does not fall to pieces of its own accord; (3) The strongest overcome the directing values. The whole condition of affairs produces the tragic age.
3. THE NIHILISTIC MOVEMENT AS AN EXPRESSION OF DECADENCE.
38. Just lately an accidental and in every way inappropriate term has been very much misused: everywhere people are speaking of "pessimism". and there is a fight around the question (to which some replies must be forthcoming): which is right pessimism or optimism? People have not yet seen what is so terribly obvious namely, that pessimism is not a problem but a symptom, that the term ought to be re placed by "nihilism," that the question, "to be or not to be," is itself an illness, a sign of degeneracy, an idiosyncrasy. The nihilistic movement is only an expression of physiological decadence.
39. To be understood: That every kind of decline and tendency to sickness has incessantly been at work in helping to create general evaluations: that in those valuations which now dominate, decadence has even begun to preponderate, that we have not only to combat the conditions which present misery and degeneration have brought into being; but that all decadence, previous to that of our own times, has been transmitted and has therefore remained an active force amongst us. A universal departure of this kind, on the part of man, from his fundamental instincts, such universal decadence of the valuing judgment, is the note of interrogation par excellence, the real riddle, which the animal "man" sets to all philosophers.
40. The notion " decadence ": Decay, decline, and waste, are, per se, in no way open to objection; they are the natural consequences of life and vital growth. The phenomenon of decadence is just as necessary to life as advance or progress is: we are not in a position which enables us to suppress it. On the contrary, reason would have it retain its rights. It is disgraceful on the part of socialist-theorists to argue that circumstances and social combinations could be devised which would put an end to all vice, illness, crime, prostitution, and poverty. . . . But that is tantamount to condemning life ... a society is not at liberty to remain young. And even in its prime it must bring forth ordure and decaying matter. The more energetically and daringly it advances, the richer will it be in failures and in deformities, and the nearer it will be to its fall. Age is not deferred by means of institutions. Nor is illness. Nor is vice.
41. Fundamental aspect of the nature of decadence: what has heretofore been regarded as its causes are its effects. In this way, the whole perspective of the problems of morality is altered. All the struggle of morals against vice, luxury, crime, and even against illness, seems a naiveté, a superfluous effort: there is no such thing as "improvement" (a word against repentance). Decadence itself is not a thing that can be withstood: it is absolutely necessary and is proper to all ages and all peoples. That which must be withstood, and by all means in our power, is the spreading of the contagion among the sound parts of the organism. Is that done? The very reverse is done. It is precisely on this account that one makes a stand on behalf of humanity. How do the highest values created hitherto stand in relation to this fundamental question in biology? Philosophy, religion, morality, art, etc. (The remedy: militarism, for instance, from Napoleon onwards, who regarded civilization as his natural enemy.)
42. All those things which heretofore have been regarded as the causes of degeneration are really its effects. But those things also which have been regarded as the remedies of degeneration are only palliatives of certain effects thereof: the "cured" are types of the degenerate. The results of decadence: vice viciousness; illness sickliness; crime criminality; celibacy sterility; hysteria the weakness of the will; alcoholism; pessimism, anarchy; debauchery (also of the spirit). The calumniators, underminers, sceptics, and destroyers.
43. Concerning the notion "decadence." (i) Scepticism is a result of decadence: just as spiritual debauchery is. Nihilism. (2) Moral corruption is a result of decadence (the weakness of the will and the need of strong stimulants). (3) Remedies, whether psychological or moral, do not alter the march of decadence, they do not arrest anything; physiologically they do not count. A peep into the enormous futility of these pretentious "reactions"; they are forms of anaesthetizing oneself against certain fatal symptoms resulting from the prevailing condition of things; they do not eradicate the morbid element; they are often heroic attempts to cancel the decadent man, to allow only a minimum of his deleterious influence to survive. (4) Nihilism is not a cause, but only the rationale of decadence. (5) The "good" and the "bad" are no more than two types of decadence: they come together in all its fundamental phenomena. (6) The social problem is a result of decadence. (7) Illnesses, more particularly those attacking the nerves and the head, are signs that the defensive strength of strong nature is lacking; a proof of this is that irritability which causes pleasure and pain to be regarded as problems of the first order.
44. The most common types of decadence: (i) In the belief that they are remedies, cures are chosen which only precipitate exhaustion; this is the case with Christianity (to point to the most egregious example of mistaken instinct); this is also the case with " progress." (2) The power of resisting stimuli is on the wane chance rules supreme: events are inflated and drawn out until they appear monstrous . . . a suppression of the "personality," a disintegration of the will; in this regard we may mention a whole class of morality, the altruistic, that which is incessantly preaching pity, and whose most essential feature is the weakness of the personality, so that it rings in unison, and, like an over sensitive string, does not cease from vibrating . . . extreme irritability. . . . (3) Cause and effect are confounded: decadence is not understood as physiological, and its results are taken to be the causes of the general indisposition: this applies to all religious morality. (4) A state of affairs is desired in which suffering shall cease; life is actually considered the cause of all ills unconscious and insensitive states (sleep and syncope) are held in incomparably higher esteem than the conscious states; hence a method of life.
45. Concerning the hygiene of the " weak." All that is done in weakness ends in failure. Moral: do nothing. The worst of it is, that precisely the strength required in order to stop action, and to cease from reacting, is most seriously diseased under the influence of weakness: that one never reacts more promptly or more blindly than when one should not react at all. The strength of a character is shown by the ability to delay and postpone reaction: a certain adiaphora is just as proper to it, as involuntariness in recoiling, suddenness and lack of restraint in "action," are proper to weakness. The will is weak: and the recipe for preventing foolish acts would be: to have a strong will and to do nothing contradiction. A sort of self-destruction, the instinct of self-preservation is compromised. . . . The weak man injures himself. . . . That is the decadent type. As a matter of fact, we meet with a vast amount of thought concerning the means where with impassibility may be induced. To this extent, the instincts are on the right scent; for to do nothing is more useful than to do something. . . . All the practices of private orders, of solitary philosophers, and of fakirs, are suggested by a correct consideration of the fact, that a certain kind of man is most useful to himself when he hinders his own action as much as possible. Relieving measures: absolute obedience, mechanical activity, total isolation from men and things that might exact immediate decisions and actions.
46. Weakness of will: this is a fable that can lead astray. For there is no will, consequently neither a strong nor a weak one. The multiplicity and disintegration of the instincts, the want of system in their relationship, constitute what is known as a " weak will"; their co-ordination, under the government of one individual among them, results in a "strong will" in the first case vacillation and a lack of equilibrium is noticeable: in the second, precision and definite direction.
47. That which is inherited is not illness, but predisposition to illness: a lack of the powers of resistance against injurious external influences, etc. etc., broken powers of resistance; expressed morally: resignation and humility in the presence of the enemy. I have often wondered whether it would not be possible to class all the highest values of the philosophies, moralities, and religions which have been devised hitherto, with the values of the feeble, the insane and the neurasthenic: in a milder form, they present the same evils. The value of all morbid conditions consists in the fact that they magnify certain normal phenomena which are difficult to discern in normal conditions. . . . Health and illness are not essentially different, as the ancient doctors believed and as a few practitioners still believe today. They cannot be imagined as two distinct principles or entities which fight for the living organism and make it their battlefield. That is nonsense and mere idle gossip, which no longer holds water. As a matter of fact, there is only a difference of degree between these two living conditions: exaggeration, want of proportion, want of harmony among the normal phenomena, constitute the morbid state (Claude Bernard). Just as "evil" may be regarded as exaggeration, discord, and want of proportion, so can "good" be regarded as a sort of protective diet against the danger of exaggeration, discord, and want of proportion. Hereditary weakness as a dominant feeling: the cause of the prevailing values. N.B. Weakness is in demand why? . . . mostly because people cannot be anything else than weak. Weakening considered a duty: The weakening of the desires, of the feelings of pleasure and of pain, of the will to power, of the will to pride, to property and to more property; weakening in the form of humility; weakening in the form of a belief; weakening in the form of repugnance and shame in the presence of all that is natural in the form of a denial of life, in the form of illness and chronic feebleness; weakening in the form of a refusal to take revenge, to offer resistance, to become an enemy, and to show anger. Blunders in the treatment: there is no attempt at combating weakness by means of any fortifying system; but by a sort of justification consisting of moralizing; i.e., by means of interpretation. Two totally different conditions are confused: for instance, the repose of strength, which is essentially abstinence from reaction (the prototype of the gods whom nothing moves), and the peace of exhaustion, rigidity to the point of anesthesia. All these philosophic and ascetic modes of procedure aspire to the second state, but actually pretend to attain to the first ... for they ascribe to the condition they have reached the attributes that would be in keeping only with a divine state.
48. The most dangerous misunderstanding. There is one concept which apparently allows of no confusion or ambiguity, and that is the concept exhaustion. Exhaustion may be acquired or inherited in any case it alters the aspect and value of things. Unlike him who involuntarily gives of the superabundance which he both feels and represents, to the things about him, and who sees them fuller, mightier, and more pregnant with promises, who, in fact, can bestow, the exhausted one belittles and disfigures everything he sees he impoverishes its worth: he is detrimental. . . . No mistake seems possible in this matter: and yet history discloses the terrible fact, that the exhausted have always been confounded with those with the most abundant resources, and the latter with the most detrimental. The pauper in vitality, the feeble one, impoverishes even life: the wealthy man, in vital powers, enriches it. The first is the parasite of the second: the second is a bestower of his abundance. How is confusion possible? When he who was exhausted came forth with the bearing of a very active and energetic man (when degeneration implied a certain excess of spiritual and nervous discharge), he was mistaken for the wealthy man. He inspired terror. The cult of the madman is also always the cult of him who is rich in vitality, and who is a powerful man. The fanatic, the one possessed, the religious epileptic, all eccentric creatures have been regarded as the highest types of power: as divine. This kind of strength which inspires terror seemed to be, above all, divine: this was the starting-point of authority; here wisdom was interpreted, hearkened to, and sought. Out of this there was developed, everywhere almost, a will to "deify," i.e., to a typical degeneration of spirit, body, and nerves: an attempt to discover the road to this higher form of being. To make oneself ill or mad, to provoke the symptoms of serious disorder was called getting stronger, becoming more superhuman, more terrible and more wise. People thought they would thus attain to such wealth of power, that they would be able to dispense it. Wheresoever there have been prayers, some one has been sought who had something to give away. What led astray, here, was the experience of intoxication. This increases the feeling of power to the highest degree, therefore, to the mind of the ingenuous, it is power. On the highest altar of power the most intoxicated man must stand, the ecstatic. (There are two causes of intoxication: superabundant life, and a condition of morbid nutrition of the brain.)
49. Acquired, not inherited exhaustion: (i) inadequate nourishment, often the result of ignorance concerning diet, as, for instance, in the case of scholars; (2) erotic precocity: the damnation more especially of the youth of France Parisian youths, above all, who are already dirtied and ruined when they step out of their lycées into the world, and who cannot break the chains of despicable tendencies; ironical and scornful towards themselves galley-slaves despite all their refinement (moreover, in the majority of cases, already a symptom of racial and family decadence, as all hypersensitiveness is; and examples of the infection of environment: to be influenced by one’s environment is also a sign of decadence); (3) alcoholism, not the instinct but the habit, foolish imitation, the cowardly or vain adaptation to a ruling fashion. What a blessing a Jew is among Germans! See the obtuseness, the flaxen head, the blue eye, and the lack of intellect in the face, the language, and the bearing; the lazy habit of stretching the limbs, and the need of repose among Germans a need which is not the result of overwork, but of the disgusting excitation and over-excitation caused by alcohol.
50. A theory of exhaustion. Vice, the insane (also artists), the criminals, the anarchists these are not the oppressed classes, but the outcasts of the community of all classes hitherto. Seeing that all our classes are permeated by these elements, we have grasped the fact that modern society is not a "society" or a "body," but a diseased agglomeration of chandala, a society which no longer has the strength even to excrete. To what extent living together for centuries has very much deepened sickliness: modern virtue, modern intellect, modern science, as forms of disease.
51. The state of corruption. The interrelation of all forms of corruption should be understood, and the Christian form (Pascal as the type), as also the socialistic and communistic (a result of the Christian), should not be overlooked (from the standpoint of natural science, the highest conception of society according to socialists, is the lowest in the order of rank among societies); the "beyond" corruption: as though outside the real world of becoming there were a world of being. Here there must be no compromise, but selection, annihilation, and war the Christian nihilistic standard of value must be withdrawn from all things and attacked beneath every disguise . . . for instance, from modern sociology, music, and pessimism (all forms of the Christian ideal of values). Either one thing or the other is true: true that is to say, tending to elevate the type man. . . . The priest, the shepherd of souls, should be looked upon as a form of life which must be suppressed. All education, hitherto, has been help less, adrift, without ballast, and afflicted with the contradiction of values.
52. If nature have no pity on the degenerate, it is not therefore immoral: the growth of physiological and moral evils in the human race, is rather the result of morbid and unnatural morality. The sensitiveness of the majority of men is both morbid and unnatural. Why is it that mankind is corrupt in a moral and physiological respect? The body degenerates if one organ is unsound. The right of altruism cannot be traced to physiology, neither can the right to help and to the equality of fate: these are all premiums for degenerates and failures. There can be no solidarity in a society containing unfruitful, unproductive, and destructive members, who, by the bye, are bound to have offspring even more degenerate than they are themselves.
53. Decadence exercises a profound and perfectly unconscious influence, even over the ideals of science: all our sociology is a proof of this pro position, and it has yet to be reproached with the fact that it has only the experience of society in the process of decay, and inevitably takes its own decaying instincts as the basis of sociological judgment. The declining vitality of modern Europe formulates its social ideals in its decaying instincts: and these ideals are all so like those of old and effete races, that they might be mistaken for one another. The gregarious instinct, then, now a sovereign power, is something totally different from the instinct of an aristocratic society: and the value of the sum depends upon the value of the units constituting it. ... The whole of our sociology knows no other instinct than that of the herd, of a multitude of mere ciphers of which every cipher has "equal rights," and where it is a virtue to be naught. . . . The valuation with which the various forms of society are judged today is absolutely the same with that which assigns a higher place to peace than to war: but this principle is contrary to the teaching of biology, and is itself a mere outcome of decadent life. Life is a result of war, society is a means to war. . . . Mr. Herbert Spencer was a decadent in biology, as also in morality (he regarded the triumph of altruism as a desideratum!!!).
54. After thousands of years of error and confusion, it is my good fortune to have rediscovered the road which leads to a yea and to a nay. I teach people to say nay in the face of all that makes for weakness and exhaustion. I teach people to say yea in the face of all that makes for strength, that preserves strength, and justifies the feeling of strength. Up to the present, neither the one nor the other has been taught; but rather virtue, disinterestedness, pity, and even the negation of life. All these are values proceeding from exhausted people. After having pondered over the physiology of exhaustion for some time, I was led to the question: to what extent the judgments of exhausted people had percolated into the world of values. The result at which I arrived was as startling as it could possibly be even for one like my self who was already at home in many a strange world: I found that all prevailing values that is to say, all those which had gained ascendancy over humanity, or at least over its tamer portions, could be traced back to the judgment of exhausted people. Under the cover of the holiest names, I found the most destructive tendencies; people had actually given the name "God" to all that renders weak, teaches weakness, and infects with weakness. ... I found that the "good man" was a form of self-affirmation on the part of decadence. That virtue which Schopenhauer still pro claimed as superior to all, and as the most fundamental of all virtues; even that same pity I recognized as more dangerous than any vice. Nihilism. Deliberately to thwart the law of selection among species, and their natural means of purging their stock of degenerate members this, up to my time, had been the greatest of all virtues. . . . One should do honor to the fatality which says to the feeble: "perish! " The opposing of this fatality, the botching of mankind and the allowing of it to putrefy, was given the name "God." One shall not take the name of the Lord one s God in vain. . . . The race is corrupted not by its vices, but by its ignorance: it is corrupted because it has not recognized exhaustion as exhaustion: physiological misunderstandings are the cause of all evil. Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding. Problem: how were the exhausted able to make the laws of values? In other words, how did they who are the last, come to power? . . . How did the instincts of the animal man ever get to stand on their heads? . . .
4. THE CRISIS: NIHILISM AND THE IDEA OF RECURRENCE.
55. Extreme positions are not relieved by more moderate ones, but by extreme opposite positions. And thus the belief in the utter immorality of nature, and in the absence of all purpose and sense, are psychologically necessary attitudes when the belief in God and in an essentially moral order of things is no longer tenable. Nihilism now appears, not because the sorrows of existence are greater than they were formerly, but because, in a general way, people have grown suspicious of the "meaning" which might be given to evil and even to existence. One interpretation has been overthrown: but since it was held to be the interpretation, it seems as though there were no meaning in existence at all, as though every thing were in vain. It yet remains to be shown that this " in vain! " is the character of present nihilism. The mistrust of our former valuations has increased to such an extent that it has led to the question: are not all values merely allurements prolonging the duration of the comedy, without, however, bringing the unraveling any closer? The "long period of time" which has culminated in an "in vain," with out either goal or purpose, is the most paralyzing of thoughts, more particularly when one sees that one is duped without, however, being able to resist being duped. Let us imagine this thought in its worst form: existence, as it is, without either a purpose or a goal, but inevitably recurring, without an end in nonentity: "eternal recurrence." This is the extremest form of nihilism: nothing (purposelessness) eternal! European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and of strength drives us to such a belief. It is the most scientific of all hypotheses. We deny final purposes. If existence had a final purpose it would have reached it. It should be understood that what is being aimed at, here, is a contradiction of pantheism: for "everything perfect, divine, eternal," also leads to the belief in eternal recurrence. Question: has this pantheistic and affirmative attitude to all things also been made possible by morality? At bottom only the moral God has been overcome. Is there any sense in imagining a God "beyond good and evil"? Would pantheism in this sense be possible? Do we withdraw the idea of purpose from the process, and affirm the process notwithstanding? This were so if, within that process, something were attained every moment and always the same thing. Spinoza won an affirmative position of this sort, in the sense that every moment, according to him, has a logical necessity: and he triumphed by means of his fundamentally logical instinct over a like conformation of the world. But his case is exceptional. If every fundamental trait of character, which lies beneath every act, and which finds expression in every act, were recognized by the individual as his fundamental trait of character, this individual would be driven to regard every moment of his existence in general, triumphantly as good. It would simply be necessary for that fundamental trait of character to be felt in oneself as something good, valuable, and pleasurable. Now, in the case of those men and classes of men who were treated with violence and oppressed by their fellows, morality saved life from despair and from the leap into nonentity: for impotence in relation to mankind and not in relation to nature is what generates the most desperate bitterness towards existence. Morality treated the powerful, the violent, and the "masters" in general, as enemies against whom the common man must be protected that is to say, emboldened, strengthened. Morality has therefore always taught the most profound hatred and contempt of the fundamental trait of character of all rulers i.e. their will to power. To suppress, to deny, and to decompose this morality, would mean to regard this most thoroughly detested instinct with the reverse of the old feeling and valuation. If the sufferer and the oppressed man were to lose his belief in his right to contemn the will to power, his position would be desperate. This would be so if the trait above-mentioned were essential to life, in which case it would follow that even that will to morality was only a cloak to this "will to power," as are also even that hatred and contempt. The oppressed man would then perceive that he stands on the same platform with the oppressor, and that he has no individual privilege, nor any higher rank than the latter. On the contrary! There is nothing on earth which can have any value, if it have not a modicum of power granted, of course, that life itself is the will to power. Morality protected the botched and bungled against nihilism, in that it gave every one of them infinite worth, metaphysical worth, and classed them altogether in one order which did not correspond with that of worldly power and order of rank: it taught submission, humility, etc. Admitting that the belief in this morality be destroyed, the botched and the bungled would no longer have any comfort, and would perish. This perishing seems like self-annihilation, like an instinctive selection of that which must be destroyed. The symptoms of this self-destruction of the botched and the bungled: self-vivisection, poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, and, above all, the instinctive constraint to acts whereby the powerful are made into mortal enemies (training, so to speak, one s own hangmen), the will to destruction as the will of a still deeper instinct of the instinct of self-destruction, of the will to nonentity. Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled have no longer any consolation, that they destroy in order to be destroyed, that, having been deprived of morality, they no longer have any reason to "resign themselves," that they take up their stand on the territory of the opposite principle, and will also exercise power themselves, by compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. This is the European form of Buddhism, that active negation, after all existence has lost its meaning. It must not be supposed that "poverty" has grown more acute, on the contrary! "God, morality, resignation" were remedies in the very deepest stages of misery: active nihilism made its appearance in circumstances which were relatively much more favorable. The fact, alone, that morality is regarded as overcome, presupposes a certain degree of intellectual culture; while this very culture, for its part, bears evidence to a certain relative well-being. A certain intellectual fatigue, brought on by the long struggle concerning philosophical opinions, and carried to hopeless skepticism against philosophy, shows moreover that the level of these nihilists is by no means a low one. Only think of the conditions in which Buddha appeared! The teaching of the eternal recurrence would have learned principles to go upon (just as Buddha s teaching, for instance, had the notion of causality, etc.). What do we mean today by the words "botched and bungled"? In the first place, they are used physiologically and not politically. The unhealthiest kind of man all over Europe (in all classes) is the soil out of which nihilism grows: this species of man will regard eternal recurrence as damnation once he is bitten by the thought, he can no longer recoil before any action. He would not extirpate passively, but would cause everything to be extirpated which is meaningless and without a goal to this extent; although it is only a spasm, or sort of blind rage in the presence of the fact that everything has existed again and again for an eternity even this period of nihilism and destruction. The value of such a crisis is that it purifies, that it unites similar elements, and makes them mutually destructive, that it assigns common duties to men of opposite persuasions, and brings the weaker and more un certain among them to the light, thus taking the first step towards a new order of rank among forces from the standpoint of health: recognizing commanders as commanders, subordinates as subordinates. Naturally irrespective of all the present forms of society. What class of men will prove they are strongest in this new order of things? The most moderate: they who do not require any extreme forms of belief, they who not only admit of, but actually like, a certain modicum of chance and nonsense; they who can think of man with a very moderate view of his value, without becoming weak and small on that account; the most rich in health, who are able to withstand a maximum amount of sorrow, and who are therefore not so very much afraid of sorrow, men who are certain of their power, and who represent with conscious pride the state of strength to which man has attained. How could such a man think of eternal recurrence?
56. The Periods of European Nihilism. The period of obscurity: all kinds of groping measures devised to preserve old institutions and not to arrest the progress of new ones. The period of light; men see that old and new are fundamental contraries; that the old values are born of descending life, and that the new ones are born of ascending life that all old ideals are unfriendly to life (born of decadence and determining it, however much they may be decked out in the Sunday finery of morality). We understand the old, but are far from being sufficiently strong for the new. The periods of the three great passions: contempt, pity, destruction. The periods of catastrophes: the rise of a teaching which will sift mankind . . . which drives the weak to some decision and the strong also.
II. CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN NIHILISM
(a) MODERN GLOOMINESS.
57. My friends, we had a hard time as youths; we even suffered from youth itself as though it were a serious disease. This is owing to the age in which we were born an age of enormous internal decay and disintegration which, with all its weakness and even with the best of its strength, is opposed to the spirit of youth. Disintegration that is to say, uncertainty is peculiar to this age: nothing stands on solid ground or on a sound faith. People live for the morrow, because the day-after-tomorrow is doubtful. All our road is slippery and dangerous, while the ice which still bears us has grown unconscionably thin: we all feel the mild and gruesome breath of the thaw-wind soon, where we are walking, no one will any longer be able to stand!
58. If this is not an age of decay and of diminishing vitality, it is at least one of indiscriminate and arbitrary experimentalizing and it is probable that out of an excess of abortive experiments there has grown this general impression, as of decay: and perhaps decay itself.
59. Concerning the history of modern gloominess. The state-nomads (officials, etc.): "home less". The break-up of the family. The "good man" as a symptom of exhaustion. Justice as will to power (rearing). Lewdness and neurosis. Black music: whither has real music gone? The anarchist. Contempt of man, loathing. Most profound distinction: whether hunger or satiety is creative? The first creates the ideals of romanticism. Northern unnaturalness. The need of alcohol: the "need" of the working classes. Philosophical nihilism.
60. The slow advance and rise of the middle and lower classes (including the lower kind of spirit and body), which was already well under way before the French Revolution, and would have made the same progress forward without the latter, in short, then, the preponderance of the herd over all herdsmen and bell-wethers, brings in its train: (i) Gloominess of spirit (the juxtaposition of a stoical and a frivolous appearance of happiness, peculiar to noble cultures, is on the decline; much suffering is allowed to be seen and heard which formerly was borne in concealment; (2) Moral hypocrisy (a way of distinguishing oneself through morality, but by means of the values of the herd: pity, solicitude, moderation; and not by means of those virtues which are recognized and honored outside the herd s sphere of power); (3) A really large amount of sympathy with both pain and joy (a feeling of pleasure resulting from being herded together, which is peculiar to all gregarious animals "public spirit," "patriotism," everything, in fact, which is apart from the individual).
61. Our age, with its indiscriminate endeavors to mitigate distress, to honor it, and to wage war in advance with unpleasant possibilities, is an age of the poor. Our "rich people" they are the poorest! The real purpose of all wealth has been forgotten.
62. Criticism of modern man: "the good man," but corrupted and misled by bad institutions (tyrants and priests); reason elevated to a position of authority; history is regarded as the surmounting of errors; the future is regarded as progress; the Christian state ("God of the armies"); Christian sexual intercourse (as marriage); the realm of "justice" (the cult of "mankind"); "freedom." The romantic attitudes of the modern man: the noble man (Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand) , taking the part of the oppressed and the bungled and the botched: motto for historians and romancers; the Stoics of duty; disinterestedness regarded as art and as knowledge; altruism as the most mendacious form of egoism (utilitarianism), the most sentimental form of egoism. All this savors of the eighteenth century. But it had other qualities which were not inherited, namely, a certain insouciance, cheerfulness, elegance, spiritual clearness. The spiritual tempo has altered; the pleasure which was begotten by spiritual refinement and clearness has given room to the pleasure of color, harmony, mass, reality, etc. etc. Sensuality in spiritual things. In short, it is the eighteenth century of Rousseau.
63. Taken all in all, a considerable amount of humanity has been attained by our men of today. That we feel this is in itself a proof of the fact that we have become so sensitive in regard to small cases of distress, that we somewhat unjustly overlook what has been achieved. Here we must make allowances for the fact that a great deal of decadence is rife, and that, through such eyes, our world must appear bad and wretched. But these eyes have always seen in the same way, in all ages. (1) A certain hypersensitiveness, even in morality. (2) The quantum of bitterness and gloominess, which pessimism bears with it in its judgments- both together have helped to bring about the preponderance of the other and opposite point of view, that things are not well with our morality. The fact of credit, of the commerce of the world, and the means of traffic are expressions of an extraordinarily mild trustfulness in men. . . . To that may also be added (3) The deliverance of science from moral and religious prejudices: a very good sign, though for the most part misunderstood. In my own way, I am attempting a justification of history.
64. The second appearance of Buddhism. Its precursory signs: the increase of pity. Spiritual exhaustion. The reduction of all problems to the question of pleasure and pain. The glory of war which calls forth a counter-stroke. Just as the sharp demarcation of nations generates a counter-movement in the form of the most hearty "fraternity." The fact that it is impossible for religion to carry on its work any longer with dogma and fables. The catastrophe of nihilism will put an end to all this Buddhistic culture.
65. That which is most sorely afflicted today is the instinct and will of tradition: all institutions which owe their origin to this instinct, are opposed to the tastes of the age. ... At bottom, nothing is thought or done which is not calculated to tear up this spirit of tradition by the roots. Tradition is looked upon as a fatality; it is studied and acknowledged (in the form of " heredity "), but people will not have anything to do with it. The extension of one will over long periods of time, the selection of conditions and valuations which make it possible to dispose of centuries in advance this, precisely, is what is most utterly anti-modern. From which it follows, that disorganizing principles give our age its specific character.
66. "Be simple" a demand which, when made to us complicated and incomprehensible triers of the heart and reins, is a simple absurdity. ... Be natural: but even if we are unnatural what then?
67. The means employed in former times in order to arrive at similarly constituted and lasting types, throughout long generations: entailed property and the respect of parents (the origin of the faith in gods and heroes as ancestors). Now, the subdivision of property belongs to the opposite tendency. The centralization of an enormous number of different interests in one soul: which, to that end, must be very strong and mutable. Nihilism.
68. Why does everything become mummery. The modern man is lacking in unfailing instinct (instinct being understood here to mean that which is the outcome of a long period of activity in the same occupation on the part of one family of men); the incapability of producing anything, is simply the result of this lack of instinct: one individual alone cannot make up for the schooling his ancestors should have transmitted to him. What a morality or book of law creates: that deep instinct which renders automatism and perfection possible in life and in work. But now we have reached the opposite point; yes, we wanted to reach it the most extreme consciousness, through introspection on the part of man and of history: and thus we are practically most distant from perfection in being, doing, and willing: our desires even our will to knowledge shows how prodigiously decadent we are. We are striving after the very reverse of what strong races and strong natures will have understanding is an end. . . . That science is possible in the way in which it is practiced today, proves that all elementary instincts, the instincts which ward off danger and protect life, are no longer active. We no longer save, we are merely spending the capital of our forefathers, even in the way in which we pursue knowledge.
69. Nihilistic trait. (a) In the natural sciences ("purposelessness"), causality, mechanism, "conformity to law," an interval, a remnant. (b) Likewise in politics: the individual lacks the belief in his own right, innocence; falsehood rules supreme, as also the worship of the moment. (c) Likewise in political economy: the abolition of slavery: the lack of a redeeming class, and of one who justifies the rise of anarchy. "Education"? (d) Likewise in history: fatalism, Darwinism; the last attempts at reconciling reason and godliness fail. Sentimentality in regard to the past: biographies can no longer be endured! (Phenomenalism even here: character regarded as a mask; there are no facts.) (e) Likewise in art: romanticism and its counter-stroke (repugnance towards romantic ideals and lies). The latter, morally, as a sense of great est truthfulness, but pessimistic. Pure "artists" (indifference as to the "subject"). (The psychology of the father-confessor and puritanical psychology two forms of psychological romanticism: but also their counter-stroke, the attempt to maintain a purely artistic attitude towards "men" but even in this respect no one dares to make the opposite valuation.)
70. Against the teaching of the influence of environment and external causes: the power coming from inside is infinitely superior; much that appears like influence acting from without is merely the subjection of environment to this inner power. Precisely the same environment may be used and interpreted in opposite ways: there are no facts. A genius is not explained by such theories concerning origins.
71. "Modernity" regarded in the light of nutrition and digestion. Sensitiveness is infinitely more acute (beneath moral vestments: the increase of pity), the abund ance of different impressions is greater than ever. The cosmopolitanism of articles of diet, of literature, newspapers, forms, tastes, and even landscapes. The speed of this affluence is prestissimo; impressions are wiped out, and people instinctively guard against assimilating anything or against taking anything seriously and " digesting " it; the result is a weakening of the powers of digestion. There begin a sort of adaptation to this accumulation of impressions. Man unlearns the art of doing, and all he does is to react to stimuli coming from his environment. He spends his strength, partly in the process of assimilation, partly in defending himself, and again partly in responding to stimuli. Profound enfeeblement of spontaneity: the historian, the critic, the analyst, the interpreter, the observer, the collector, the reader, all reactive talents, all science! Artificial modification of one s own nature in order to make it resemble a "mirror"; one is interested, but only epidermally: this is systematic coolness, equilibrium, a steady low temperature, just beneath the thin surface on which warmth, movement, "storm," and undulations play. Opposition of external mobility to a certain dead heaviness and fatigue.
72. Where must our modern world be classed under exhaustion or under increasing strength? Its multiformity and lack of repose are brought about by the highest form of consciousness.
73. Overwork, curiosity and sympathy our modern vices.
74. A contribution to the characterization of "modernity." Exaggerated development of intermediate forms; the decay of types; the break-up of tradition, schools; the predominance of the instincts (philosophically prepared: the unconscious has the greater value) after the appearance of the enfeeblement of will power and of the will to an end and to the means thereto.
75. A capable artisan or scholar cuts a good figure if he have his pride in his art, and looks pleasantly and contentedly upon life. On the other hand, there is no sight more wretched than that of a cobbler or a schoolmaster who, with the air of a martyr, gives one to understand that he was really born for something better. There is nothing better than what is good! and that is: to have a certain kind of capacity and to use it. This is virtu in the Italian style of the Renaissance. Nowadays, when the state has a nonsensically oversized belly, in all fields and branches of work there are "representatives" over and above the real workman: for instance, in addition to the scholars, there are the journalists; in addition to the suffering masses, there is a crowd of jabbering and bragging ne'er-do-wells who "represent" that suffering not to speak of the professional politicians who, though quite satisfied with their lot, stand up in parliament and, with strong lungs, "represent" grievances. Our modern life is extremely expensive thanks to the host of middlemen that infest it; whereas in the city of antiquity, and in many a city of Spain and Italy today, where there is an echo of the ancient spirit, the man himself comes forward and will have nothing to do with a representative or an intermediary in the modern style except perhaps to kick him hence!
76. The pre-eminence of the merchant and the middleman, even in the most intellectual spheres: the journalist, the " representative," the historian (as an intermediary between the past and the pre sent), the exotic and cosmopolitan, the middleman between natural science and philosophy, the semi- theologians.
77. The men I have regarded with the most loathing, heretofore, are the parasites of intellect: they are to be found everywhere, already, in our modern Europe, and as a matter of fact their conscience is as light as it possibly can be. They may be a little turbid, and savor somewhat of Pessimism, but in the main they are voracious, dirty, dirtying, stealthy, insinuating, light-fingered gentry, scabby and as innocent as all small sinners and microbes are. They live at the expense of those who have intellect and who distribute it liberally: they know that it is peculiar to the rich mind to live in a disinterested fashion, without taking too much petty thought for the morrow, and to distribute its wealth prodigally. For intellect is a bad domestic economist, and pays no heed whatever to the fact that everything lives on it and devours it.
78. MODERN MUMMERY. The motleyness of modern men and its charm. Essentially a mask and a sign of boredom. The journalist. The political man (in the "national swindle"). Mummery in the arts: The lack of honesty in preparing and schooling oneself for them (Fromentin); The Romanticists (their lack of philosophy and science and their excess in literature); The novelists (Walter Scott, but also the monsters of the Nibelung with their inordinately nervous music); The lyricists. "Scientifically." Virtuosos (Jews). The popular ideals are overcome, but not yet in the presence of the people: The saint, the sage, the prophet.
79. The want of discipline in the modern spirit concealed beneath all kinds of moral finery. The show-words are: Toleration (for the " incapacity of saying yes or no "); la largeur de sympathie ( = a third of indifference, a third of curiosity, and a third of morbid susceptibility); "objectivity" (the lack of personality and of will, and the in ability to "love"); "freedom" in regard to the rule (Romanticism); "truth" as opposed to false hood and lying (Naturalism); the "scientific spirit" (the "human document": or, in plain English, the serial story which means "addition" instead of "composition"); "passion" in the place of disorder and intemperance; "depth" in the place of confusion and the pell-mell of symbols.
80. Concerning the criticism of big words. I am full of mistrust and malice towards what is called "ideal": this is my pessimism, that I have recognized to what extent "sublime sentiments" are a source of evil, that is to say, a belittling and depreciating of man. Every time "progress" is expected to result from an ideal, disappointment invariably follows; the triumph of an ideal has always been a retrograde movement. Christianity, revolution, the abolition of slavery, equal rights, philanthropy, love of peace, justice, truth: all these big words are only valuable in a struggle, as banners: not as realities, but as showy words, for something quite different (yea, even quite opposed to what they mean!).
81. The kind of man is known who has fallen in love with the sentence " tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner" It is the weak and, above all, the disillusioned: if there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to contemn! It is the philosophy of disappointment, which here swathes itself so humanly in pity, and gazes out so sweetly. They are Romanticists, whose faith has gone to pot: now they at least wish to look on and see how everything vanishes and fades. They call it I art pour I art, " objectivity," etc.
82. The main symptoms of Pessimism: Dinners at Magny s; Russian Pessimism (Tolstoy, Dostoiew- 69 sky); aesthetic Pessimism, fart pour I art, " de scription " (the romantic and the anti-romantic Pessimism); Pessimism in the theory of know ledge (Schopenhauer: phenomenalism); anarchical Pessimism; the " religion of pity," Buddhistic preparation; the Pessimism of culture (exoticness, cosmopolitanism); moral Pessimism, myself.
83. " Without the Christian Faith," said Pascal, " you would yourselves be like nature and history, un monstre et un chaos" We fulfilled this prophecy: once the weak and optimistic eighteenth century had embellished and rationalised man. Schopenhauer and Pascal. In one essential point, Schopenhauer is the first who takes up Pascals movement again: un monstre et un chaos, conse quently something that must be negatived . . . history, nature, and man himself! " Our inability to know the truth is the result of our corruption, of our moral decay" says Pascal. And Schopenhauer says essentially the same. " The more profound the corruption of reason is, the more necessary is the doctrine of salvation " or, putting it into Schopenhauerian phraseology, negation.
84. Schopenhauer as an epigone (state of affairs before the Revolution): Pity, sensuality, art, weakness of will, Catholicism of the most intel lectual desires that is, at bottom, the good old eighteenth century. 70 Schopenhauer s fundamental misunderstanding of the will (just as though passion, instinct, and desire were the essential factors of will) is typical: the depreciation of the will to the extent of mis taking it altogether. Likewise the hatred of willing: the attempt at seeing something superior yea, even superiority itself, and that which really matters, in non-willing, in the " subject-being without aim or intention." Great symptom of fatigue or of the weakness of will: for this, in reality, is what treats the passions as master, and directs them as to the way and to the measure. . . .
85. The undignified attempt has been made to regard Wagner and Schopenhauer as types of the mentally unsound: an infinitely more essential understanding of the matter would have been gained if the exact decadent type which each of them represents had been scientifically and accurately defined.
86. In my opinion, Henrik Ibsen has become very German. With all his robust idealism and " Will to Truth," he never dared to ring himself free from moral-illusionism which says " freedom," and will not admit, even to itself, what freedom is: the second stage in the metamorphosis of the " Will to Power" in him who lacks it. In the first stage, one demands justice at the hands of those who havepower. In the second one speaks of "freedom," 71 that is to say, one wishes to " shake oneself free " from those who have power. In the third stage, one speaks of " equal rights " that is to say, so long as one is not a predominant personality one wishes to prevent one s competitors from growing in power.
87. The Decline of Protestantism: theoretically and historically understood as a half-measure. Un deniable predominance of Catholicism today: Protestant feeling is so dead that the strongest anti- Protestant movements (Wagner s Parsifal, for instance) are no longer regarded as such. The whole of the more elevated intellectuality in France is Catholic in instinct; Bismarck recognized that there was no longer any such thing as Protestantism.
88. Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and tiresome form of decadence, in which Christianity has known how to survive in the mediocre North, is something incomplete and complexly valuable for knowledge, in so far as it was able to bring experiences of different kinds and origins into the same heads.
89. What has the German spirit not made out of Christianity! And, to refer to Protestantism again, how much beer is there not still in Protestant Christianity! Can a crasser, more indolent, and more lounging form of Christian belief be imagined, than that of the average German Protestant? . . . It is indeed a very humble Christianity. I call it the Homoeopathy of Christianity! I am reminded that, today, there also exists a less humble sort of Protestantism; it is taught by royal chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but nobody has ever maintained that any " spirit " " hovers " over these waters. It is merely a less respectable form of Christian faith, not by any means a more comprehensible one.
90. Progress. Let us be on our guard lest we deceive ourselves! Time flies forward apace, we would fain believe that everything flies forward with it, that evolution is an advancing development. . . . That is the appearance of things which deceives the most circumspect. But the nineteenth century shows no advance whatever on the sixteenth: and the German spirit of 1888 is an example of a backward movement when compared with that of 1788. . . . Mankind does not advance, it does not even exist. The aspect of the whole is much more like that of a huge experimenting workshop where some things in all ages succeed, while an incalculable number of things fail; where all order, logic, co-ordination, and responsibility is lacking. How dare we blink the fact that the rise of Christianity is a decadent movement? that the German Reformation was a recrudescence of Christian barbarism? that the Revolution destroyed the instinct for an organization of society on a large scale? . . . Man is not an example of progress as compared with animals: the tender son of culture is an abortion compared with the Arab or the Corsican; the Chinaman is a more successful type that is to say, richer in sustaining power than the European.
(b) THE LAST CENTURIES.
91. Gloominess and pessimistic influence necessarily follow in the wake of enlightenment. Towards 1770 a falling-off in cheerfulness was already noticeable; women, with that very feminine instinct which always defends virtue, believed that immor ality was the cause of it. Galiani hit the bull s eye: he quotes Voltaire s verse: " Un monstre gai vaut mieux Qu un sentimental ennuyeux." If now I maintain that I am ahead, by a century or two of enlightenment, of Voltaire and Galiani who was much more profound, how deeply must I have sunk into gloominess! This is also true, and betimes I somewhat reluctantly manifested some caution in regard to the German and Christian narrowness and inconsistency of Schopenhauerian or, worse still, Leopardian Pessim ism, and sought the most characteristic form (Asia). But, in order to endure that extreme Pessimism (which here and there peeps out of my Birth of Tragedy), to live alone " without God or morality," I was compelled to invent a counter-prop for my self. Perhaps I know best why man is the only animal that laughs: he alone suffers so excruciat ingly that he was compelled to invent laughter. The unhappiest and most melancholy animal is, as might have been expected, the most cheerful.
92. In regard to German culture, I have always had a feeling as of decline. The fact that I learned to know a declining form of culture has often made me unfair towards the whole phenomenon of European culture. The Germans always follow at some distance behind: they always go to the root of things, for instance: Dependance upon foreigners; Kant Rousseau, the sensualists, Hume, Swedenborg. Schopenhauer the Indians and Romanticism, Voltaire. Wagner the French cult of the ugly and of grand opera, Paris, and the flight into primitive barbarism (the marriage of brother and sister). The law of the laggard (the provinces go to Paris, Germany goes to France). How is it that precisely Germans discovered the Greek (the more an instinct is developed, the more it is tempted to run for once into its opposite). Music is the last breath of every culture.
93. Renaissance and Reformation. What does the Renaissance prove? That the reign of the "individual" can be only a short one. The out put is too great; there is not even the possibility of husbanding or of capitalizing forces, and exhaustion sets in step by step. These are times when everything is squandered, when even the strength itself with which one collects, capitalises, and heaps riches upon riches, is squandered. Even the opponents of such movements are driven to preposterous extremes in the dissipation of their strength: and they too are very soon exhausted, used up, and completely sapped. In the Reformation we are face to face with a wild and plebeian counterpart of the Italian Renaissance, generated by similar impulses, except that the former, in the backward and still vulgar North, had to assume a religious form there the concept of a higher life had not yet been divorced from that of a religious one. Even the Reformation was a movement for individual liberty; " every one his own priest " is really no more than a formula for libertinage. As a matter of fact, the words " Evangelical freedom " would have sufficed and all instincts which had reasons for remaining concealed broke out like wild hounds, the most brutal needs suddenly acquired the courage to show themselves, everything seemed justified . . . men refused to specify the kind of freedom they had aimed at, they preferred to shut their eyes. But the fact that their eyes were closed and that their lips were moistened with gushing orations, did not prevent their hands from being ready to snatch at whatever there was to snatch at, that the belly became the god of the "free gospel," and that all lusts of revenge and of hatred were indulged with insatiable fury. This lasted for a while: then exhaustion super vened, just as it had done in Southern Europe; and again here, it was a low form of exhaustion, a sort of general mere in servitium. . . . Then the disreputable century of Germany dawned.
94. Chivalry the position won by power: its gradual break-up (and partial transference to broader and more bourgeois spheres). In the case of Larochefoucauld we find a knowledge of the actual impulses of a noble temperament together with the gloomy Christian estimate of these impulses. The protraction of Christianity through the French Revolution. The seducer is Rousseau; he once again liberates woman, who thenceforward is always represented as ever more interesting suffering. Then come the slaves and Mrs. Beecher- Stowe. Then the poor and the workmen. Then the vicious and the sick all this is drawn into the foreground (even for the purpose of disposing people in favour of the genius, it has been custom ary for five hundred years to press him forward as the great sufferer!). Then comes the cursing of all voluptuousness (Beaudelaire and Schopen hauer); the most decided conviction that the lust of power is the greatest vice; absolute certainty that morality and disinterestedness are identical things; that the " happiness of all " is a goal worth 77 striving after (i.e., Christ's Kingdom of Heaven). We are on the best road to it: the Kingdom of Heaven of the poor in spirit has begun. Inter mediate stages: the bourgeois (as a result of the nouveau riche] and the workman (as a result of the machine). Greek and French culture of the time of Louis XIV. compared. A decided belief in oneself. A leisure-class which makes things hard for itself and exercises a great deal of self-control. The power of form, the will to form oneself. " Happi ness " acknowledged as a purpose. Much strength and energy behind all formality of manners. Pleasure at the sight of a life that is seemingly so easy. The Greeks seemed like children to the French.
95. The Three Centuries. Their different kinds of sensitiveness may perhaps be best expressed as follows: Aristocracy: Descartes, the reign of reason, evidence showing the sovereignty of the will. Feminism: Rousseau, the reign of feeling, evidence showing the sovereignty of the senses; all lies. Animalism: Schopenhauer, the reign of passion, evidence showing the sovereignty of animality, more honest, but gloomy. The seventeenth century is aristocratic, all for order, haughty towards everything animal, severe in regard to the heart, " austere," and even free from sentiment, " non-German," averse to all that is burlesque and natural, generalizing and maintaining an attitude of sovereignty towards the past- for it believes in itself. At bottom it partakes very much of the beast of prey, and practises asceticism in order to remain master. It is the century of strength of will, as also that of strong passion. The eighteenth century is dominated by woman, it is gushing, spiritual, and flat; but with intellect at the service of aspirations and of the heart, it is a libertine in the pleasures of intellect, undermining all authorities; emotionally intoxicated, cheerful, clear, humane, and sociable, false to itself and at bottom very rascally. . . . The nineteenth century is more animal, more subterranean, hateful, realistic, plebeian, and on that very account " better," " more honest," more submissive to " reality " of what kind soever, and truer; but weak of will, sad, obscurely exacting and fatalistic. It has no feeling of timidity or reverence, either in the presence of " reason " or the " heart "; thoroughly convinced of the dominion of the desires (Schopenhauer said " Will," but nothing is more characteristic of his philosophy than that it entirely lacks all actual willing}. Even morality is reduced to an instinct (" Pity "). Auguste Comte is the continuation of the eighteenth century (the dominion of the heart over the head, sensuality in the theory of knowledge, altruistic exaltation). The fact that science has become as sovereign as it is today, proves how the nineteenth century has emancipated itself from the dominion of ideals. A certain absence of " needs " and wishes makes our scientific curiosity and rigor possible this is our kind of virtue. Romanticism is the counterstroke of the eighteenth century; a sort of accumulated longing for its grand style of exaltation (as a matter of fact, largely mingled with mummery and self-deception: the desire was to represent strong nature and strong passion}. The nineteenth century instinctively goes in search of theories by means of which it may feel its fatalistic submission to the empire of facts justified. Hegel s success against sentimentality and romantic idealism was already a sign of its fatalistic trend of thought, in its belief that superior reason belongs to the triumphant side, and in its justification of the actual " state " (in the place of " humanity," etc.). Schopenhauer: we are something foolish, and at the best self- suppressive. The success of determinism, the genealogical derivation of obligations which were formerly held to be absolute, the teaching of environment and adaptation, the reduction of will to a process of reflex movement, the denial of the will as a " working cause "; finally a real process of re-christening: so little will is observed that the word itself becomes available for another purpose. Further theories: the teaching of objectivity, " will-less " contemplation, as the only road to truth, as also to beauty (also the belief in " genius," in order to have the right to be submissive); mechanism, the determinable rigidity of the mechanical process; so-called " Naturalism," the elimination of the choosing, directing, inter preting subject, on principle. Kant, with his " practical reason," with his moral fanaticism, is quite eighteenth century style; still completely outside the historical movement, without any notion whatsoever of the reality of his time, for instance, revolution; he is not affected by Greek philosophy; he is a phantasist of the notion of duty, a sensualist with a hidden leaning to dogmatic pampering. The return to Kant in our century means a return to the eighteenth century: people desire to create themselves a right to the old ideas and to the old exaltation hence a theoryofknowledge which" describes limits," that is to say, which admits of the option of fixing a Beyond to the domain of reason. Hegel's way of thinking is not so very far removed from that of Goethe: see the latter on the subject of Spinoza, for instance. The will to deify the All and Life, in order to find both peace and happiness in contemplating them: Hegel looks for reason everywhere in the presence of reason man may be submissive and resigned. In Goethe we find a kind of fatalism which is almost joyous and confiding, which neither revolts nor weakens, which strives to make a totality out of itself, in the belief that only in totality does every thing seem good and justified, and find itself resolved.
96. The period of rationalism followed by a period of sentimentality. To what extent does Schopenhauer come under "sentimentality"? (Hegel under intellectuality?)
97. The seventeenth century suffers from humanity as from a host of contradictions (" Famas de con tradictions " that we are ); it endeavours to discover man, to co-ordinate him, to excavate him: whereas the eighteenth century tries to forget what is known of man s nature, in order to adapt him to its Utopia. " Superficial, soft, humane " gushes over " humanity." The seventeenth century tries to banish all traces of the individual in order that the artist s work may resemble life as much as possible. The eighteenth century strives to create interest in the author by means of the work. The seventeenth century seeks art in art, a piece of culture; the eighteenth uses art in its propaganda for political and social reforms. " Utopia," the " ideal man," the deification of Nature, the vanity of making one s own personality the centre of interest, subordination to the propa ganda of social ideas, charlatanism all this we derive from the eighteenth century. The style of the seventeenth century: propre exact et libre. The strong individual who is self-sufficient, or who appeals ardently to God and that obtrusive- ness and indiscretion of modern authors these things are opposites. u Showing-oneself-ofif" what a contrast to the Scholars of Port- Royal! Alfieri had a sense for the grand style. The hate of the burlesque (that which lacks dignity), the lack of a sense of Nature belongs to the seventeenth century.
98. Against Rousseau. Alas! man is no longer sufficiently evil; Rousseau s opponents, who say that " man is a beast of prey," are unfortunately wrong. Not the corruption of man, but the softening and moralising of him is the curse. In the sphere which Rousseau attacked most violently, the relatively strongest and most successful type of man was still to be found (the type which still possessed the great passions intact: Will to Power, Will to Pleasure, the Will and Ability to Com mand). The man of the eighteenth century must be compared with the man of the Renaissance (also with the man of the seventeenth century in France) if the matter is to be understood at all: Rousseau is a symptom of self-contempt and of inflamed vanity both signs that the dominating will is lacking: he moralises and seeks the cause of his own misery after the style of a revengeful man in the ruling classes.
99. Voltaire Rousseau. A state of nature is terrible; man is a beast of prey: our civilisation is an extraordinary triumph over this beast of prey in nature this was Voltaire s conclusion. He was conscious of the mildness, the refinements, the intellectual joys of the civilized state; he despised obtuseness, even in the form of virtue, and the lack of delicacy even in ascetics and monks. The moral depravity of man seemed to pre occupy Rousseau; the words " unjust," " cruel," are the best possible for the purpose of exciting the instincts of the oppressed, who otherwise find themselves under the ban of the vetitum and of disgrace; so that their conscience is opposed to their indulging any insurrectional desires. These emancipators seek one thing above all: to give their party the great accents and attitudes of higher Nature.
100. Rousseau: the rule founded on sentiment; Nature as the source of justice; man perfects himself in proportion as he approaches Nature (according to Voltaire, in proportion as he leaves Nature behind}. The very same periods seem to the one to demonstrate the progress of humanity and, to the other, the increase of injustice and inequality. Voltaire, who still understood umanita in the sense of the Renaissance, as also virtu (as " higher culture "), fights for the cause of the " honnetes gens" " la bonne compagnie" taste, science, arts, and even for the cause of progress and civilisation. The flare-up occurred towards 1760: On the one hand the citizen of Geneva, on the other le seigneur de Ferney. It is only from that moment and henceforward that Voltaire was the man of his age, the philosopher, the representative of Toleration and of Disbelief (theretofore he had been merely un bel esprit}. His envy and hatred of Rousseau s success forced him upwards. " Pour la canaille un dieu re mune rateur el vengeur " Voltaire. The criticism of both standpoints in regard to the value of civilisation. To Voltaire nothing seems finer than the social invention: there is no higher goal than to uphold and perfect it. L honnetete consists precisely in respecting social usage; virtue in a certain obedience towards various necessary " prejudices " which favour the maintenance of society. Missionary of Culture, aristocrat, representative of the triumphant and ruling classes and their values. But Rousseau remained a plebeian, even as hommes de lettres, this was preposterous] his shameless contempt for everything that was not himself. The morbid feature in Rousseau is the one which happens to have been most admired and imitated. (Lord Byron resembled him somewhat, he too screwed himself up to sublime attitudes and to revengeful rage a sign of vulgarity; later on, when Venice restored his equilibrium, he under stood what alleviates most and does the most good . . . F insouciance?) In spite of his antecedents, Rousseau is proud of himself; but he is incensed if he is reminded of his origin. . . . In Rousseau there was undoubtedly some brain trouble; in Voltaire rare health and lightsome- ness. The revengefulness of the sick; his periods of insanity as also those of his contempt of man, and of his mistrust. Rousseau s defence of Providence (against Vol taire s Pessimism): he had need of God in order to be able to curse society and civilisation; every thing must be good per se, because God had created it; man alone has corrupted man. The " good man " as a man of Nature was pure fantasy; but with the dogma of God s authorship he became something probable and even not devoid of found ation. Romanticism & la Rousseau: passion (" the sovereign right of passion "); " naturalness "; the fascination of madness (foolishness reckoned as greatness); the senseless vanity of the weak; the revengefulness of the masses elevated to the posi tion of justice (" in politics, for one hundred years, the leader has always been this invalid " ).
101. Kant: makes the scepticism of Englishmen, in regard to the theory of knowledge, possible for Germans. (1) By enlisting in its cause the interest of the German s religious and moral needs: just as the new academicians used scepticism for the same reasons, as a preparation for Platonism (vide Augustine); just as Pascal even used moral scepticism in order to provoke (to justify) the need of belief; (2) By complicating and entangling it with scholastic flourishes in view of making it more acceptable to the German's scientific taste in form (for Locke and Hume, alone, were too illuminating, too clear that is to say, judged according to the German valuing instinct, " too superficial "). Kant: a poor psychologist and mediocre judge of human nature, made hopeless mistakes in regard to great historical values (the French Revolution); a moral fanatic a la Rousseau; with a subterranean current of Christian values; a thorough dogmatist, but bored to extinction by this tendency, to the extent of wishing to tyrannise over it, but quickly tired, even of skepticism; and not yet affected by any cosmopolitan thought or antique beauty ... a dawdler and a go-between, not at all original (like Leibnitz, something between mechanism and spiritualism; like Goethe, something between the taste of the eighteenth century and that of the " historical sense " [which is essentially a sense of exoticism]; like German music, between French and Italian music; like Charles the Great, who mediated and built bridges between the Roman Empire and Nationalism a dawdler par excellence],
102. In what respect have the Christian centuries with their Pessimism been stronger centuries than the eighteenth and how do they correspond with the tragic age of the Greeks? The nineteenth century versus the eighteenth. How was it an heir? how was it a step backwards from the latter? (more lacking in " spirit " and in taste) how did it show an advance on the latter? (more gloomy, more realistic, stronger).
103. How can we explain the fact that we feel something in common with the Campagna romana? And the high mountain chain? Chateaubriand in a letter to M. de Fontanes in 1803 writes his first impression of the Campagna romana. The President de Brosses says of the Campagna romana: " II fallait que Romulus fut ivre quand il songea a batir une ville dans un terrain aussi laid." Even Delacroix would have nothing to do with Rome, it frightened him. He loved Venice, just as Shakespeare, Byron, and Georges Sand did. The"ophile Gautier s and Richard Wagner s dislike of Rome must not be forgotten. Lamartine has the language for Sorrento and Posilippo. Victor Hugo raves about Spain, " parce que aucune autre nation n a moins emprunte* a 1 antiquite", parce qu elle n a subi aucune influence classique."
104. The two great attempts that were made to overcome the eighteenth century: Napoleon, in that he called man, the soldier, and the great struggle for power, to life again, and conceived Europe as a political power. Goethe, in that he imagined a European culture which would consist of the whole heritage of what humanity had attained to up to his time. German culture in this century inspires mistrust the music of the period lacks that complete element which liberates and binds as well, to wit Goethe.
105. The pre-eminence of music in the romanticists of 1830 and 1840. Delacroix. Ingres a passionate musician (admired Gluck, Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart), said to his pupils in Rome: "Si je pouvais vous rendre tous musiciens, vous y gagneriez comme peintres" likewise Horace Vernet, who was particularly fond of Don Juan (as Mendelssohn assures us, 1831); Stendhal, too, who says of himself: "Combien de lieues ne ferais-je pas a pied, et a combien de jours de prison ne me soumetterais-je pas pour entendre Don Juan ou le Matrimonio segreto; et je ne sais pour quelle autre chose je ferais cet effort." He was then fifty-six years old. The borrowed forms, for instance: Brahms as a typical "Epigone," likewise Mendelssohn s cultured Protestantism (a former " soul " is turned into poetry posthumously . . .) the moral and poetical substitutions in Wagner, who used one art as a stop-gap to make up for what another lacked. the " historical sense," inspiration derived from poems, sagas. That characteristic transformation of which G. Flaubert is the most striking example among Frenchmen, and Richard Wagner the most striking example among Germans, shows how the romantic belief in love and the future changes into a longing for nonentity in 1830-50. "
106. How is it that German music reaches its culminating point in the age of German romanti cism? How is it that German music lacks Goethe? On the other hand, how much Schiller, or more exactly, how much " Thekla " * is there not in Beethoven! Schumann has Eichendorff, Uhland, Heine, Hoffman, Tieck, in him. Richard Wagner has Freischutz, Hoffmann, Grimm, the romantic Saga, the mystic Catholicism of instinct, symbolism, " the free-spiritedness of passion " (Rousseau s intention). The Flying Dutchman savors of France, where le ttntbreux (1830) was the type of the seducer. The cult of music, the revolutionary romanticism of form. Wagner synthesises German and French romanticism.
107. From the point of view only of his value to Germany and to German culture, Richard Wagner is still a great problem, perhaps a German mis fortune: in any case, however, a fatality. But what does it matter? Is he not very much more than a German event? It also seems to me that to no country on earth is he less related than to Germany; nothing was prepared there for his advent; his whole type is simply strange amongst Germans; there he stands in their midst, wonderful, misunderstood, incomprehensible. But people carefully avoid acknowledging this: they are too kind, too square-headed too German for that. " Credo quia absurdus est ": thus did the German spirit wish it to be, in this case too hence it is content meanwhile to believe everything Richard Wagner wanted to have believed about himself. In all ages the spirit of Germany has been deficient in subtlety and divining powers concerning psychological matters. Now that it happens to be under the high pressure of patriotic nonsense and self-adoration, it is visibly growing thicker and coarser: how could it therefore be equal to the problem of Wagner!
108. The Germans are not yet anything, but they are becoming something; that is why they have not yet any culture; that is why they cannot yet have any culture! They are not yet anything: that means they are all kinds of things. They are becoming something: that means that they will one day cease from being all kinds of things. The latter is at bottom only a wish, scarcely a hope yet. Fortunately it is a wish with which one can live, a question of will, of work, of discipline, a question of training, as also of resentment, of longing, of privation, of discomfort, yea, even of bitterness, in short, we Germans will get something out of ourselves, something that has not yet been wanted of us we want something more 91 That this " German, as he is not as yet " has a right to something better than the present German " culture "; that all who wish to become something better, must wax angry when they perceive a sort of contentment, an impudent " setting-oneself-at-ease," or " a process of self- censing," in this quarter: that is my second principle, in regard to which my opinions have not yet changed.
(c) SIGNS OF INCREASING STRENGTH.
109. First Principle: everything that characterises modern men savors of decay: but side by side with the prevailing sickness there are signs of a strength and powerfulness of soul which are still untried. The same causes which tend to promote the belittling of men, also force the stronger and rarer individuals upwards to greatness. no.
110. General survey: the ambiguous character of our modern world precisely the same symptoms might at the same time be indicative of either decline or strength. And the signs of strength and of emancipation dearly bought, might in view of traditional (or hereditary] appreciations concerned with the feelings, be misunderstood as indications of weakness. In short, feeling, as a means of fixing valuations, is not on a level with the times. Generalized: Every valuation is always back ward; it is merely the expression of the conditions which favoured survival and growth in a much earlier age: it struggles against new conditions of existence out of which it did not arise, and which it therefore necessarily misunderstands: it hinders, and excites suspicion against, all that is new.
111. The problem of the nineteenth century. To discover whether its strong and weak side belong to each other. Whether they have been cut from one and the same piece. Whether the variety of its ideals and their contradictions are conditioned by a higher purpose: whether they are something higher. For it might be the prerequisite of great ness, that growth should take place amid such violent tension. Dissatisfaction, Nihilism, might be a good sign.
112. General survey. As a matter of fact, all abundant growth involves a concomitant process of crumbling to bits and decay: suffering and the symptoms of decline belong to ages of enormous progress; every fruitful and powerful movement of mankind has always brought about a concurrent Nihilistic movement Under certain circumstances, the appearance of the extremest form of Pessimism and actual Nihilism might be the sign of a process of incisive and most essential growth, and of man kind s transit into completely new conditions of existence. This is what I have understood. Nihilism.
113. A. Starting out with a thoroughly courageous appreciation of our men of today: we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by appearance: this mankind is much less effective, but it gives quite different pledges of lasting strength its tempo is slower, but the rhythm itself is richer. Healthiness is increasing, the real conditions of a healthy body are on the point of being known, and will gradually be created, " asceticism " is regarded with irony. The fear of extremes, a certain confidence in the " right way," no raving: a periodical self-habituation to narrower values (such as " mother-land," " science," etc.). This whole picture, however, would still be ambiguous: it might be a movement either of increase or decline in Life. B. The belief in " progress " in lower spheres of intelligence, appears as increasing life: but this is self-deception; in higher spheres of intelligence it is a sign of declining life. Description of the symptoms. The unity of the aspect: uncertainty in regard to the standard of valuation. Fear of a general " in vain." Nihilism.
114. As a matter of fact, we are no longer so urgently in need of an antidote against the first Nihilism: Life is no longer so uncertain, accidental, and senseless in modern Europe. All such tremendous exaggeration of the value of men, of the value of evil, etc., are not so necessary now; we can endure a considerable diminution of this value, we may grant a great deal of nonsense and accident: the power man has acquired now allows of a lowering of the means of discipline, of which the strongest was the moral interpretation of the universe. The hypothesis " God " is much too extreme.
115. If anything shows that our humanisation is a genuine sign of progress, it is the fact that we no longer require excessive contraries, that we no longer require contraries at all. . . . We may love the senses; for we have spiritualised them in every way and made them artistic; We have a right to all things which hitherto have been most calumniated.
116. The reversal of the order of rank. Those pious counterfeiters thepriests arebecomingChandala in our midst: they occupy the position of the charlatan, of the quack, of the counterfeiter, of the sorcerer: we regard them as corrupters of the will, as the great slanderers and vindictive enemies of Life, and as the rebels among the bungled and the botched. We have made our middle class out of our servant-caste the Sudra that is to say, our people or the body which wields the political power. On the other hand, the Chandala of former times is paramount: the blasphemers, the im- moralists, the independents of all kinds, the artists, the Jews, the minstrels and, at bottom, all dis reputable classes are in the van. We have elevated ourselves to honorable thoughts, even more, we determine what honor is on earth, "nobility." ... All of us today are advocates of life. We Immoralists are today the strongest power: the other great powers are in need of us ... we re-create the world in our own image. We have transferred the label " Chandala " to the priests, the backworldsmen, and to the deformed Christian society which has become associated with these people, together with creatures of like origin, the pessimists, Nihilists, romanticists of pity, criminals, and men of vicious habits the whole sphere in which the idea of "God" is that of Saviour. . . . We are proud of being no longer obliged to be liars, slanderers, and detractors of Life. . . .
117. The advance of the nineteenth century upon the eighteenth (at bottom we good Europeans are carrying on a war against the eighteenth century): 1 i ) " The return to Nature " is getting to be understood, ever more definitely, in a way which is quite the reverse of that in which Rousseau used the phrase away from idylls and operas! (2) Ever more decided, more anti-idealistic, more objective, more fearless, more industrious, more temperate, more suspicious of sudden changes. anti-revolutionary; (3) The question of bodily health is being pressed ever more decidedly in front of the health of " the soul ": the latter is regarded as a condition brought about by the former, and bodily health is believed to be, at least, the prerequisite to spiritual health.
118. If anything at all has been achieved, it is a more innocent attitude towards the senses, a happier, more favourable demeanour in regard to sensuality, resembling rather the position taken up by Goethe; a prouder feeling has also been developed in knowledge, and the "reine Thor" * meets with little faith.
119. We " objective people? It is not "pity" that opens up the way for us to all that is most remote and most strange in life and culture; but our Nihilism. 97 accessibility and ingenuousness, which precisely does not " pity," but rather takes pleasure in hun dreds of things which formerly caused pain (which in former days either outraged or moved us, or in the presence of which we were either hostile or indifferent). Pain in all its various phases is now interesting to us: on that account we are certainly not the more pitiful, even though the sight of pain may shake us to our foundations and move us to tears: and we are absolutely not inclined to be more helpful in view thereof. In this deliberate desire to look on at all pain and error, we have grown stronger and more powerful than in the eighteenth century; it is a proof of our increase of strength (we have drawn closer to the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries). But it is a profound mistake to regard our " romanticism " as a proof of our " beautified souls." We want stronger sensations than all coarser ages and classes have wanted. (This fact must not be con founded with the needs of neurotics and decadents; in their case, of course, there is a craving for pepper even for cruelty.) We are all seeking conditions which are eman cipated from the bourgeois, and to a greater degree from the priestly, notion of morality (every book which savors at all of priestdom and theology gives us the impression of pitiful niaiserie and mental indigence). " Good company," in fact, finds everything insipid which is not forbidden and con sidered compromising in bourgeois circles; and the case is the same with books, music, politics, and opinions on women.
120. The simplification of man in the nineteenth century (The eighteenth century was that of elegance, subtlety, and generous feeling). Not "return to nature "; for no natural humanity has ever existed yet. Scholastic, unnatural, and antinatural values are the rule and the beginning; man only reaches Nature after a long struggle he never turns his " back " to her. . . . To be natural means, to dare to be as immoral as Nature is. We are coarser, more direct, richer in irony towards generous feelings, even when we are be neath them. Our haute votte, the society consisting of our rich and leisured men, is more natural: people hunt each other, the love of the sexes is a kind of sport in which marriage is both a charm and an obstacle; people entertain each other and live for the sake of pleasure; bodily advantages stand in the first rank, and curiosity and daring are the rule. Our attitude towards knowledge is more natural; we are innocent in our absolute spiritual debauchery, we hate pathetic and hieratic manners, we delight in that which is most strictly prohibited, we should scarcely recognise any interest in knowledge if we were bored in acquiring it. Our attitude to morality is also more natural. Principles have become a laughing-stock; no one dares to speak of his " duty," unless in irony. But a helpful, benevolent disposition is highly valued. (Morality is located in instinct and the rest is despised. Besides this there are few points of honor.) Our attitude to politics is more natural: we see problems of power, of the quantum of power, against another quantum. We do not believe in a right that does not proceed from a power which is able to uphold it. We regard all rights as conquests. Our valuation of great men and things is more natural: we regard passion as a privilege; we can conceive of nothing great which does not involve a great crime; all greatness is associated in our minds with a certain standing-beyond-the-pale in morality. Our attitude to Nature is more natural: we no longer love her for her " innocence," her " reason," her " beauty," we have made her beautifully devilish and " foolish." But instead of despising her on that account, since then we have felt more closely related to her and more familiar in her presence. She does not aspire to virtue: we therefore respect her. Our attitude towards Art is more natural: we do not exact beautiful, empty lies, etc., from her; brutal positivism reigns supreme, and it ascer tains things with perfect calm. In short: there are signs showing that the European of the nineteenth century is less ashamed of his instincts; he has gone a long way towards acknowledging his unconditional naturalness and immorality, without bitterness: on the contrary, he is strong enough to endure this point of view alone. To some ears this will sound as though corruption had made strides: and certain it is that man has not drawn nearer to the " Nature " which Rousseau speaks about, but has gone one step farther in the civilisation before which Rousseau stood in horror. We have grown stronger, we have drawn nearer t the seventeenth century, more particularly to the taste which reigned towards its close (Dancourt, Le Sage, Renard).
121. Culture versus Civilization. culminating stages of culture and civilisation lie apart: one mutt not be led astray as regards the fundamental antagonism existing between culture and civilisa tion. From the moral standpoint, great peno in the history of culture have always been periods of corruption; while on the other hand, those periods in which man was deliberately and compulsorily tamed ("civilization") have always been periods of intolerance towards the most intellectual and most audacious natures. Civilization desires some thing different from what culture strives after: their aims may perhaps be opposed. . . .
122. What I warn people against: confounding the instincts of decadence" with those of humanity; Confounding the dissolving means of civilization and those which necessarily promote decadence, with culture; Confounding debauchery, and the principle, "laisser aller," with the Will to Power (the latter is the exact reverse of the former).
123. The unsolved problems which I set anew: the problem of civilisation, the struggle between Rous seau and Voltaire about the year 1760. Man becomes deeper, more mistrustful, more " immoral," stronger, more self-confident and therefore " more natural" , that is "progress." In this way, by a process of division of labour, the more evil strata and the milder and tamer strata of society get separated: so that the general facts are not visible at first sight. ... It is a sign of strength, and of the self-control and fascination of the strong, that these stronger strata possess the arts in order to make their greater powers for evil felt as something " higher" As soon as there is " progress " there is a Revaluation of the strengthened factors into the " good."
124. Man must have the courage of his natural instincts restored to him. The poor opinion he has of himself must be destroyed (not in the sense of the individual, but in the sense of the natural man . . .) The contradictions in things must be eradicated, after it has been well understood that we were responsible for them Social idiosyncrasies must be stamped out of existence (guilt, punishment, justice, honesty, freedom, love, etc. etc.) An advance towards " naturalness ": in all politi cal questions, even in the relations between parties, even in merchants , workmen s, or contractors parties, only questions of power come into play: " what one can do " is the first question, what one ought to do is only a secondary consideration.
125. Socialism or the tyranny of the meanest and the most brainless, that is to say, the superficial, the envious, and the mummers, brought to its zenith, is, as a matter of fact, the logical con clusion of " modern ideas " and their latent anarchy: but in the genial atmosphere of demo cratic well-being the capacity for forming resolu tions or even for coming to an end at all, is paralysed. Men follow but no longer their reason. That is why socialism is on the whole a hopelessly bitter affair: and there is nothing more amusing than to observe the discord between the poisonous and desperate faces of present-day socialists and what wretched and nonsensical feelings does not their style reveal to us! and the childish lamblike happiness of their hopes and desires. Nevertheless, in many places in Europe, there may be violent hand-to-hand struggles and irruptions on their account: the coming century is likely to be convulsed in more than one spot, and the Paris Commune, which finds defenders and advocates even in Germany, will seem to have been but a slight indigestion compared with what is to come. Be this as it may, there will always be too many people of property for socialism ever to signify anything more than an attack of illness: and these people of property are like one man with one faith, " one must possess something in 103 order to be some one." This, however, is the oldest and most wholesome of all instincts; I should add: " one must desire more than one has in order to become more." For this is the teaching which life itself preaches to all living things: the morality of Development. To have and to wish to have more, in a word, Growth that is life itself. In the teaching of socialism " a will to the denial of life " is but poorly concealed: botched men and races they must be who have devised a teaching of this sort. In fact, I even wish a few experiments might be made to show that in a socialistic society, life denies itself, and itself cuts away its own roots. The earth is big enough and man is still unex hausted enough for a practical lesson of this sort and demonstratio ad absurdum even if it were accomplished only by a vast expenditure of lives to seem worthwhile to me. Still, Socialism, like a restless mole beneath the foundations of a society wallowing in stupidity, will be able to achieve something useful and salutary: it delays " Peace on Earth " and the whole process of character- softening of the democratic herding animal; it forces the European to have an extra supply of intellect, that is to say, craft and caution, and prevents his entirely abandoning the manly and warlike qualities, it also saves Europe awhile from the marasmus femininus which is threatening it.
126. The most favourable obstacles and remedies of modernity: (1) Compulsory military service with real wars in which all joking is laid aside. (2) National thick-headedness (which simplifies and concentrates). (3) Improved nutrition (meat). (4) Increasing cleanliness and wholesomeness in the home. (5) The predominance of physiology over theology, morality, economics, and politics. (6) Military discipline in the exaction and the practice of one s " duty " (it is no longer customary to praise).
127. I am delighted at the military development of Europe, also at the inner anarchical conditions: the period of quietude and " Chinadom " which Galiani prophesied for this century is now over. Personal and manly capacity, bodily capacity recovers its value, valuations are becoming more physical, nutrition consists ever more and more of flesh. Fine men have once more become possible. Bloodless sneaks (with mandarins at their head, as Comte imagined them) are now a matter of the past. The savage in every one of us is acknowledged even the wild animal. Precisely on that account, philosophers will have a better chance. Kant is a scarecrow!
128. I have not yet seen any reasons to feel dis couraged. He who acquires and preserves a strong will, together with a broad mind, has a more favourable chance now than ever he had. For the plasticity of man has become exceedingly great in democratic Europe: men who learn easily, who readily adapt themselves, are the rule: the gregarious animal of a high order of intelligence is prepared. He who would command finds those who must obey: I have Napoleon and Bismarck in mind, for instance. The struggle against strong and unintelligent wills, which forms the surest obstacle in one s way, is really insignificant Who would not be able to knock down these " objective " gentlemen with weak wills, such as Ranke and Renan!
129. Spiritual enlightenment is an unfailing means of making men uncertain, weak of will, and needful of succour and support; in short, of developing the herding instincts in them. That is why all great artist-rulers hitherto (Confucius in China, the Roman Empire, Napoleon, Popedom at a time when they had the courage of their worldliness and frankly pursued power) in whom the ruling instincts, that had prevailed until their time, culminated, also made use of the spiritual enlighten ment; or at least allowed it to be supreme (after the style of the Popes of the Renaissance). The self-deception of the masses on this point, in every democracy for instance, is of the greatest possible value: all that makes men smaller and more amenable is pursued under the title " progress."
130. The highest equity and mildness as a condition of weakness (the New Testament and the early Christian community manifesting itself in the form of utter foolishness in the Englishmen, Darwin and Wallace). Your equity, ye higher men, drives you to universal suffrage, etc.; your " humanity " urges you to be milder towards crime and stupidity. In the end you will thus help stupidity and harmlessness to conquer. Outwardly: Ages of terrible wars, insurrections, explosions. Imwardly: ever more and more weakness among men; events take the form of excitants. The Parisian as the type of the European extreme. Consequences: (1) Savages (at first, of course, in conformity with the culture that has reigned hitherto); (2) Sovereign individuals (where powerful barbarous masses and emancipation from all that has been, are crossed). The age of greatest stupidity, brutality, and wretchedness in the masses, and in the highest individuals.
131. An incalculable number of higher individuals now perish: but he who escapes their fate is as strong as the devil. In this respect we are reminded of the conditions which prevailed in the Renaissance.
132. How are Good Europeans such as ourselves distinguished from the patriots? In the first place, we are atheists and immoralists, but we take care to support the religions and the morality which we associate with the gregarious instinct: for by means of them, an order of men is, so to speak, being prepared, which must at some time or other fall into our hands, which must actually crave for our hands. Beyond Good and Evil, certainly; but we insist upon the unconditional and strict preserva tion of herd-morality. We reserve ourselves the right to several kinds of philosophy which it is necessary to learn: under certain circumstances, the pessimistic kind as a hammer; a European Buddhism might perhaps be indispensable. We should probably support the development and the maturation of democratic tendencies; for it conduces to weakness of will: in " Socialism " we recognise a thorn which prevents smug ease. Attitude towards the people. Our prejudices; we pay attention to the results of cross-breeding. Detached, well-to-do, strong: irony concerning the " press " and its culture. Our care: that scientific men should not become journalists. We mistrust any form of culture that tolerates news paper reading or writing. We make our accidental positions (as Goethe and Stendhal did), our experiences, a foreground, and we lay stress upon them, so that we may deceive concerning our backgrounds. We ourselves wait and avoid putting our heart into them. They serve us as refuges,such as a wanderer might require and use but we avoid feeling at home in them. We are ahead of our fellows in that we have had a disciplina voluntatis. All strength is directed to the development of the will, an art which allows us to wear masks, an art of understanding beyond the passions (also " super- European " thought at times). This is our preparation before becoming the law-givers of the future and the lords of the earth; if not we, at least our children. Caution where marriage is concerned.
133. The twentieth century. The Abbe Galiani says somewhere: " La prfooyance est la cause des guerres actuelles de F Europe. Si I on voulait se donner la peine de ne rien prtvoir, tout le monde serait tranquille, et je ne crois pas qu on serait plus mal- heureux parce qu on ne feraitpas la guerre" As I in no way share the unwarlike views of my deceased friend Galiani, I have no fear whatever of saying something beforehand with the view of conjuring in some way the cause of wars. A condition of excessive consciousness, after the worst of earthquakes: with new questions.
134. It is the time of the great noon, of the most appalling enlightenment: my particular kind of Pessimism: the great starting-point. (i) Fundamental contradiction between civil isation and the elevation of man. (2) Moral valuations regarded as a history of lies and the art of calumny in the service of the Will to Power (of the will of the herd, which rises against stronger men). (3) The conditions which determine every elevation in culture (the facilitation of a selection being made at the cost of a crowd) are the con ditions of all growth. (4). The multiformity of the world as a question of strength, which sees all things in the perspective of their growth. The moral Christian values to be regarded as the insurrection and mendacity of slaves (in comparison with the aristrocratic values of the ancient world).
SECOND BOOK. A CRITICISM OF THE HIGHEST VALUES THAT HAVE PREVAILED HITHERTO.
I. CRITICISM OF RELIGION
ALL the beauty and sublimity with which we have invested real and imagined things, I will show to be the property and product of man, and this should be his most beautiful apology. Man as a poet, as a thinker, as a god, as love, as power. Oh, the regal liberality with which he has lavished gifts upon things in order to im poverish himself and make himself feel wretched! Hitherto, this has been his greatest disinterested ness, that he admired and worshipped, and knew how to conceal from himself that he it was who had created what he admired.
I. CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIONS.
135. The origin of religion. Just as the illiterate man of today believes that his wrath is the cause of his being angry, that his mind is the cause of his thinking, that his soul is the cause of his feeling, in short, just as a mass of psychological entities are still unthinkingly postulated as causes; so, in a still more primitive age, the same pheno mena were interpreted by man by means of personal entities. Those conditions of his soul which seemed strange, overwhelming, and raptur ous, he regarded as obsessions and bewitching influences emanating from the power of some personality. (Thus the Christian, the most puerile and backward man of this age, traces hope, peace, and the feeling of deliverance to a psychological inspiration on the part of God: being by nature a sufferer and a creature in need of repose, states of happiness, peace, and resigna tion, perforce seem strange to him, and seem to need some explanation.) Among intelligent, strong, and vigorous races, the epileptic is mostly the cause of a belief in the existence of some foreign power; but all such examples of apparent subjection as, for instance, the bearing of the exalted man, of the poet, of the great criminal, or the passions, love and revenge lead to the invention of supernatural powers. A condition is made concrete by being identified with a personality, and when this condition overtakes anybody, it is ascribed to that personality. In other words: in the psychological concept of God, a certain state of the soul is personified as a cause in order to appear as an effect. The psychological logic is as follows: when the feeling of power suddenly seizes and overwhelms a man, and this takes place in the case of all the great passions, a doubt arises in him concerning his own person: he dare not think himself the cause of this astonishing sensation and thus he posits a stronger person, a Godhead as its cause. In short, the origin of religion lies in the extreme feelings of power, which, being strange, take men by surprise: and just as the sick man, who feels one of his limbs unaccountably heavy, concludes that another man must be sitting on it, so the ingenuous homo religiosus, divides himself up into several people. Religion is an example of the " alteration de la personality? A sort of fear and sensation of terror in one s own presence. . . . But also a feeling of inordinate rapture and exaltation. Among sick people, the sensation of health suffices to awaken a belief in the proximity of God.
136. Rudimentary psychology of the religious man: All changes are effects; all effects are effects of will (the notion of " Nature " and of " natural law," is lacking); all effects presuppose an agent. Rudimentary psychology: one is only a cause oneself, when one knows that one has willed something. Result: States of power impute to man the feeling that he is not the cause of them, that he is not responsible for them: they come without being willed to do so consequently we cannot be their originators: will that is not free (that is to say, the knowledge of a change in our condition which we have not helped to bring about) requires a strong will. Consequence of this rudimentary psychology: Man has never dared to credit himself with his strong and startling moods, he has always con ceived them as " passive," as " imposed upon him from outside ": Religion is the offshoot of a doubt concerning the entity of the person, an alteration of the personality: in so far as every thing great and strong in man was considered superhuman and foreign, man belittled himself, he laid the two sides, the very pitiable and weak side, and the very strong and startling side apart, in two spheres, and called the one " Man " and the other " God." And he has continued to act on these lines; during the period of the moral idiosyncrasy he did not interpret his lofty and sublime moral states as " proceeding from his own will " or as the " work " of the person. Even the Christian himself divides his personality into two parts, the one a mean and weak fiction which he calls man, and the other which he calls God (Deliverer and Saviour). Religion has lowered the concept " man "; its ultimate conclusion is that all goodness, greatness, and truth are superhuman, and are only obtainable by the grace of God
137. One way of raising man out of his self-abase ment, which brought about the decline of the point of view that classed all lofty and strong states of the soul, as strange, was the theory of relation ship. These lofty and strong states of the soul could at least be interpreted as the influence of our forebears; we belonged to each other, we were irrevocably joined; we grew in our own esteem, by acting according to the example of a model known to us all. There is an attempt on the part of noble families to associate religion with their own feelings of self-respect. Poets and seers do the same thing; they feel proud that they have been worthy, that they have been selected for such association, they esteem it an honor, not to be considered at all as individuals, but as mere mouthpieces (Homer). Man gradually takes possession of the highest and proudest states of his soul, as also of his acts and his works. Formerly it was believed that one paid oneself the greatest honor by denying one s own responsibility for the highest deeds one accomplished, and by ascribing them to God. The will which was not free, appeared to be that which imparted a higher value to a deed: in those days a god was postulated as the author of the deed.
138. Priests are the actors of something which is supernatural, either in the way of ideals, gods, or saviours, and they have to make people believe in them; in this they find their calling, this is the purpose of their instincts; in order to make it as credible as possible, they have to exert themselves to the utmost extent in the art of posing; their actor s sagacity must, above all, aim at giving them a clean conscience, by means of which, alone, it is possible to persuade effectively.
139. The priest wishes to make it an understood thing, that he is the highest type of man, that he rules, even over those who wield the power, that he is indispensable and unassailable, that he is the strongest power in the community, not by any means to be replaced or undervalued. Means thereto: he alone is cultured; he alone is the man of virtue; he alone has sovereign power over himself: he alone is, in a certain sense, God, and ultimately goes back to the Godhead; he alone is the middleman between God and others; the Godhead administers punishment to every one who puts the priest at a disadvantage, or who thinks in opposition to him. Means thereto: Truth exists. There is only one way of attaining to it, and that is to become a priest. Everything good, which relates either to order, nature, or tradition, is to be traced to the wisdom of the priests. The Holy Book is their work. The whole of nature is only a fulfilment of the maxims which it contains. No other source of goodness exists than the priests. Every other kind of perfection, even the warrior s, is different in rank from that of the priests. Consequence: If the priest is to be the highest type, then the degrees which lead to his virtues must be the degrees of value among men. Study, emancipation from material things, inactivity, im passibility, absence of passion, solemnity; the opposite of all this is found in the lowest type of man. The priest has taught a kind of morality which conduced to his being considered the highest type of man. He conceives a type which is the reverse of his own: the Chandala. By making these as contemptible as possible, some strength is lent to the order of castes. The priest s excessive fear of sensuality also implies that the latter is the most serious threat to the order of castes (that is to say, order in general). . . . Every " free tendency " in puncto puncti overthrows the laws of marriage.
140. The philosopher considered as the development of the priestly type: He has the heritage of the priest in his blood; even as a rival he is compelled to fight with the same weapons as the priest of his time; he aspires to the highest authority. What is it that bestows authority upon men who have no physical power to wield (no army, no arms at all . . .)? How do such men gain authority over those who are in possession of material power, and who represent authority? (Philosophers enter the lists against princes, vic torious conquerors, and wise statesmen.) They can do it only by establishing the belief that they are in possession of a power which is higher and stronger God. Nothing is strong enough: every one is in need of the mediation and the services of priests. They establish themselves as indispensable intercessors. The conditions of their existence are: (i) That people believe in the absolute superiority of their god, in fact believe in their god; (2) that there is no other access, no direct access to god, save through them. The second condition alone gives rise to the concept " heterodoxy "; the first to the concept " dis believers " (that is to say, he who believes in another god).
141. A Criticism of the Holy Lie. That a lie is allowed in pursuit of holy ends is a principle which belongs to the theory of all priestcraft, and the object of this inquiry is to discover to what extent it belongs to its practice. But philosophers, too, whenever they intend taking over the leadership of mankind, with the ulterior motives of priests in their minds, have never failed to arrogate to themselves the right to lie: Plato above all. But the most elaborate of lies is the double lie, developed by the typically Arian philosophers of the Vedanta: two systems, contradicting each other in all their main points, but interchangeable, complementary, and mutually expletory, when educational ends were in question. The lie of the one has to create a condition in which the truth of the other can alone become intelligible. . . . How far does the holy lie of priests and philo sophers go? The question here is, what hypo theses do they advance in regard to education, and what are the dogmas they are compelled to invent in order to do justice to these hypotheses? First: they must have power, authority, and absolute credibility on their side. Secondly: they must have the direction of the whole of Nature, so that everything affecting the individual seems to be determined by their law. Thirdly: their domain of power must be very extensive, in order that its control may escape the notice of those they subject: they must know the penal code of the life beyond of the life " after death," and, of course, the means where by the road to blessedness may be discovered. They have to put the notion of a natural course of things out of sight, but as they are intelligent and thoughtful people, they are able to promise a host of effects, which they naturally say are con ditioned by prayer or by the strict observance of their law. They can, moreover, prescribe a large number of things which are exceedingly reasonable only they must not point to experience or empiricism as the source of this wisdom, but to revelation or to the fruits of the " most severe exercises of penance." The holy lie, therefore, applies principally to the purpose of an action (the natural purpose, reason, is made to vanish: a moral purpose, the observ ance of some law, a service to God, seems to be the purpose): to the consequence of an action (the natural consequence is interpreted as something supernatural, and, in order to be on surer ground, other incontrollable and supernatural consequences are foretold). In this way the concepts good and evil are created, and seem quite divorced from the natural concepts: " useful," " harmful," " life-promoting," " life-retarding," indeed, inasmuch as another life is imagined, the former concepts may even be antagonistic to Nature's concepts of good and evil. In this way, the proverbial concept " conscience " is created: an inner voice, which, though it makes itself heard in regard to every action, does not measure the worth of that action according to its results, but according to its conformity or non conformity to the " law." The holy lie therefore invented: (i) a god who punishes and rewards, who recognises and carefully observes the law-book of the priests, and who is particular about sending them into the world as his mouthpieces and plenipotentiaries; (2) an After Life, in which, alone, the great penal machine is supposed to be active to this end the immor tality of the soul was invented; (3) a conscience in man, understood as the knowledge that good and evil are permanent values that God himself speaks through it, whenever its counsels are in conformity with priestly precepts; (4) Morality as the denial of all natural processes, as the subjection of all phenomena to a moral order, as the inter pretation of all phenomena as the effects of a moral order of things (that is to say, the concept of punishment and reward), as the only power and only creator of all transformations; (5) Truth as given, revealed, and identical with the teaching of the priests: as the condition to all salvation and happiness in this and the next world. In short: what is the price paid for the improve- < ment supposed to be due to morality? The unhinging of reason, the reduction of all motives to fear and hope (punishment and reward); dependence upon the tutelage of priests, and upon a formulary exactitude which is supposed to express a divine will; the implantation of a " conscience " which establishes a false science in the place of experience and experiment: as though all one had to do or had not to do were predetermined a kind of contraction of the seeking and striving spirit; in short: the worst mutilation of man that can be imagined, and it is pretended that " the good man " is the result. Practically speaking, all reason, the whole heri tage of intelligence, subtlety, and caution, the first condition of the priestly canon, is arbitrarily re duced, when it is too late, to a simple mechanical process: conformity with the law becomes a pur pose in itself, it is the highest purpose; Life no longer contains any problems; the whole conception of the world is polluted by the notion of punish ment; Life itself, owing to the fact that the priesfs life is upheld as the non plus ultra of perfection, is transformed into a denial and pol lution of life; the concept " God " represents an aversion to Life, and even a criticism and a con temning of it. Truth is transformed in the mind, into priestly prevarication; the striving after truth, into the study of the Scriptures into the way to become a theologian..
142. A criticism of the Law-Book of Manu. The whole book is founded upon the holy lie. Was it the well-being of humanity that inspired the whole of this system? Was this kind of man, who believes in the interested nature of every action, interested or not interested in the success of this system? The desire to improve mankind whence comes the inspiration to this feeling? Whence is the concept improvement taken? We find a class of men, the sacerdotal class, who consider themselves the standard pattern, the highest example and most perfect expression of the type man. The notion of " improving " mankind, to this class of men, means to make man kind like themselves. They believe in their own superiority, they will be superior in practice: the cause of the holy lie is The Will to Power. . . . Establishment of the dominion: to this end, ideas which place a non plus ultra of power with the priesthood are made to prevail. Power ac quired by lying was the result of the recognition of the fact that it was not already possessed physically, in a military form. . . . Lying as a supplement to power this is a new concept of " truth." It is a mistake to presuppose unconscious and innocent development in this quarter a sort of self-deception. Fanatics are not the discoverers of such exhaustive systems of oppression. . . . Cold-blooded reflection must have been at work here; the same sort of reflection which Plato showed when he worked out his " State " " One must desire the means when one desires the end." Concerning this political maxim, all legislators have always been quite clear. We possess the classical model, and it is speci fically Arian: we can therefore hold the most gifted and most reflective type of man responsible for the most systematic lie that has ever been told. . . . Everywhere almost the lie was copied, and thus Arian influence corrupted the world. . . .
143. Much is said today about the Semitic spirit of the New Testament-, but the thing referred to is merely priestcraft, and in the purest example of an Arian law-book, in Manu, this kind of " Semitic spirit " that is to say, Sacerdotalism, is worse than anywhere else. The development of the Jewish hierarchy is not original: they learnt the scheme in Babylon it is Arian. When, later on, the same thing became dominant in Europe, under the preponderance of Germanic blood, this was in conformity to the spirit of the ruling race: a striking case of atavism. The Germanic middle ages aimed at a revival of the A rian order of castes. Mohammedanism in its turn learned from Christianity the use of a " Beyond " as an instru ment of punishment. The scheme of a permanent community, with priests at its head this oldest product of Asia s great culture in the domain of organization naturally provoked reflection and imitation in every way. Plato is an example of this, but above all, the Egyptians.
144. Moralities and religions are the principal means by which one can modify men into whatever one 126 likes; provided one is possessed of an overflow of creative power, and can cause one s will to pre vail over long periods of time.
145. If one wish to see an affirmative Arian religion which is the product of a ruling class, one should read the law-book of Manu. (The deification of the feeling of power in the Brahmin: it is in teresting to note that it originated in the warrior- caste, and was later transferred to the priests.) If one wish to see an affirmative religion of the Semitic order, which is the product of the ruling class, one should read the Koran or the earlier portions of the Old Testament. (Mohammedan ism as a religion for men, has profound contempt for the sentimentality and prevarication of Christi anity, . . . which, according to Mohammedans, is a woman s religion.) If one wish to see a negative religion of the Semitic order, which is the product of the op pressed class, one should read the New Testament (which, according to Indian and Arian points of view, is a religion for the Chandala). If one wish to see a negative Arian religion, which is the product of the ruling classes, one should study Buddhism. It is quite in the nature of things that we have no Arian religion which is the product of the oppressed classes; for that would have been a contradiction: a race of masters is either para mount or else it goes to the dogs.
146. Religion, per se, has nothing to do with morality; yet both offshoots of the Jewish religion are essentially moral religions which prescribe the rules of living, and procure obedience to their principles by means of rewards and punishment.
147. Paganism Christianity. Paganism is that which says yea to all that is natural, it is innocence in being natural, " naturalness." Christianity is that which says no to all that is natural, it is a certain lack of dignity in being natural; hostility to Nature. " Innocent ": Petronius is innocent, for in stance. Beside this happy man a Christian is absolutely devoid of innocence. But since even the Christian status is ultimately only a natural condition, the term " Christian " soon begins to mean the counterfeiting of the psychological inter pretation.
148. The Christian priest is from the root a mortal enemy of sensuality: one cannot imagine a greater contrast to his attitude than the guileless, slightly awed, and solemn attitude, which the religious rites of the most honorable women in Athens maintained in the presence of the symbol of sex. In all non-ascetic religions the procreative act is the secret per se: a sort of symbol of perfection and of the designs of the future: re-birth, im mortality.
149. Our belief in ourselves is the greatest fetter, the most telling spur, and the strongest pinion. Christianity ought to have elevated the innocence of man to the position of an article of belief men would then have become gods: in those days believing was still possible.
150. The egregious lie of history: as if it were the corruption of Paganism that opened the road to Christianity. As a matter of fact, it was the enfeeblement and moralisation of the man of antiquity. The new interpretation of natural functions, which made them appear like vices, had already gone before!
151. Religions are ultimately wrecked by the belief in morality. The idea of the Christian moral God becomes untenable, hence " Atheism," as though there could be no other god. Culture is likewise wrecked by the belief in morality. For when the necessary and only possible conditions of its growth are revealed, nobody will any longer countenance it (Buddh ism).
152. The physiology of Nihilistic religions. All in all, the Nihilistic religions are systematized histories of sickness described in religious and moral ter- m in o logy. In pagan cultures it is around the interpretation of the great annual cycles that the religious cult turns; in Christianity it is around a cycle of paralytic phenomena.
153. This Nihilistic religion gathers together all the decadent elements and things of like order which it can find in antiquity, viz.: (a) The weak and the botched (the refuse of the ancient world, and that of which it rid itself with most violence). (b} Those who are morally obsessed and anti- pagan. (c) Those who are weary of politics and in different (the bias Romans), the denationalised, who know not what they are. (d) Those who are tired of themselves who are happy to be party to a subterranean conspiracy.
154. Buddha versus Christ. Among the Nihilistic religions, Christianity and Buddhism may always be sharply distinguished. Buddhism is the ex pression of a fine evening, perfectly sweet and mild it is a sort of gratitude towards all that . I lies hidden, including that which it entirely lacks, viz., bitterness, disillusionment, and resent ment. Finally it possesses lofty intellectual love; it has got over all the subtlety of philosophical contradictions, and is even resting after it, though it is precisely from that source that it derives its intellectual glory and its glow as of a sunset (it originated in the higher classes). Christianity is a degenerative movement, con sisting of all kinds of decaying and excremental elements: it is not the expression of the downfall of a race, it is, from the root, an agglomeration of all the morbid elements which are mutually attractive and which gravitate to one another. ... It is therefore not a national religion, not determined by race: it appeals to the disinherited everywhere; it consists of a foundation of resent ment against all that is successful and dominant: it is in need of a symbol which represents the damnation of everything successful and dominant. It is opposed to every form of intellectual move ment, to all philosophy: it takes up the cudgels for idiots, and utters a curse upon all intellect. Resentment against those who are gifted, learned, intellectually independent: in all these it suspects the element of success and domination.
155. In Buddhism this thought prevails: " All passions, everything which creates emotions and leads to blood, is a call to action " to this extent alone are its believers warned against evil. For action has no sense, it merely binds one to existence. All existence, however, has no sense. Evil is interpreted as that which leads to irration- alism: to the affirmation of means whose end is denied. A road to nonentity is the desideratum, hence all emotional impulses are regarded with horror. For instance: " On no account seek after revenge! Be the enemy of no one! " The Hedonism of the weary finds its highest expression here. Nothing is more utterly foreign to Buddhism than the Jewish fanaticism of St. Paul: nothing could be more contrary to its instinct than the tension, fire, and unrest of the religious man, and, above all, that form of sensuality which sanctifies Christianity with the name " Love." Moreover, it is the cultured and very intellectual classes who find blessedness in Buddhism: a race wearied and besotted by centuries of philosophical quarrels, but not beneath all culture as those classes were from which Christianity sprang. ... In the Buddhistic ideal, there is essentially an emancipa tion from good and evil: a very subtle suggestion of a Beyond to all morality is thought out in its teaching, and this Beyond is supposed to be compatible with perfection, the condition being, that even good actions are only needed pro tern., merely as a means, that is to say, in order to be free from all action.
156. How very curious it is to see a Nihilistic religion such as Christianity, sprung from, and in keeping with, a decrepit and worn-out people, who have outlived all strong instincts, being transferred step by step to another environment that is to say, to a land of young people, who have not yet lived at all The joy of the final chapter, of the fold and of the evening, preached to barbarians and Germans! How thoroughly all of it must first have been barbarised, Germanised! To those who had dreamed of a Walhalla: who found happiness only in war! A -national religion preached in the midst of chaos, where no nations yet existed even.
157. The only way to refute priests and religions is this: to show that their errors are no longer beneficent -that they are rather harmful; in short, that their own " proof of power " no longer holds good. . . .
2. CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY.
158. Christianity as an historical reality should not be confounded with that one root which its name recalls. The other roots, from which it has sprung, are by far the more important. It is an unprecedented abuse of names to identify such manifestations of decay and such abortions as the "Christian Church," "Christian belief," and "Christian life," with that Holy Name. What did Christ deny? Everything which today is called Christian.
159. The whole of the Christian creed all Christian " truth," is idle falsehood and deception, and is precisely the reverse of that which was at the bottom of the first Christian movement. All that which in the ecclesiastical sense is Christian, is just exactly what is most radically anti- Christian: crowds of things and people appear instead of symbols, history takes the place of eternal facts, it is all forms, rites, and dogmas instead of a " practice " of life. To be really Christian would mean to be absolutely indifferent to dogmas, cults, priests, church, and theology. The practice of Christianity is no more an im possible phantasy than the practice of Buddhism is: it is merely a means to happiness.
160. Jesus goes straight to the point, the " Kingdom of Heaven " in the heart, and He does not find the means in duty to the Jewish Church; He even regards the reality of Judaism (its need to maintain itself) as nothing; He is concerned purely with the inner man. Neither does He make anything of all the coarse forms relating to man s intercourse with God: He is opposed to the whole of the teaching of repentance and atonement; He points out how man ought to live in order to feel himself" deified," and how futile it is on his part to hope to live properly by showing repentance and contrition for his sins. " Sin is of no account " is practically his chief standpoint. Sin, repentance, forgiveness, all this does not belong to Christianity ... it is Judaism or Paganism which has become mixed up with Christ s teaching.
161. The Kingdom of Heaven is a state of the heart (of children it is written, " for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven "): it has nothing to do with superterrestrial things. The Kingdom of God " cometh," not chronologically or historically, not on a certain day in the calendar; it is not something which one day appears and was not previously there; it is a " change of feeling in the individual," it is something which may come at any time and which may be absent at any time. . . .
162. The thief on the cross; When the criminal him self, who endures a painful death, declares: " the way this Jesus suffers and dies, without a murmur of revolt or enmity, graciously and resignedly, is the only right way," he assents to the gospel; and by this very fact he is in Paradise. . . .
163. Jesus bids us: not to resist, either by deeds or in our heart, him who ill-treats us; He bids us admit of no grounds for separating ourselves from our wives; 135 He bids us make no distinction between foreigners and fellow-countrymen, strangers and familiars; He bids us show anger to no one, and treat no one with contempt; give alms secretly; not to desire to become rich; not to swear; not to stand in judgment; become reconciled with our enemies and forgive offences; not to worship in public. " Blessedness " is nothing promised: it is here, with us, if we only wish to live and act in a par ticular way.
164. Subsequent Additions; The whole of the prophet- and thaumaturgist-attitudes and the bad temper; while the conjuring-up of a supreme tribunal of justice is an abominable corruption (see Mark vi. 1 1: " And whosoever shall not receive you. . . . Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha," etc.). The "fig tree" (Matt. xxi. 18, 19): "Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee hence forward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away."
165. The teaching of rewards and punishments has become mixed up with Christianity in a way which is quite absurd; everything is thereby spoilt. I3 6 In the same way, the practice of the first ecclesia militant, of the Apostle Paul and his attitude, is put forward as if it had been commanded or pre- determined. The subsequent glorification of the actual life and teaching of the first Christians: as if every thing had been prescribed beforehand and had been only a matter of following directions And as for the fulfilment of scriptural prophecies: how much of all that is more than forgery and cooking?
166. Jesus opposed a real life, a life in truth, to ordinary life: nothing could have been more foreign to His mind than the somewhat heavy nonsense of an eternal Peter," of the eternal duration of a single person. Precisely what He combats is the exaggerated importance of the " person ": how can He wish to immortalise it? He likewise combats the hierarchy within the community; He never promises a certain propor tion of reward for a certain proportion of deserts: how can He have meant to teach the doctrine of punishment and reward in a Beyond?
167. Christianity is an ingenuous attempt at bringing about a Buddhistic movement in favour of peace, sprung from the very heart of the resenting masses ... but transformed by Paul into a mysterious pagan cult, which was ultimately able to accord 137 with the whole of State organization . . . and which carries on war, condemns, tortures, conjures, and hates. Paul bases his teaching upon the need of mystery felt by the great masses capable of religious emotions: he seeks a victim a bloody phantasmagoria, which may be equal to a contest with the images of a secret cult: God on the cross, the drinking of blood, the unto mystica with the " victim." He seeks the prolongation of life after death (the blessed and atoned after-life of the individual soul) which he puts in causal relation with the victim already referred to (according to the type of Dionysos, Mithras, Osiris). He feels the necessity of bringing notions of guilt and sin into the foreground, not a new practice of life (as Jesus Himself demonstrated and taught), but a new cult,a newbelief,a beliefin a mira culous metamorphosis (" Salvation " through belief). He understood the great needs of the pagan world, and he gave quite an absolutely arbitrary picture of those two plain facts, Christ s life and death. He gave the whole a new accent, altering the equilibrium everywhere ... he was one of the most active destroyers of primitive Christianity. The attempt made on the life of priests and theo logians culminated, thanks to Paul, in a new priest hood and theology a ruling caste and a Church. The attempt made to suppress the fussy im portance of the " person," culminated in the belief in the eternal " personality " (and in the anxiety concerning " eternal salvation " . . .), and in the 138 most paradoxical exaggeration of individual egoism. This is the humorous side of the question tragic humour: Paul again set up on a large scale precisely what Jesus had overthrown by His life. At last, when the Church edifice was complete, it even sanctioned the existence of the State.
168. The Church is precisely that against which Jesus inveighed and against which He taught His disciples to fight.
169. A God who died for our sins, salvation through faith, resurrection after death all these things are the counterfeit coins of real Christianity, for which that pernicious blockhead Paul must be held responsible. The life ivJiich must serve as an example consists in love and humility; in the abundance of hearty emotion which does not even exclude the lowliest; in the formal renunciation of all desire of making its rights felt; in conquest, in the sense of triumph over oneself; in the belief in salvation in this world, despite all sorrow, opposition, and death; in forgiveness and the absence of anger and con tempt; in the absence of a desire to be rewarded; in the refusal to be bound to anybody; abandon ment to all that is most spiritual and intellectual; 139 in fact, a very proud life controlled by the will of a servile and poor life. Once the Church had allowed itself to take over all the Christian practice, and had formally sanctioned the State, that kind of life which Jesus combats and condemns, it was obliged to lay the sense of Christianity in other things than early Christian ideals that is to say, in the faith in incredible things, in the ceremonial of prayers, worship, feasts, etc. etc. The notions " sin," " for giveness," " punishment," " reward " everything, in fact, which had nothing in common with, and was quite absent from, primitive Christianity, now comes into the foreground. An appalling stew of Greek philosophy and Judaism; asceticism; continual judgments and condemnations; the order of rank, etc.
170. Christianity has, from the first, always trans formed the symbolical into crude realities: (1) The antitheses "true life" and "false life" were misunderstood and changed into " life here " and " life beyond." (2) The notion " eternal life," as opposed to the personal life which is ephemeral, is translated into " personal immortality "; (3) The process of fraternising by means of sharing the same food and drink, after the Hebrew- Arabian manner, is interpreted as the " miracle of transubstantiation." (4) " Resurrection " which was intended to 140 mean the entrance to the " true life," in the sense of being intellectually " born again," becomes an historical contingency, supposed to take place at some moment after death; (5) The teaching of the Son of man as the " Son of God," that is to say, the life-relationship between man and God, becomes the " second person of the Trinity," and thus the filial relation ship of every man even the lowest to God, is done away with; (6) Salvation through faith (that is to say, that there is no other way to this filial relationship to God, save through the practice of life taught by Christ) becomes transformed into the belief that there is a miraculous way of atoning for all sin; though not through our own endeavours, but by means of Christ: For all these purposes, " Christ on the Cross " had to be interpreted afresh. The death itself would certainly not be the principal feature of the event ... it was only another sign pointing to the way in which one should behave towards the authorities and the laws of the world that one was not to defend oneself this was the exemplary life.
171. Concerning the psychology of Paul. The im portant fact is Christ s death. This remains to be explained. . . . That there may be truth or error in an explanation never entered these people s heads: one day a sublime possibility strikes them, " His death might mean so and so " 14! and it forthwith becomes so and so. An hypo thesis is proved by the sublime ardour it lends to its discoverer. . . . " The proof of strength ": i.e., a thought is demonstrated by its effects (" by their fruits," as the Bible ingenuously says); that which fires en thusiasm must be true, what one loses one s blood for must be true In every department of this world of thought, the sudden feeling of power which an idea imparts to him who is responsible for it, is placed to the credit of that idea: and as there seems no other way of honoring an idea than by calling it true, the first epithet it is honored with is the word true, . , . How could it have any effect other wise? It was imagined by some power: if that power were not real, it could not be the cause of anything. . . . The thought is then understood as inspired: the effect it causes has something of the violent nature of a demoniacal influence A thought which a decadent like Paul could not resist and to which he completely yields, is thus " proved " true All these holy epileptics and visionaries did not possess a thousandth part of the honesty in self-criticism with which a philologist, nowadays, reads a text, or tests the truth of an historical event. . . . Beside us, such people were moral cretins.
172. whet) provided it be effective: total absence of intellectual It matters little whether a thing be true, 142 uprightness. Everything is good, whether it be lying, slander, or shameless " cooking," provided it serve to heighten the degree of heat to the point at which people " believe." We are face to face with an actual school for the teaching of the means wherewith men are seduced to a belief: we see systematic contempt for those spheres whence contradiction might come (that is to say, for reason, philosophy, wisdom, doubt, and caution); a shameless praising and glorification of the teaching, with continual refer ences to the fact that it was God who presented us with it that the apostle signifies nothing. that no criticism is brooked, but only faith, ac ceptance; that it is the greatest blessing and favour to receive such a doctrine of salvation; that the state in which one should receive it, ought to be one of the profoundest thankfulness and humility. . . . The resentment which the lowly feel against all those in high places, is continually turned to account: the fact that this teaching is revealed to them as the reverse of the wisdom of the world, against the power of the world, seduces them to it. This teaching convinces the outcasts and the botched of all sorts and conditions; it promises blessedness, advantages, and privileges to the most insignificant and most humble men; it fanaticises the poor, the small, and the foolish, and fills them with insane vanity, as though they were the mean ing and salt of the earth. Again, I say, all this cannot be sufficiently contemned, we spare ourselves a criticism of the 143 teaching; it is sufficient to take note of the means it uses in order to be aware of the nature of the phenomenon one is examining. It identified itself with virtue, it appropriated the whole of the fasci nating power of virtue, shamelessly, for its own purposes ... it availed itself of the power of paradox, and of the need, manifested by old civilisation, for pepper and absurdity; it amazed and revolted at the same time; it provoked per secutions and ill-treatment. It is the same kind of vdl-thought-out meanness with which the Jewish priesthood established their power and built up their Church. . . . One must be able to discern: (i)that warmth of passion " love " (resting on a base of ardent sensuality); (2) the thoroughly ignoble character of Christianity: the continual exaggeration and verbosity; the lack of cool intellectuality and irony; the unmilitary character of all its instincts; the priestly prejudices against manly pride, sensuality, the sciences, the arts.
173. Paul: seeks power against ruling Judaism, his attempt is too weak. . . . Revaluation of the notion " Jew ": the " race " is put aside: but that means denying the very basis of the whole struc ture. The " martyr," the " fanatic," the value of all strong belief. Christianity is fat form of decay of the old world, after the latter s collapse, and it is characterised by the fact that it brings all the most sickly and unhealthy elements and needs to the top. 144 THE WILL T0 POWER. Consequently other instincts had to step into the foreground, in order to constitute an entity, a power able to stand alone in short, a condition of tense sorrow was necessary, like that out of which the Jews had derived their instinct of self-preserva tion. . . . The persecution of Christians was invaluable for this purpose. Unity in the face of danger; the conversion of the masses becomes the only means of putting an end to the persecution of the individual. (The notion " conversion " is therefore made as elastic as possible.)
174. The Christian Judaic life: here resentment did not prevail. The great persecutions alone could have driven out the passions to that extent as also the ardour of love and hate. When the creatures a man most loves are sacrificed before his eyes for the sake of his faith, that man becomes aggressive; the triumph of Christianity is due to its persecutors. Asceticism is not specifically Christian: this is what Schopenhauer misunderstood. It only shoots up in Christianity, wherever it would have existed without that religion. Melancholy Christianity, the torture and tor ment of the conscience, is also only a peculiarity of a particular soil, where Christian values have taken root: it is not Christianity properly speaking. Christianity has absorbed all the different kinds of diseases which grow from morbid soil: one could 145 refute it at one blow by showing that it did not know how to resist any contagion. But that precisely is the essential feature of it. Christi anity is a type of decadence.
175. The reality on which Christianity was able to build up its power consisted of the small dispersed fezvish families, with their warmth, tenderness, and peculiar readiness to help, which, to the whole of the Roman Empire, was perhaps the most incom prehensible and least familiar of their character istics; they were also united by their pride at being a " chosen people," concealed beneath a cloak of humility, and by their secret denial of all that was uppermost and that possessed power and splendour, although there was no shade of envy in their denial. To have recognized this as a power, to have regarded this blessed state as com municable, seductive, and infectious even where pagans were concerned this constituted Paul s genius: to use up the treasure of latent energy and cautious happiness for the purposes of " a Jewish Church of free confession," and to avail himself of all the Jewish experience, their propa ganda, and their expertness in the preservation of a community under a foreign power this is what he conceived to be his duty. He it was who discovered that absolutely unpolitical and isolated body of paltry people, and their art of asserting themselves and pushing themselves to the front, by means of a host of acquired virtues which are made to represent the only forms of virtue (" the self-preservative measure and weapon of success of a certain class of man "). The principle of love comes from the small community of Jewish people: a very passionate soul glows here, beneath the ashes of humility and wretchedness: it is neither Greek, Indian, nor German. The song in praise of love which Paul wrote is not Christian; it is the Jewish flare of that eternal flame which is Semitic. If Christianity has done anything essentially new in a psychological sense, it is this, that it has increased the temperature of the soul among those cooler and more noble races who were at one time at the head of affairs; it discovered that the most wretched life could be made rich and invaluable, by means of an eleva tion of the temperature of the soul. . . . It is easily understood that a transfer of this sort could not take place among the ruling classes: the Jews and Christians were at a disadvantage owing to their bad manners spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by Kad manners, only provoke loathing (I become aware of these bad manners while reading the New Testament). It was necessary to be related both in baseness and sorrow with this type of lower manhood in order to feel anything attractive in him. . . . The atti tude a man maintains towards the New Testament is a test of the amount of taste he may have for the classics (see Tacitus); he who is not revolted by it, he who does not feel honestly and deeply that he is in the presence of a sort of fceda superstitio when reading it, and who does not draw his hand back so as not to soil his fingers such a man does not know what is classical. A man must feel about " the cross " as Goethe did.*
176. The reaction of paltry people: Love provides the feeling of highest power. It should be under stood to what extent, not man in general, but only a certain kind of man is speaking here. " We are godly in love, we shall be the children of God; God loves us and wants nothing from us save love "; that is to say: all morality, obedi ence, and action, do not produce the same feeling of power and freedom as love does; a man does nothing wicked from sheer love, but he does much more than if he were prompted by obedience and virtue alone. Here is the happiness of the herd, the communal feeling in big things as in small, the living senti ment of unity felt as the sum of the feeling of life. Helping, caring for, and being useful, constantly kindle the feeling of power; visible success, the * Vieles kann ich ertragen. Die meisten beschwerlichen Dinge Duld ich mit ruhigem Mut, wie es ein Gott mir gebeut. Wenige sind mir jedoch wie Gift und Schlange zuwider; Viere: Rauch des Tabaks, Wanzen, und Knoblauch und J. Goethe s Venetian Epigrams, No. 67. Much can I bear. Things the most irksome I endure with such patience as comes from a god. Four things, however, repulse me like venom: Tobacco smoke, garlic, bugs, and the cross. (TRANSLATOR S NOTE.) 148 expression of pleasure, emphasise the feeling of power; pride is not lacking either, it is felt in the form of the community, the House of God, and the " chosen people." As a matter of fact, man has once more experi enced an " alteration " of his personality: this time he called his feeling of love God. The awaken ing of such a feeling must be pictured; it is a sort of ecstasy, a strange language, a " Gospel " it was this newness which did not allow man to attribute love to himself he thought it was God leading him on and taking shape in his heart. " God descends among men," one s neighbour is trans figured and becomes a God (in so far as he provokes the sentiment of love). Jesus is the neighbour, the moment He is transfigured in thought into a God, and into a cause provoking the feeling of power.
177. Believers are aware that they owe an infinite amount to Christianity, and therefore conclude that its Founder must have been a man of the first rank. . . . This conclusion is false, but it is typical of the reverents. Regarded objectively, it is, in the first place, just possible that they are mistaken concerning the extent of their debt to Christianity: a man s convictions prove nothing concerning the thing he is convinced about, and in religions they are more likely to give rise to suspicions. . . . Secondly, it is possible that the debt owing to Christianity is not due to its Founder at all, but to the whole structure, the 149 whole thing to the Church, etc. The notion " Founder " is so very equivocal, that it may stand even for the accidental cause of a movement: the person of the Founder has been inflated in proportion as the Church has grown: but even this process of veneration allows of the conclusion that, at one time or other, this Founder was some thing exceedingly insecure and doubtful in the beginning. . . . Let any one think of the free and easy way in which Paul treats the problem of the personality of Jesus, how he almost juggles with it: some one who died, who was seen after His death, some one whom the Jews delivered up to death all this was only the theme Paul wrote the music to it.
178. The founder of a religion may be quite insignificant, a wax vesta and no more.
179. Concerning the psychological problem of Christianity. The driving forces are; resentment, popular insurrection, the revolt of the bungled and the botched. (In Buddhism it is different: it is not born of resentment. It rather combats resent ment because the latter leads to action?) This party, which stands for freedom, under stands that the abandonment of antagonism in thought and deed is a condition of distinction and preservation. Here lies the psychological difficulty which has stood in the way of Christianity being understood: the force which created it, urges to a struggle against itself. Only as a party standing ior peace and innocence can this insurrectionary movement hope to be successful: it must conquer by means of excessive mildness, sweetness, softness, and its instincts are aware of this. The feat was to deny and con demn the force, of which man is the expression, and to press the reverse of that force continually to the fore, by word and deed.
180. The pretence of youthfulness. It is a mistake to imagine that, with Christianity, an ingenuous and youthful people rose against an old culture; the story goes that it was out of the lowest levels of society, where Christianity flourished and shot its roots, that the more profound source of life gushed forth afresh: but nothing can be under stood of the psychology of Christianity, if it be supposed that it was the expression of revived youth among a people, or of the resuscitated strength of a race. It is rather a typical form of decadence, of moral-softening and of hysteria, amid a general hotch-potch of races and people that had lost all aims and had grown weary and sick. The wonderful company which gathered round this master-seducer of the populace, would not be at all out of place in a Russian novel: all the diseases of the nerves seem to give one another a rendezvous in this crowd the absence of a known duty, the feeling that every- 151 thing is nearing its end, that nothing is any longer worth while, and that contentment lies in dolce far niente. The power and certainty of the future in the Jew s instinct, its monstrous will for life and for power, lies in its ruling classes; the people who upheld primitive Christianity are best dis tinguished by this exJiausted condition of their instincts. On the one hand, they are sick of every thing; on the other, they are content with each other, with themselves and for themselves.
181. Christianity regarded as emancipated Judaism (just as a nobility which is both racial and in digenous ultimately emancipates itself from these conditions, and goes in search of kindred elements. . . .). (1) As a Church (community) on the territory of the State, as an unpolitical institution. (2) As life, breeding, practice, art of living. (3) As a religion of sin (sin committed against God, being the only recognized kind, and the only cause of all suffering), with a universal cure for it. There is no sin save against God; what is done against men, man shall not sit in judgment upon, nor call to account, except in the name of God. At the same time, all commandments (love): everything is associated with God, and all acts are performed according to God s will. Beneath this arrangement there lies exceptional intelligence (a very narrow life, such as that led by the 152 Esquimaux, can only be endured by most peaceful and indulgent people: the Judaeo-Christian dogma turns against sin in favour of the " sinner ").
182. The Jewish priesthood understood how to present everything it claimed to be right as a divine precept, as an act of obedience to God, and also to introduce all those things which conduced to preserve Israel and were the conditions of its existence (for instance: the large number of " works ": circumcision and the cult of sacrifices, as the very pivot of the national conscience), not as Nature, but as God. This process continued; within the very heart of Judaism, where the need of these " works " was not felt (that is to say, as a means of keeping a race distinct), a priestly sort of man was pictured, whose bearing towards the aristocracy was like that of " noble nature "; a sacerdotalism of the soul, which now, in order to throw its opposite into strong relief, attaches value, not to the " dutiful acts " themselves, but to the sentiment. . . . At bottom, the problem was once again, how to make a certain kind of soul prevail: it was also a popular insurrection in the midst of a priestly people a pietistic movement coming from below (sinners, publicans, women, and children). Jesus of Nazareth was the symbol of their sect. And again, in order to believe in themselves, they were in need of a theological transfiguration: they require nothing less than " the Son of God " in 153 order to create a belief for themselves. And just as the priesthood had falsified the whole history of Israel, another attempt was made, here, to alter and falsify the whole history of mankind in such a way as to make Christianity seem like the most important event it contained. This movement could have originated only upon the soil of Judaism, the main feature of which was the confounding of guilt with sorrow and the reduction of all sin to sin against God. Of all this, Christianity is the second degree of power.
183. The symbolism of Christianity is based upon that of Judaism, which had already transfigured all reality (history, Nature) into a holy and artificial unreality which refused to recognise real history, and which showed no more interest in a natural course of things.
184. The Jews made the attempt to prevail, after two of their castes the warrior and the agri cultural castes, had disappeared from their midst. In this sense they are the " castrated people": they have their priests and then their Chandala. . . . How easily a disturbance occurs among them an insurrection of their Chandala. This was the origin of Christianity. Owing to the fact that they had no knowledge of warriors except as their masters, they introduced 154 enmity towards the nobles, the men of honor, pride, and power, and the ruling classes, into their religion: they are pessimists from indignation. . . . Thus they created a very important and novel position: the priests in the van of the Chandala against the noble classes. . . . Christianity was the logical conclusion of this movement: even in the Jewish priesthood, it still scented the existence of the caste, of the privileged and noble minority it therefore did away with priests. Christ is the unit of the Chandala who removes the priest . . . the Chandala who redeems himself. . . . That is why the French Revolution is the lineal descendant and the continuator of Christianity it is characterised by an instinct of hate towards castes, nobles, and the last privileges.
185. The " Christian Ideal " put on the stage with Jewish astuteness these are the fundamental psychological forces of its " nature ": Revolt against the ruling spiritual powers; The attempt to make those virtues which facili tate the happiness of the lowly, a standard of all values in fact, to call God that which is no more than the self-preservative instinct of that class of man possessed of least vitality; Obedience and absolute abstention from war and resistance, justified by this ideal; 155 The love of one another as a result of the love of God. The trick: The denial of all natural mobilia, and their transference to the spiritual world beyond . . . the exploitation of virtue and its veneration for wholly interested motives, gradual denial of virtue in everything that is not Christian.
186. The profound contempt with which the Christian was treated by the noble people of antiquity, is of the same order as the present instinctive aversion to Jews: it is the hatred which free and self- respecting classes feel towards those who wish to creep in secretly, and who combine an awkward bearing with foolish self-sufficiency. The New Testament is the gospel of a com pletely ignoble species of man; its pretensions to highest values yea, to all values, is, as a matter of fact, revolting even nowadays.
187. How little the subject matters! It is the spirit which gives the thing life! What a quantity of stuffy and sick-room air there is in all that chatter about " redemption," " love," " blessedness," " faith," " truth," " eternal life "! Let any one look into a really pagan book and compare the two; for in stance, in Petronius, nothing at all is done, said, desired, and valued, which, according to a bigoted Christian estimate, is not sin, or even deadly sin. And yet how happy one feels with the purer air, the 156 superior intellectuality, the quicker pace, and the free overflowing strength which is certain of the future! In the whole of the New Testament there is not one bouffonnerie: but that fact alone would suffice to refute any book. . . .
188. The prof ound lack of dignity with which all life, which is not Christian, is condemned: it does not suffice them to think meanly of their actual oppon ents, they cannot do with less than a general slander of everything that is not themselves. . . . An abject and crafty soul is in the most perfect harmony with the arrogance of piety, as witness the early Christians. The future: they see that they are heavily paid for it. . . . Theirs is the muddiest kind of spirit that exists. The whole of Christ s life is so arranged as to confirm the prophecies of the Scriptures: He behaves in suchwise in order that they may be right. . . .
189. The deceptive interpretation of the words, the doings, and the condition of dying people; the natural fear of death, for instance, is systematically confounded with the supposed fear of what is to happen " after death." . . .
190. The Christians have done exactly what the Jews did before them. They introduced what they 157 conceived to be an innovation and a thing necessary to self-preservation into their Master s teaching, and wove His life into it. They likewise credited Him with all the wisdom of a maker of proverbs in short, they represented their every day life and activity as an act of obedience, and thus sanctified their propaganda. What it all depends upon, may be gathered from Paul: it is not much. What remains is the development of a type of saint, out of the values which these people regarded as saintly. The whole of the "doctrine of miracles," in-j eluding the resurrection, is the result of self- glorification on the part of the community, which ascribed to its Master those qualities it ascribed to itself, but in a higher degree (or, better still, it derived its strength from Him. . . .).
191. The Christians have never led the life which Jesus commanded them to lead, and the impudent fable of the " justification by faith," and its unique and transcendental significance, is only the result of the Church s lack of courage and will in acknow ledging those "works" which Jesus commanded. The Buddhist behaves differently from the non- Buddhist; but the Christian behaves as all the rest of the world does, and possesses a Christianity of ceremonies and states of the soul. The profound and contemptible falsehood of Christianity in Europe makes us deserve the con tempt of the Arabs, Hindoos, and Chinese. . , . 158 Let any one listen to the words of the first German statesman, concerning that which has preoccupied Europe for the last forty years.
192. " Faith " or " works "? But that the " works," the habit of particular works may engender a certain set of values or thoughts, is just as natural as it would be unnatural for " works " to proceed from mere valuations. Man must practise, not how to strengthen feelings of value, but how to strengthen action: first of all, one must be able to do some thing. . . . Luther s Christian Dilettantism. Faith is an asses bridge. The background consists of a profound conviction on the part of Luther and his peers, that they are enabled to accomplish Christian " works," a personal fact, disguised under an extreme doubt as to whether all action is not sin and devil s work, so that the worth of life depends upon isolated and highly-strained conditions of inactivity (prayer, effusion, etc.). Ultimately, Luther would be right: the instincts which are expressed by the whole bearing of the reformers are the most brutal that exist. Only in turning absolutely away from themselves, and in becoming absorbed in the opposite of themselves, only by means of an illusion ("faith") was existence endurable to them.
193. " What was to be done in order to believe? " an absurd question. That which is wrong with Christianity is, that it does none of the things that Christ commanded, It is a mean life, but seen through the eye of contempt.
194. The entrance into the real life a man saves t his own life by living the life of the multitude.
195. Christianity has become something fundament ally different from what its Founder wished it to be. It is the great anti-pagan movement of anti quity, formulated with the use of the life, teaching, and " words " of the Founder of Christianity, but interpreted quite arbitrarily, according to a scheme embodying profoundly different needs: translated into the language of all the subterranean religions then existing. It is the rise of Pessimism (whereas Jesus wished to bring the peace and the happiness of the lambs): and moreover the Pessimism of the weak, of the inferior, of the suffering, and of the oppressed. Its mortal enemies are (i) Power, whether in the form of character, intellect, or taste, and " worldliness "; (2) the "good cheer" of classical times, the noble levity and scepticism, hard pride, eccentric dissipation, and cold frugality of the sage, Greek refinement in manners, words, and form. Its mortal enemy is as much the Roman as the Greek. The attempt on the part of anti-paganism to establish itself on a philosophical basis, and to make its tenets possible: it shows a taste for the ambiguous figures of antique culture, and above all for Plato, who was, more than any other, an anti-Hellene and Semite in instinct. . . . It also shows a taste for Stoicism, which is essentially the work of Semites ("dignity" is regarded as severity law; virtue is held to be greatness, self responsibility, authority, greatest sovereignty over oneself this is Semitic. The Stoic is an Arabian sheik wrapped in Greek togas and notions.
196. Christianity only resumes the fight which had already been begun against the classical ideal anc noble religion. As a matter of fact, the whole process of transformation is only an adaptation to the needs and to the level of intelligence of religious masses then existing: those masses whicl believed in Isis, Mithras, Dionysos, and great mother," and which demanded the follow ing things of a religion: (i) hopes of a beyond, (2) the bloody phantasmagoria of animal sacrmce (the mystery), (3) holy legend and the redeeming deed (4) asceticism, denial of the world, supe: stitious "purification," (5) a hierarchy as a part of the community. In short, Christianity everywhere fitted the already prevailing and increasing anti-pagan tendency those cults whicl Epicurus combated or more exactly, those l6l religions proper to the lower herd, women, slaves, and ignoble classes. The misunderstandings are therefore the following: (1) The immortality of the individual; (2) The assumed existence of another world; (3) The absurd notion of punishment and expiation in the heart of the interpretation of existence; (4) The profanation of the divine nature of man, instead of its accentuation, and the con struction of a very profound chasm, which can only be crossed by the help of a miracle or by means of the most thorough self-contempt; (5) The whole world of corrupted imagination and morbid passion, instead of a simple and loving life of action, instead of Buddhistic happiness attainable on earth; (6) An ecclesiastical order with a priesthood, theology, cults, and sacraments; in short, every thing that Jesus of Nazareth combated; (7) The miraculous in everything and every body, superstition too: while precisely the trait which distinguished Judaism and primitive Christianity was their repugnance to miracles and their relative rationalism.
197. The psychological pre-requisites: Ignorance and lack of culture, the sort of ignorance which has un learned every kind of shame: let any one imagine those impudent saints in the heart of Athens;. L 1 62 The Jewish instinct of a chosen people: they appropriate all the virtues, without further ado, as their own, and regard the rest of the world as their opposite; this is a profound sign of spiritual depravity; The total lack of real aims and real duties, for which other virtues are required than those of the bigot the State undertook this work for them: and the impudent people still behaved as though they had no need of the State. "Except ye become as little children " oh, how far we are from this psychological ingenuousness!
198. The Founder of Christianity had to pay dearly for having directed His teaching at the lowest classes of Jewish society and intelligence. They understood Him only according to the limitations of their own spirit. ... It was a disgrace to concoct a history of salvation, a personal God, a personal Saviour, a personal immortality, and to have retained all the meanness of the " person," and of the "history" of a doctrine which denies the reality of all that is personal and historical. The legend of salvation takes the place of the symbolic " now " and " all time," of the symbolic "here" and "everywhere"; and miracles appear instead of the psychological symbol.
199. Nothing is less innocent than the New Testa ment. The soil from which it sprang is known. These people, possessed of an inflexible will to assert themselves, and who, once they had lost all natural hold on life, and had long existed without any right to existence, still knew how to prevail by means of hypotheses which were as unnatural as they were imaginary (calling them selves the chosen people, the community of saints, the people of the promised land, and the " Church "): these people made use of their pia fraus with such skill, and with such "clean consciences," that one cannot be too cautious when they preach morality. When Jews step forward as the personification of innocence, the danger must be great. While reading the New Testament a man should have his small fund of intelligence, mistrust, and wickedness constantly at hand. People of the lowest origin, partly mob, out casts not only from good society, but also from respectable society; grown away from the atmosphere of culture, and free from discipline; ignorant, without even a suspicion of the fact that conscience can also rule in spiritual matters; in a word the Jews: an instinctively crafty people, able to create an advantage, a means of seduction out of every conceivable hypothesis of superstition, even out of ignorance itself.
200. I regard Christianity as the most fatal and seductive lie that has ever yet existed as the greatest and most impious lie: I can discern the !6 4 last sprouts and branches of its ideal beneath every form of disguise, I decline to enter into any compromise or false position in reference to it- I urge people to declare open war with it. The morality of paltry people as the measure of all things: this is the most repugnant kind of degeneracy that civilisation has ever yet brought into existence. And this kind of ideal is hanging still, under the name of "God," over men s heads! !
201. However mo dest one s demands may be concerning intellectual cleanliness, when one touches the New Testament one cannot help experiencing a sort of inexpressible feeling of dis comfort; for the unbounded cheek with which the least qualified people will have their say in its pages, in regard to the greatest problems of existence, and claim to sit in judgment on such matters, exceeds all limits. The impudent levity with which the most unwieldy problems are spoken of here (life, the world, God, the purpose of life), as if they were not problems at all, but the most simple things which these little bigots know all about.
202. This was the most fatal form of insanity that has ever yet existed on earth: when these little lying abortions of bigotry begin laying claim to the words "God," "last judgment," "truth," Move," "wisdom," "Holy Spirit," and thereby distinguishing themselves from the rest of the world; when such men begin to revalue values to suit themselves, as though they were the sense the salt, the standard, and the measure of all things; then all that one should do is this: build lunatic asylums for their incarceration. To persecute them was an egregious act of antique folly: this was taking them too seriously; it was making them serious. The whole fatality was made possible by the fact that a similar form of megalomania was already in existence, the Jewish form (once the gulf separating the Jews from the Christian-Jews was bridged, the Christian-Jews were compelled to employ those self-preservative measures afresh which were discovered by the Jewish instinct for their own self-preservation, after having accent uated them); and again through the fact that Greek moral philosophy had done everything that could be done to prepare the way for moral-fanaticism, even among Greeks and Romans, and to render it palatable. . . . Plato, the great importer of corruption, who was the first who refused to see Nature in morality, and who had already deprived the Greek gods of all their worth by his notion "good? was already tainted with Jewish bigotry (in Egypt? ).
203. These small virtues of gregarious animals do not by any means lead to eternal life ": to put them on the stage in such a way, and to use them for one s own purpose is perhaps very smart; but to him who keeps his eyes open, even here it remains, in spite of all, the most ludicrous performance. A man by no means deserves privileges, either on earth or in heaven, because he happens to have attained to perfection in the art of behaving like a good-natured little sheep; at best, he only remains a dear, absurd little ram with horns provided, of course, he does not burst with vanity or excite indignation by assuming the airs of a supreme judge. What a terrible glow of false coloring here floods the meanest virtues as though they were the reflection of divine qualities! The natural purpose and utility of every virtue is systematically hushed up it can only be valuable in the light of a divine command or model, or in the light of the good which belongs to a beyond or a spiritual world. (This is magnificent! As if it were a question of the salvation of the soul , but it was a means of making things bearable here with as many beautiful sentiments as possible.)
204. The law, which is the fundamentally realistic formula of certain self-preservative measures of a community, forbids certain actions that have a definite tendency to jeopardise the welfare of that community: it does not forbid the attitude of mind which gives rise to these actions for in the pur- 167 suit of other ends the community requires these forbidden actions, namely, when it is a matter of opposing its enemies. The moral idealist now steps forward and says: " God sees into men s hearts: the action itself counts for nothing; the reprehensible attitude of mind from which it pro ceeds must be extirpated. . . ." In normal conditions men laugh at such things; it is only in exceptional cases, when a community lives quite beyond the need of waging war in order to maintain itself, that an ear is lent to such things. Any attitude of mind is abandoned, the utility of which cannot be conceived. This was the case, for example, when Buddha appeared among a people that was both peaceable and afflicted with great intellectual weariness. This was also the case in regard to the first Christian community (as also the Jewish), the primary condition of which was the absolutely unpolitical Jewish society. Christianity could grow only upon the soil of Judaism that is to say, among a people that had already renounced the political life, and which led a sort of parasitic existence within the Roman sphere of government. Christianity goes a step farther: it allows men to " emasculate " themselves even more; the circum stances actually favour their doing so. Nature is expelled from morality when it is said, " Love ye your enemies ": for Nature s injunction, " Ye shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy," has now become senseless in the law (in instinct); now, even the love a man feels for his neighbour must first be based upon something (a sort of love 1 68 of God}. God is introduced everywhere, and utility is withdrawn; the natural origin of morality is denied everywhere: the veneration of Nature which lies in acknowledging a natural morality, is destroyed to the roots. . . . Whence comes the seductive charm of this emasculate ideal of man? Why are we not disgusted by it, just as we are disgusted at the thought of a eunuch? . . . The answer is obvious: it is not the voice of the eunuch that revolts us, despite the cruel mutilation of which it is the result; for, as a matter of fact, it has grown sweeter. . . . And owing to the very fact that the " male organ " has been amputated from virtue, its voice now has a feminine ring, which, formerly, was not to be discerned. On the other hand, we have only to think of the terrible hardness, dangers, and accidents to which a life of manly virtues leads the life of a Corsican, even at the present day, or that of a heathen Arab (which resembles the Corsican s life even to the smallest detail: the Arab s songs might have been written by Corsicans) in order to perceive how the most robust type of man was fascinated and moved by the voluptuous ring of this "goodness" and "purity." ... A pastoral melody ... an idyll ... the " good man ": such things have most effect in ages when tragedy is abroad. With this, we have realized to what extent the idealist " (the ideal eunuch) also proceeds from a 169 definite reality and is not merely a visionary. . . . He has perceived precisely that, for his kind of reality, a brutal injunction of the sort which pro hibits certain actions has no sense (because the instinct which would urge him to these actions is weakened, thanks to a long need of practice, and of compulsion to practise). The castrator formu lates a host of new self-preservative measures for a perfectly definite species of men: in this sense he is a realist. The means to which he has recourse for establishing his legislation, are the same as those of ancient legislators: he appeals to all authorities, to " God," and he exploits the notions " guilt and punishment " that is to say, he avails himself of the whole of the older ideal, but interprets it differently; for instance: punish ment is given a place in the inner self (it is called the pang of conscience). In practice this kind of man meets with his end the moment the exceptional conditions favouring his existence cease to prevail a sort of insular happiness, like that of Tahiti, and of the little Jews in the Roman provinces. Their only natural foe is the soil from which they spring: they must wage war against that, and once more give their offensive and defensive passions rope in order to be equal to it: their opponents are the adherents of the old ideal (this kind of hostility is shown on a grand scale by Paul in relation to Judaism, and by Luther in relation to the priestly ascetic ideal). The mildest form of this antagonism is certainly that of the first Buddhists; perhaps nothing has given rise to so much work, as the enfeeblement and IO discouragement of the feeling of antagonism,. The struggle against resentment almost seems the Buddhist s first duty; thus only is his peace of soul secured. To isolate oneself without bitterness, this presupposes the existence of a surprisingly mild and sweet order of men, saints. . . . * The Astuteness of moral castration. How is war waged against the virile passions and valuations? No violent physical means are available; the war must therefore be one of ruses, spells, and lies in short, a " spiritual war." First recipe: One appropriates virtue in general, and makes it the main feature of one s ideal; the older ideal is denied and declared to be the reverse of all ideals. Slander has to be carried to a fine art for this purpose. Second recipe: A type of man is set up as a general standard; and this is projected into all things, behind all things, and behind the destiny of all things as God. Third recipe: The opponents of one s ideal are declared to be the opponents of God; one arro gates to oneself a right to great pathos, to power, and a right to curse and to bless. Fourth recipe: All suffering, all gruesome, terrible, and fatal things are declared to be the results of opposition to one s ideal all suffering is punishment even in the case of one s adherents (except it be a trial, etc.). Fifth recipe: One goes so far as to regard Nature as the reverse of one s ideal, and the lengthy 171 sojourn amid natural conditions is considered a great trial of patience a sort of martyrdom; one studies contempt, both in one s attitudes and one s looks towards all " natural things," Sixth recipe: The triumph of anti-naturalism and ideal castration, the triumph of the world of the pure, good, sinless, and blessed, is projected into the future as the consummation, the finale, the great hope, and the " Coming of the Kingdom of God." I hope that one may still be allowed to laugh at this artificial hoisting up of a small species of man to the position of an absolute standard of all things?
205. What I do not at all like in Jesus of Nazareth and His Apostle Paul, is that they stuffed so much into the heads of paltry people, as if their modest virtues were worth so much ado. We have had to pay dearly for it all; for they brought the most valuable qualities of both virtue and man into ill repute; they set the guilty conscience and the self-respect of noble souls at loggerheads, and they led the braver, more magnanimous, more daring, and more excessive tendencies of strong souls astray even to self-destruction.
206. In the New Testament, and especially in the Gospels, I discern absolutely no sign of a " Divine " voice: but rather an indirect form of the most subterranean fury, both in slander and destructive- ness one of the most dishonest forms of hatred. It lacks all knowledge of the qualities of a higher nature. It makes an impudent abuse of all kinds of plausibilities, and the whole stock of proverbs is used up and foisted upon one in its pages. Was it necessary to make a God come in order to appeal to those publicans and to say to them, etc. etc.? Nothing could be more vulgar than this struggle with the Pharisees, carried on with a host of absurd and unpractical moral pretences; the mob, of course, has always been entertained by such feats. Fancy the reproach of " hypocrisy! " coming from those lips! Nothing could be more vulgar than this treatment of one s opponents a most insidious sign of nobility or its reverse. . .
207. Primitive Christianity is the abolition of the State: it prohibits oaths, military service, courts of justice, self-defence or the defence of a community, and denies the difference between fellow-country men and strangers, as also the order of castes. Christ s example: He does not withstand those who ill-treat Him; He does not defend Himself; He does more, He " offers the left cheek " (to the demand: " Tell us whether thou be the Christ? " He replies: " Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven "). He forbids His disciples to defend Him; He calls attention to the fact that He could get help if He wished to, but will not. Christianity also means the abolition of society it prizes everything that society despises, its very growth takes place among the outcasts, the con demned, and the leprous of all kinds, as also among " publicans," " sinners," prostitutes, and the most foolish of men (the " fisher folk "); it despises the rich, the scholarly, the noble, the virtuous, and the " punctilious." . . .
208. The war against the noble and the powerful, as it is waged in the New Testament, is reminis cent of Reynard the Fox and his methods: but plus the Christian unction and the more absolute refusal to recognise one s own craftiness.
209. The Gospel is the announcement that the road to happiness lies open for the lowly and the poor that all one has to do is to emancipate one s self from all institutions, traditions, and the tutelage of the higher classes. Thus Christianity is no more than the typical teaching of Socialists. Property, acquisitions, mother-country, status and rank, tribunals, the police, the State, the Church, Education, Art, militarism: all these are so many obstacles in the way of happiness, so many mistakes, snares, and devil s artifices, on which the Gospel passes sentence all this is typical of socialistic doctrines. Behind all this there is the outburst, the ex- 14 plosion, of a concentrated loathing of the " masters," the instinct which discerns the happiness of freedom after such long oppression. . . . (Mostly a symptom of the fact that the inferior classes have been treated too humanely, that their tongues already taste a joy which is forbidden them. ... It is not hunger that provokes revolu tions, but the fact that the mob have contracted an appetite en mangeant. . . .)
210. Let the New Testament only be read as a book of seduction: in it virtue is appropriated, with the idea that public opinion is best won with it, and as a matter of fact it is a very modest kind of virtue, which recognises only the ideal gregarious animal and nothing more (including, of course, the herdsmen): a puny, soft, benevolent, helpful, and gushingly-satisfied kind of virtue which to the outside world is quite devoid of pretensions, and which separates the " world " entirely from itself. The crassest arrogance which fancies that the destiny of man turns around it, and it alone, and that on the one side the community of believers represents what is right, and on the other the world represents what is false and eternally to be reproved and rejected. The most imbecile hatred of all things in power, which, how ever, never goes so far as to touch these things. A kind of inner detachment which, outwardly, leaves everything as it was (servitude and slavery; and knowing how to convert everything into a means of serving God and virtue). 175 X
211. Christianity is possible as the most private form of life; it presupposes the existence of a narrow, isolated, and absolutely unpolitical society it belongs to the conventicle. On the other hand, a " Christian State" "Christian politics," are pieces of downright impudence; they are lies, like, for instance, a Christian leadership of an army, which in the end regards " the God of hosts " as chief of the staff. Even the Papacy has never been able to carry on politics in a Christian way . . .; and when Reformers indulge in politics, as Luther did, it is well known that they are just as ardent followers of Machiavelli as any other immoralists or tyrants.
212. Christianity is still possible at any moment. It is not bound to any one of the impudent dogmas that have adorned themselves with its name: it needs neither the teaching of the personal God, nor of sin, nor of immortality, nor of redemption, nor of faith; it has absolutely no need whatever of metaphysics, and it needs asceticism and Christian " natural science " still less. Christi- x anity is a method of life, not a system of belief. It tells us how we should behave, not what we should believe. He who says today: " I refuse to be a soldier," " I care not for tribunals," " I lay no claim to the services of the police," " I will not do anything that disturbs the peace within me: and if I must suffer on that account, nothing can so well maintain my inward peace as suffering " such a man would be a Christian.
213. Concerning the history of Christianity. Con tinual change of environment: Christian teaching is thus continually changing its centre of gravity. The favouring of low and paltry people. . . . The development of caritas. . . . The type " Chris tian " gradually adopts everything that it originally rejected (and in the rejection of which it asserted its right to exist]. The Christian becomes a citizen, a soldier, a judge, a workman, a merchant, a scholar, a theologian, a priest, a philosopher, a farmer, an artist, a patriot, a politician, a prince ... he re-enters all those departments of active life which he had forsworn (he defends himself, he establishes tribunals, he punishes, he swears, he differentiates between people and people, he contemns, and he shows anger). The whole life of the Christian is ultimately exactly that life from which Christ preached deliverance. . . . The Church is just as much a factor in the triumph of the Antichrist, as the modern State and modern Nationalism. . . . The Church is the barbarisation of Christianity.
214. Among the powers that have mastered Chris tianity are: Judaism (Paul]; Platonism (Augustine); The cult of mystery (the teaching of salvation, 177 the emblem of the " cross "); Asceticism (hostility towards " Nature," " Reason," the " senses," the Orient . . .)
215. Christianity is a denaturalisation of gregarious morality: under the power of the most complete misapprehensions and self-deceptions. Demo cracy is a more natural form of it, and less sown with falsehood. It is a fact that the oppressed, the low, and whole mob of slaves and half-castes, will prevail. First step: they make themselves free they detach themselves, at first in fancy only; they recognise each other; they make themselves paramount. Second step: they enter the lists, they demand acknowledgment, equal rights, " Justice." Third step: they demand privileges (they draw the representatives of power over to their side). Fourth step: they alone want all power, and they have it. There are three elements in Christianity which must be distinguished: (a) the oppressed of all kinds, the mediocre of all kinds, (c) the dis satisfied and diseased of all kinds. The first struggle against the politically noble and their ideal; the second contend with the exceptions and those who are in any way privileged (mentally or physically); the third oppose the natural instinct of the happy and the sound. Whenever a triumph is achieved, the second . M 178 element steps to the fore; for then Christianity has won over the sound and happy to its side (as warriors in its cause), likewise the powerful (inter ested to this extent in the conquest of the crowd) and now it is the gregarious instinct, that mediocre nature which is valuable in every respect, that now gets its highest sanction through Chris tianity. This mediocre nature ultimately becomes so conscious of itself (gains such courage in regard to its own opinions), that it arrogates to tsttevQrpoliticalpower. . . . Democracy is Christianity made natural: a sort of " return to Nature," once Christianity, owing to extreme anti-naturalness, might have been overcome by the opposite valuation. Result: the aristocratic ideal begins to lose its natural character ("the higher man," "noble," "artist," " passion," " knowledge "; Romanticism as the cult of the exceptional, genius, etc. etc.).
216. When the " masters " may also become Christians. It is of the nature of a community (race, family, herd, tribe) to regard all those conditions and aspirations which favour its survival, as in them selves valuable; for instance: obedience, mutual assistance, respect, moderation, pity as also, to suppress everything that happens to stand in the way of the above. It is likewise of the nature of the rulers (whether they are individuals or classes) to patronise and applaud those virtues which make 179 their subjects amenable and submissive condi tions and passions which may be utterly different from their own). The gregarious instinct and the instinct of the rulers sometimes agree in approving of a certain number of qualities and conditions, but for different reasons: the first do so out of direct egoism, the second out of indirect egoism. The submission to Christianity on the part of master races is essentially the result of the con viction that Christianity is a religion for the herd, that it teaches obedience: in short, that Christians are more easily ruled than non-Christians. With a hint of this nature, the Pope, even nowadays, recommends Christian propaganda to the ruling Sovereign of China. It should also be added that the seductive power of the Christian ideal works most strongly upon natures that love danger, adventure, and contrasts; that love everything that entails a risk, and wherewith a nonplus ultra of powerful feeling may be attained. In this respect, one has only to think of Saint Theresa, surrounded by the heroic instincts of her brothers: Christianity appears in those circumstances as a dissipation of the will, as strength of will, as a will that is Quixotic.
3. CHRISTIAN IDEALS.
217. War against the Christian ideal, against the doctrine of " blessedness " and " salvation " as the aims of life, against the supremacy of the fools, of the pure in heart, of the suffering and of the botched! When and where has any man, of any note at all, resembled the Christian ideal? at least in the eyes of those who are psychologists and triers of the heart and reins. Look at all Plutarch's heroes!
218. Our claim to superiority: we live in an age of Comparisons; we are able to calculate as men have never yet calculated; in every way we are history become self-conscious. We enjoy things in a different way; we suffer in a different way: our instinctive activity is the comparison of an enormous variety of things. We understand everything; we experience everything, we no longer have a hostile feeling left within us. How ever disastrous the results may be to ourselves, our plunging and almost lustful inquisitiveness, attacks, unabashed, the most dangerous of subjects. . . . " Everything is good " it gives us pain to say " nay " to anything. We suffer when we feel that we are sufficiently foolish to make a definite stand against anything. ... At bottom, it is we scholars who today are fulfilling Christ s teaching most thoroughly.
219. We cannot suppress a certain irony when we contemplate those who think they have overcome Christianity by means of modern natural science. Christian values are by no means overcome by such people. "Christ on the cross" is still the most sublime symbol even now
220. The two great Nihilistic movements are: (a) Buddhism, (#) Christianity. The latter has only just about reached a state of culture in which it can fulfil its original object, it has found its level, and now it can manifest itself without disguise. . . .
221. We have re-established the Christian ideal, it now only remains to determine its value. (1) Which values does it deny! What does the ideal that opposes it stand for? Pride, pathos of distance, great responsibility, exuberant spirits, splendid animalism, the instincts of war and of conquest, the deification of passion, revenge, cunning, anger, voluptuousness, adventure, know ledge; the noble ideal is denied: the beauty, wisdom, power, pomp, and awfulness of the type man: the man who postulates aims, the " future " man (here Christianity presents itself as the logical result of Judaism], (2) Can it be realized? Yes, of course, when the climatic conditions are favourable as in the case of the Indian ideal. Both neglect the factor work. It separates a creature from a people, a state, a civilised community, and jurisdiction; it rejects education, wisdom, the cultivation of good man ners, acquisition and commerce; it cuts adrift 1 everything which is of use and value to men by means of an idiosyncrasy of sentiment it isolates a man. It is non-political, anti-national, neither aggressive nor defensive, and only possible within a strictly-ordered State or state of society, which allows these holy parasites to flourish at the cost of their neighbours. . . . (3) It has now become the will to be happy and nothing else! " Blessedness " stands for something self-evident, that no longer requires any justification everything else (the way to live and let live) is only a means to an end. . . . But what follows is the result of a low order of thought: the fear of pain, of defilement, of cor ruption, is great enough to provide ample grounds for allowing everything to go to the dogs. . . . This is a poor way of thinking, and is the sign of an exhausted race; we must not allow ourselves to be deceived. (" Become as little children." Natures of the same order-, Francis of Assisi, neurotic, epileptic, visionary, like Jesus.)
222. The higher man distinguishes himself from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune: it is a sign of degeneration when eudemonistic values begin to prevail (physio logical fatigue and enfeeblement of will-power). Christianity, with its prospect of " blessedness," is the typical attitude of mind of a suffering and impoverished species of man. Abundant strength will be active, will suffer, and will go under: to it 183 the bigotry of Christian salvation is bad music and hieratic posing and vexation.
223. Poverty, humility, and chastity are dangerous and slanderous ideals; but like poisons, which are useful cures in the case of certain diseases, they were also necessary in the time of the Roman Empire. All ideals are dangerous: because they lower and brand realities; they are all poisons, but occasionally indispensable as cures.
224. God created man, happy, idle, innocent, and immortal: our actual life is a false, decadent, and sinful existence, a punishment. . . . Suffering, struggle, work, and death are raised as objections against life, they make life questionable, unnatural something that must cease, and for which one not only requires but also has remedies! Since the time of Adam, man has been in an abnormal state: God Himself delivered up His Son for Adam s sin, in order to put an end to the abnormal condition of things: the natural character of life is a curse; to those who believe in Him, Christ restores normal life: He makes them happy, idle, and innocent. But the world did not become fruitful without labour; women do not bear children without pain; illness has not ceased: believers are served just as badly as un believers in this respect. All that has happened is, that man is delivered from death and sin two assertions which allow of no verification, and which are therefore emphasised by the Church with more than usual heartiness. " He is free from sin," not owing to his own efforts, not owing to a vigorous struggle on his part, but redeemed by the death of the Saviour, conse quently, perfectly innocent and paradisaical. Actual life is nothing more than an illusion (that is to say, a deception, an insanity). The whole of struggling, fighting, and real existence so full of light and shade, is only bad and false: everybody s duty is to be delivered from it. " Man, innocent, idle, immortal, and happy " this concept, which is the object of the " most supreme desires," must be criticised before any thing else. Why should guilt, work, death, and pain (and, from the Christian point of view, also knowledge . . .) be contrary to all supreme desires? The lazy Christian notions: " blessedness," " innocence," " immortality."
225. The eccentric concept " holiness " does not exist " God " and " man " have not been divorced from each other. " Miracles " do not exist such spheres do not exist: the only one to be con sidered is the " intellectual " (that is to say, the symbolically-psychological). As decadence: a counterpart to " Epicureanism." . . . Paradise according to Greek notions was only " Epicurus Garden." A life of this sort lacks a purpose: it strives after nothing; a form of the " Epicurean gods " there is no longer any reason to aim at anything, not even at having children: everything has been done.
226. They despised the body: they did not reckon with it: nay, more they treated it as an enemy. It was their delirium to think that a man could carry a " beautiful soul " about in a body that was a cadaverous abortion. ... In order to inoculate others with this insanity they had to present the concept " beautiful soul " in a different way, and to revalue the natural value, until, at last, a pale, sickly, idiotically exalted creature, some thing angelic, some extreme perfection and trans figuration was declared to be the higher man.
227. Ignorance in matters psychological. The Christian has no nervous system; contempt for, and deliberate and wilful turning away from, the demands of the body, and the naked body; it is assumed that all this is in keeping with man s nature, and must perforce vork the ultimate good of the soul; all functions of the body are systematically reduced to moral values; illness itself is regarded as determined by morality, it is held to be the result of sin, or it is a trial or a state of salvation, through which man becomes more perfect than he could become in a state 1 86 of health (Pascal s idea); under certain circum stances, there are wilful attempts at inducing illness.
228. What in sooth is this struggle " against Nature " on the part of the Christian? We shall not, of course, let ourselves be deceived by his words and explanations. It is Nature against something which is also Nature. With many, it is fear; with others, it is loathing; with yet others, it is the sign of a certain intellectuality, the love of a bloodless and passionless ideal; and in the case of the most superior men, it is love of an abstract Nature these try to live up to their ideal. It is easily understood that humiliation in the place of self-esteem, anxious cautiousness towards the passions, emancipation from the usual duties (whereby a higher notion of rank is created), the incitement to constant war on behalf of enormous issues, habituation to effusiveness of feelings all this goes to constitute a type: in such a type the hypersensitiveness of a perishing body pre ponderates; but the nervousness and the in spirations it engenders are interpreted differently. The taste of this kind of creature tends either (i) to subtilise, (2) to indulge in bombastic eloquence, or (3) to go in for extreme feelings. The natural inclinations do get satisfied, but they are interpreted in a new way; for instance, as "justification before God," " the feeling of redemption through grace," every undeniable feeling of pleasure becomes (interpreted in this way !) pride, voluptuousness, etc. General problem: what will become of the man who slanders and practically denies and belittles what is natural? As a matter of fact, the Christian is an example of exaggerated self- control: in order to tame his passions, he seems to find it necessary to extirpate or crucify them.
229. Man did not know himself physiologically throughout the ages his history covers; he does not even know himself now. The knowledge, for instance, that man has a nervous system (but no " soul ") is still the privilege of the most educated people. But man is not satisfied, in this respect, to say he does not know. A man must be very superior to be able to say: " I do not know this," that is to say, to be able to admit his ignorance. Suppose he is in pain or in a good mood, he never questions that he can find the reason of either condition if only he seeks. ... In truth, he cannot find the reason; for he does not even suspect where it lies. . . . What happens? . . . He takes the result of his condition for its cause; for instance, if he should undertake some work (really undertaken because his good mood gave him the courage to do so) and carry it through successfully: behold, the work itself is the reason of his good mood. ... As a matter of fact, his success was determined by the same cause as that which brought about his good mood that is to say, the happy co-ordination of physiological powers and functions. He feels bad: consequently he cannot overcome a care, a scruple, or an attitude of self-criticism. . . . He really fancies that his disagreeable con dition is the result of his scruple, of his " sin," or of his " self-criticism." But after profound exhaustion and prostration, a state of recovery sets in. " How is it possible that I can feel so free, so happy? It is a miracle; only a God could have effected this change." Conclusion: " He has forgiven my sin." . . . From this follow certain practices: in order to provoke feelings of sinfulness and to prepare the way for crushed spirits it is necessary to induce a condition of morbidity and nervousness in the body. The methods of doing this are well known. Of course, nobody suspects the causal logic of the fact: the maceration of the flesh is interpreted religiously, it seems like an end in itself, whereas it is no more than a means of bringing about that morbid state of indigestion which is known as repentance (the " fixed idea " of sin, the hypnotising of the hen by means of the chalk-line " sin "). The mishandling of the body prepares the ground for the required range of " guilty feelings " that is to say, for that general state of pain which demands an explanation. . . . On the other hand, the method of " salvation " may also develop from the above: every dis sipation of the feelings, whether prayers, move ments, attitudes, or oaths, has been provoked, and exhaustion follows; very often it is acute, or it appears in the form of epilepsy. And behind this condition of deep somnolence there come signs of recovery or, in religious parlance, " Salvation."
230. Formerly, the conditions and results of physio logical exhaustion were considered more important than healthy conditions and their results, and this was owing to the suddenness, fearfulness, and mysteriousness of the former. Men were terrified by themselves, and postulated the existence of a higlier world. People have ascribed the origin of the idea of two worlds one this side of the grave and the other beyond it to sleep and dreams, to shadows, to night, and to the fear of Nature: but the symptoms of physiological ex haustion should, above all, have been considered. Ancient religions have quite special methods of disciplining the pious into states of exhaustion, in which they must experience such things. . . . The idea was, that one entered into a new order of things, where everything ceases to be known. The semblance of a higher power. . . .
231. Sleep is the result of every kind of exhaus tion; exhaustion follows upon all excessive excitement. . . . In all pessimistic religions and philosophies there is a yearning for sleep; the very notion " sleep " is deified and worshipped. In this case the exhaustion is racial; sleep 190 regarded psychologically is only a symbol of a much deeper and longer compulsion to rest. . . . In praxi it is death which rules here in the seductive image of its brother sleep. . . .
232. The whole of the Christian training in repent ance and redemption may be regarded as a folie circulaire arbitrarily produced; though, of course, it can be produced only in people who are pre disposed to it that is to say, who have morbid tendencies in their constitutions.
233. Against remorse and its purely psychical treat ment. To be unable to have done with an ex perience is already a sign of decadence. This reopening of old wounds, this wallowing in self- contempt and depression, is an additional form of disease; no " salvation of the soul " ever results from it, but only a new kind of spiritual illness. . . . These " conditions of salvation " of which the Christian is conscious are merely variations of the same diseased state the interpretation of an attack of epilepsy by means of a particular formula which is provided, not by science, but by religious mania. When a man is ill his very goodness is sickly. . . . By far the greatest portion of the psychical apparatus which Christianity has used, is now classed among the various forms of hysteria and epilepsy. 191 The whole process of spiritual healing must be remodelled on a physiological basis: the " sting of conscience " as such is an obstacle in the way of recovery as soon as possible the attempt must be made to counterbalance everything by means of new actions, so that there may be an escape from the morbidness of self-torture. . . . The purely psychical practices of the Church and of the various sects should be decried as dangerous to the health. No invalid is ever cured by prayers or by the exorcising of evil spirits: the states of " repose " which follow upon such methods of treatment, by no means inspire confidence, in the psychological sense. . . . A man is healthy when he can laugh at the seriousness and ardour with which he has allowed himself to be hypnotised to any extent by any detail in his life when his remorse seems to him like the action of a dog biting a stone when he is ashamed of his repentance. The purely psychological and religious practices, which have existed hitherto, only led to an altera tion in the symptoms: according to them a man had recovered when he bowed before the cross, and swore that in future he would be a good man. . . . But a criminal, who, with a certain gloomy seriousness cleaves to his fate and refuses to malign his deed once it is done, has more spiritual health. . . . The criminals with whom Dostoiewsky associated in prison, were all, without exception, unbroken natures, are they not a hundred times more valuable than a " broken-spirited " Christian? 1 92 (For the treatment of pangs of conscience I recommend Mitchell s Treatment.*)
234. A pang of conscience in a man is a sign that his character is not yet equal to his deed. There is such a thing as a pang of conscience after good deeds: in this case it is their unfamiliarity, their incompatibility with an old environment.
235. Against remorse. I do not like this form of cowardice in regard to one s own actions, one must not leave one s self in the lurch under the pressure of sudden shame or distress. Extreme pride is much more fitting here. What is the good of it all in the end! No deed gets undone because it is regretted, no more than because it is " forgiven " or " expiated." A man must be a theologian in order to believe in a power that erases faults: we immoralists prefer to dis believe in " faults." We believe that all deeds, of what kind soever, are identically the same at root; just as deeds which turn against us may * TRANSLATOR S NOTE. In The New Sydenham Society s Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences, the following description of Mitchell s treatment is to be found: " A method of treating cases of neurasthenia and hysteria . . . by removal from home, rest in bed, massage twice a day, electrical excitation of the muscles, and excessive feeding, at first with milk." 193 be useful from an economical point of view, and even generally desirable. In certain individual cases, we admit that we might well have been spared a given action; the circumstances alone predisposed us in its favour. Which of us, if favoured by circumstances, would not already have committed every possible crime? . . . That is why one should never say: " Thou shouldst never have done such and such a thing," but only: " How strange it is that I have not done such and such a thing hundreds of times already! " As a matter of fact, only a very small number of acts are typical acts and real epitomes of a personality, and seeing what a small number of people really are personalities, a single act very rarely character ises a man. Acts are mostly dictated by circum stances; they are superficial or merely reflex movements performed in response to a stimulus, long before the depths of our beings are affected or consulted in the matter. A fit of temper, a gesture, a blow with a knife: how little of the individual resides in these acts! A deed very often brings a sort of stupor or feeling of con straint in its wake: so that the agent feels almost spellbound at its recollection, or as though he belonged to it, and were not an independent creature. This mental disorder, which is a form of hypnotism, must be resisted at all costs: surely a single deed, whatever it be, when it is compared with all one has done, is nothing; and may be deducted from the sum without making the account wrong. The unfair interest which society manifests in controlling the whole of our lives . N 194 in one direction, as though the very purpose of its existence were to cultivate a certain individual act, should not infect the man of action: but unfortunately this happens almost continually. The reason of this is, that every deed, if followed by unexpected consequences, leads to a certain mental disturbance, no matter whether the con sequences be good or bad. Behold a lover who has been given a promise, or a poet while he is receiving applause from an audience: as far as intellectual torpor is concerned, these men are in no way different from the anarchist who is suddenly confronted by a detective bearing a search warrant. There are some acts which are unworthy of us: acts which, if they were regarded as typical, would set us down as belonging to a lower class of man. The one fault that has to be avoided here, is to regard them as typical. There is another kind of act of which we are unworthy: exceptional acts, born of a particular abundance of happiness and health; they are the highest waves of our spring tides, driven to an unusual height by a storm an accident: such acts and " deeds " are also not typical. An artist should never be judged according to the measure of his works.
236. A. In proportion as Christianity seems necessary today, man is still wild and fatal. . . . B. In another sense, it is not necessary, but extremely dangerous, though it is captivating and 195 seductive, because it corresponds with the morbid character of whole classes and types of modern humanity, . . . they simply follow their inclinations when they aspire to Christianity they are de cadents of all kinds. A and B must be kept very sharply apart. In the case of A, Christianity is a cure, or at least a taming process (under certain circumstances it serves the purpose of making people ill: and this is sometimes useful as a means of subduing savage and brutal natures). In the case of B, it is a symptom of illness itself, it renders the state of decadence more acute; in this case it stands opposed to a corroborating system of treatment, it is the invalid s instinct standing against that which would be most salutary to him.
237. On one side there are the serious, the dignified, and reflective people: and on the other the bar barous, the unclean, and the irresponsible beasts: it is merely a question of taming animals and in this case the tamer must be hard, terrible, and awe-inspiring, at least to his beasts. All essential requirements must be imposed upon the unruly creatures with almost brutal distinct ness that is to say, magnified a thousand times. Even the fulfilment of the requirement must be presented in the coarsest way possible, so that it may command respect, as in the case of the spiritualisation of the Brahmins. 196 The struggle with the rabble and the herd. If any degree of tameness and order has been reached, the chasm separating these purified and regenerated people from the terrible remainder must have been bridged. . . . This chasm is a means of increasing self-respect in higher castes, and of confirming their belief in that which they represent hence the Chandala. Contempt and its excess are perfectly correct psychologically that is to say, magnified a hundred times, so that it may at least be felt.
238. The struggle against brutal instincts is quite different from the struggle against morbid instincts; it may even be a means of overcoming brutality by making the brutes ill. The psychical treatment practiced by Christianity is often nothing more than the process of converting a brute into a sick and therefore tame animal. The struggle against raw and savage natures must be a struggle with weapons which are able to affect such natures: superstitions and such means are therefore indispensable and essential.
239. Our age, in a certain sense, is mature (that is to say, decadent), just as Buddha s was. . . . That is why a sort of Christianity is possible without all the absurd dogmas (the most repulsive offshoots of ancient hybridism).
240. Supposing it were impossible to disprove Chris tianity, Pascal thinks, in view of the terrible possibility that it may be true, that it is in the highest degree prudent to be a Christian. As a proof of how much Christianity has lost of its terrible nature, today we find that other attempt to justify it, which consists in asserting, that even if it were a mistake, it nevertheless provides the greatest advantages and pleasures for its adherents throughout their lives: it therefore seems that this belief should be upheld owing to the peace and quiet it ensures not owing to the terror of a threatening possibility, but rather out of fear of a life that has lost its charm. This hedonistic turn of thought, which uses happiness as a proof, is a symptom of decline: it takes the place of the proof resulting from power or from that which to the Christian mind is most terrible namely, fear. With this new interpretation, Christianity is, as a matter of fact, nearing its stage of exhaustion. People are satisfied with a Christianity which is an opiate, because they no longer have the strength to seek, to struggle, to dare, to stand alone, nor to take up Pascal s position and to share that gloomily brooding self-contempt, that belief in human unworthiness, and that anxiety which believes that it " may be damned." But a Christianity the chief object of which is to soothe diseased nerves, does not require the terrible solution consisting of a " God on the cross "; that 198 is why Buddhism is secretly gaining ground all over Europe.
241. The humour of European culture: people regard one thing as true, but do the other. For instance, what is the use of all the art of reading and criticising, if the ecclesiastical interpretation of the Bible, whether according to Catholics or Protestants, is still upheld!
242. No one is sufficiently aware of the barbarity ot the notions among which we Europeans still live. To think that men have been able to believe that the " Salvation of the soul " depended upon a I book! . . . And I am told that this is still j believed. What is the good of all scientific education, all criticism and all hermeneutics, if such nonsense as the Church s interpretation of the Bible has not yet turned the colors of our bodies permanently into the red of shame?
243. Subject for reflection: To what extent does the fatal belief in " Divine Providence " the most paralysing belief for both the hand and the under standing that has ever existed continue to pre vail; to what extent have the Christian hypothesis and interpretation of Life continued their lives under the cover of terms like " Nature," " Progress," " perfectionment," " Darwinism," or beneath the superstition that there is a certain relation between happiness and virtue, unhappiness and sin? That absurd belief in the course of things, in " Life " and in the " instinct of Life "; that foolish resig nation which arises from the notion that if only every one did his duty all would go well all this sort of thing can only have a meaning if one assumes that there is a direction of things sub specie boni. Even fatalism, our present form of philosophical sensibility, is the result of a long belief in Divine Providence, an unconscious result: . as though it were nothing to do with us how everything goes! (As though we might let things take their own course; the individual being only a modus of the absolute reality.)
244. It is the height of psychological falsity on the part of man to imagine a being according to his own petty standard, who is a beginning, a " thing- in-itself," and who appears to him good, wise, mighty, and precious; for thus he suppresses in thought all the causality by means of which every kind of goodness, wisdom, and power comes into existence and has value. In short, elements of the most recent and most conditional origin were regarded not as evolved, but as spontaneously generated and " things-in-themselves," and perhaps as the cause of all things. . . . Experience teaches us that, in every case in which a man has elevated himself to ny great extent above the average of his fellows, every degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from good and evil as also from "true" and "false," and cannot take into account what goodness dictates: the same holds good of a high degree of wisdom--in this case goodness is just as much suppressed as truthfulness, justice, virtue, and other popular whims in valuations. In fact, is it not obvious that every high degree of goodness itself presupposes a certain intellectua myopia and obtuseness? As also an inability to distinguish at a great distance between true and false, useful and harmful? Not to mention the fact that a high degree of power in the hands of the highest goodness might lead to the baleful consequences ("the suppression of evil"). In sooth it is enough to perceive with what aspirations the "God of Love" inspires His believers: they ruin mankind for the benefit of "good men." In practice, this same God has shown Himself to be God of the most acute myopia, devilry, and impotence, in the face of the actual arrangement of the universe, and from this the value of His conception may be estimated. Knowledge and wisdom can have no value in themselves, any more than goodness can: the goal they are striving after must be known first, for then only can their value or worthlessness be judged--a goal might be imagined which would make excessive wisdom a great disadvantage (if, for instance, complete deception were a prerequisite to the enhancement of life; likewise, if goodness were able to paralyze and depress the mainsprings of the great passions).... Taking our human life as it is, it cannot be denied that all "truth," "goodness," "holiness," and "Godliness" in the Christian sense, have hitherto shown themselves to be great dangers--even now mankind is in danger of persihing owing to an ideal which is hostile to life.
246. By pressing the doctrine of disinterestedness and love into the foreground, Christianity by no means elevated the interests of the species above those of the individual. Its real historical effect, its fatal effect, remains precisely the increase of egotism, of individual egotism, to excess (to the extreme which consists in the belief in individual immortality). The individual was made so important and so absolute, by means of Christian values, that he could no longer be sacrificed, despite the fact that the species can only be maintained by human sacrifices. All " souls " became equal before God: but this is the most pernicious of all valuations! If one regards individuals as equals, the demands of the species are ignored, and a process is initiated which ultimately leads to its ruin. Christianity is the reverse of the principle of selection. If the degenerate and sick man (" the Christian ") is to be of the same value as the healthy man (" the pagan "), or if he is even to be valued higher than the latter, as Pascal s view of health and sickness would have us value him, the natural course of evolution is thwarted and the unnatural becomes law. ... In practice this general love of mankind is nothing more than deliberately favouring all the suffering, the botched, and the degenerate: it is this love that has reduced and weakened the power, responsibility, and lofty duty of sacrificing men. According to the scheme of Christian values, all that remained was the alternative of self-sacrifice, but this vestige of human sacrifice, which Christianity conceded and even recommended, has no meaning when regarded in the light of rearing a whole species. The pro sperity of the species is by no means affected by the sacrifice of one individual (whether in the monastic and ascetic manner,or by means of crosses, stakes, and scaffolds, as the " martyrs " of error). What the species requires is the suppression of the physiologically botched, the weak and the degenerate: but it was precisely to these people that Christianity appealed as a preservative force, it simply strengthened that natural and very strong instinct of all the weak which bids them protect, maintain, and mutually support each other. What is Christian " virtue " and " love of men," if not precisely this mutual assistance with a view to survival, this solidarity of the weak, this thwarting of selection? What is Christian altruism, if it is not the mob-egotism of the weak which divines that, if everybody looks after everybody else, every individual will be preserved for a longer period of time? . . . He who does not consider this attitude of mind as immoral, as a crime against life, himself belongs to the sickly crowd, and also shares their instincts. . . . Genuine love of man kind exacts sacrifice for the good of the species it is hard, full of self-control, because it needs human sacrifices. And this pseudo-humanity which is called Christianity, would fain establish the rule that nobody should be sacrificed.
247. Nothing could be more useful and deserves more promotion than systematic Nihilism in action. As I understand the phenomena of Christianity and pessimism, this is what they say: " We are ripe for nonentity, for us it is reasonable not to be." This hint from " reason " in this case, is simply the voice of selective Nature. On the other hand, what deserves the most rigorous condemnation, is the ambiguous and cowardly infirmity of purpose of a religion like Christianity, or rather like the Chtircti, which, instead of recommending death and self-destruction, actually protects all the botched and bungled, and encourages them to propagate their kind. Problem: with what kind of means could one lead up to a severe form of really contagious Nihilism a Nihilism which would teach and prac tise voluntary death with scientific conscientious ness (and not the feeble continuation of a vegetative sort of life with false hopes of a life after death)? Christianity cannot be sufficiently condemned for having depreciated the value of a great cleansing Nihilistic movement (like the one which was pro bably in the process of formation), by its teaching of the immortality of the private individual, as also by the hopes of resurrection which it held out: that is to say, by dissuading people from perform ing the deed of Nihilism which is suicide. ... In the latter s place it puts lingering suicide, and gradually a puny, meagre, but durable life; gradu ally a perfectly ordinary, bourgeois, mediocre life, etc.
248. Christian moral quackery. Pity and contempt succeed each other at short intervals, and at the sight of them I feel as indignant as if I were in 205 the presence of the most despicable crime. Here error is made a duty a virtue, misapprehension has become a knack, the destructive instinct is systematised under the name of " redemption "; here every operation becomes a wound, an amputa tion of those very organs whose energy would be the prerequisite to a return of health. And in the best of cases no cure is effected; all that is done is to exchange one set of evil symptoms for another set. . . . And this pernicious nonsense, this system atised profanation and castration of life, passes for holy and sacred; to be in its service, to be an instrument of this art of healing that is to say, to be a priest, is to be rendered distinguished, reverent, holy, and sacred. God alone could have been the Author of this supreme art of healing; redemption is only possible as a revelation, as an act of grace, as an unearned gift, made by the Creator Himself. Proposition I.: Spiritual healthiness is regarded as morbid, and creates suspicion. . . . Proposition II.: The prerequisites of a strong, exuberant life strong desires and passions are reckoned as objections against strong and ex uberant life. Proposition III.: Everything which threatens danger to man, and which can overcome and ruin him, is evil and should be torn root and branch from his soul. Proposition IV.: Man converted into a weak creature, inoffensive to himself and others, crushed by humility and modesty, and conscious of his weakness, in fact, the " sinner," this is the 206 desirable type, and one which one can produce by means of a little spiritual surgery. . . .
249. What is it I protest against? That people should regard this paltry and peaceful mediocrity, this spiritual equilibrium which knows nothing of the fine impulses of great accumulations of strength, as something high, or possibly as the standard of all things. Bacon of Verulam says: Infimarum virtutum apud vulgus laus est, mediarum admiratio, supre- marum sensus nullus. Christianity as a religion, however, belongs to the vulgus: it has no feeling for the highest kind of virtus.
250. Let us see what the " genuine Christian " does of all the things which his instincts forbid him to do: he covers beauty, pride, riches, self-reliance, brilliancy, knowledge, and power with suspicion and mud in short, all culture: his object is to deprive the latter of its clean conscience.
251. The attacks made upon Christianity, hitherto, have been not only timid but false. So long as Christian morality was not felt to be a capital crime against Life, its apologists had a good time. The question concerning the mere " truth " of 207 Christianity whether in regard to the existence of its God, or to the legendary history of its origin, not to speak of its astronomy and natural science is quite beside the point so long as no inquiry is made into the value of Christian morality. Are Christian morals worth anything or are they a profanation and an outrage, despite all the arts of holiness and seduction with which they are en forced? The question concerning the truth of the religion may be met by all sorts of subterfuges; and the most fervent believers can, in the end, avail themselves of the logic used by their opponents, in order to create a right for their side to assert that certain things are irrefutable that is to say, they transcend the means employed to refute them (nowadays this trick of dialectics is called " Kantian Criticism ").
252. Christianity should never be forgiven for having ruined such men as Pascal. This is precisely, what should be combated in Christianity, namely, that it has the will to break the spirit of the strongest and noblest natures. One should take no rest until this thing is utterly destroyed: the ideal of mankind which Christianity advances, the demands it makes upon men, and its " Nay " and " Yea " relative to humanity. The whole of the remaining absurdities, that is to say, Christian fable, Christian cobweb-spinning in ideas and principles, and Christian theology, do not concern us; they might be a thousand times more absurd 2O8 and we should not raise a finger to destroy them. But what we do stand up against, is that ideal which, thanks to its morbid beauty and feminine seductiveness, thanks to its insidious and slanderous eloquence, appeals to all the cowardices and vanities of wearied souls, and the strongest have their moments of fatigue, as though all that which seems most useful and desirable at such moments that is to say, confidence, artlessness, modesty, patience, love of one s like, resignation, submission to God, and a sort of self-surrender were useful and desirable per se; as though the puny, modest abortion which in these creatures takes the place of a soul, this virtuous, mediocre animal and sheep of the flock which deigns to call itself man, were not only to take precedence of the stronger, more evil, more passionate, more defiant, and more prodigal type of man, who by virtue of these very qualities is exposed to a hundred times more dangers than the former, but were actually to stand as an ideal for man in general, as a goal, a measure the highest de sideratum. The creation of this ideal was the most appalling temptation that had ever been put in the way of mankind; for, with it, the stronger and more successful exceptions, the lucky cases among men, in which the will to power and to growth leads the whole species " man " one step farther forward, this type was threatened with disaster. By means of the values of this ideal, the growth of such higher men would be checked at the root. For these men, owing to their superior demands and duties, readily accept a 209 more dangerous life (speaking economically, it is a case of an increase in the costs of the under taking coinciding with a greater chance of failure). What is it we combat in Christianity? That it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness and debility, at converting their proud assurance into anxiety and conscience-trouble; that it knows how to poison the noblest instincts and to infect them with disease, until their strength, their will to power, turns inwards, against themselves until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt and self-immolation: that gruesome way of perishing, of which Pascal is the most famous example. .
II. I. THE ORIGIN OF MORAL VALUATIONS.
253. THIS is an attempt at investigating morality without being affected by its charm, and not without some mistrust in regard to the beguiling beauty of its attitudes and looks. A world which we can admire, which is in keeping with our capacity for worship which is continually demonstrating itself in small things or in large: this is the Christian standpoint which is common to us all. But owing to an increase in our astuteness, in our mistrust, and in our scientific spirit (also through a more developed instinct for truth, which again is due to Christian influence), this interpre tation has grown ever less and less tenable for us. The craftiest of subterfuges: Kantian criticism. The intellect not only denies itself every right to interpret things in that way, but also to reject the interpretation once it has been made. People are satisfied with a greater demand upon their credulity and faith, with a renunciation of all right to reason concerning the proof of their creed, with an intangible and superior " Ideal " (God) as a stop-gap. The Hegelian subterfuge, a continuation of the Platonic, a piece of romanticism and reaction, and at the same time a symptom of the historical sense of a new power: " Spirit " itself is the " self- revealing and self-realising ideal": we believe that in the "process of development" an ever greater proportion of this ideal is being mani festedthus the ideal is being realized, faith is vested in the future, into which all its noble needs are projected, and in which they are being worshipped. In short: (1) God is unknowable to us and not to be demonstrated by us (the concealed meaning behind the whole of the epistemological move ment); (2) God may be demonstrated, but as some thing evolving, and we are part of it, as our pressing desire for an ideal proves (the concealed meaning behind the historical movement). It should be observed that criticism is never levelled at the ideal itself, but only at the problem which gives rise to a controversy concerning the ideal that is to say, why it has not yet been realized, or why it is not demonstrable in small things as in great. * It makes all the difference: whether a man recognises this state of distress as such owing to a passion or to a yearning in himself, or whether it comes home to him as a problem which he arrives at only by straining his thinking powers and his historical imagination to the utmost. Away from the religious and philosophical points of view we find the same phenomena. Utilitarianism (socialism and democracy) criticises the origin of moral valuations, though it believes in them just as much as the Christian does. (What guilelessrtess! As if morality could remain when the sanctioning deity is no longer present! The belief in a " Beyond " is absolutely necessary, if the faith in morality is to be maintained.) Fundamental problem: whence comes this almighty power of Faith? Whence this faith in morality? (It is betrayed by the fact that even the fundamental conditions of life are falsely interpreted in favour of it: despite our knowledge of plants and animals. " Self-preser vation ": the Darwinian prospect of a reconcilia tion of the altruistic and egotistic principles.)
254. An inquiry into the origin of our moral valuations and tables of law has absolutely nothing to do with the criticism of them, though people persist in believing it has; the two matters lie quite apart, notwithstanding the fact that the knowledge of the piidenda ongo of a valuation does diminish its prestige, and pre pares the way to a critical attitude and spirit towards it. 213 What is the actual worth of our valuations and tables of moral laws? What is the outcome of their dominion? For whom? In relation to what? answer: for Life. But what is Life? A new and more definite concept of what " Life " is, becomes necessary here. My formula of this concept is: Life is Will to Power. What is the meaning of the very act of valuing? Does it point back to another, metaphysical world, or does it point down? (As Kant believed, who lived in a period which preceded the great historical movement.) In short: what is its origin? Or had it no human " origin "? Answer: moral valuations are a sort of explana- ation, they constitute a method of interpreting. Interpretation in itself is a symptom of definite physiological conditions, as also of a definite spiritual level of ruling judgments. What is it that interprets? Our passions.
255. All virtues should be looked upon as physiological conditions: the principal organic functions, more particularly, should be considered necessary and good. All virtues are really refined passions and elevated physiological conditions. Pity and philanthropy may be regarded as the developments of sexual relations, justice as the development of the passion for revenge, virtue as the love of resistance, the will to power, honor as an acknowledgment of an equal, or of an equally powerful, force.
256. Under " Morality " I understand a system of valuations which is in relation with the conditions of a creature s life.
257. Formerly it was said of every form of morality, " Ye shall know them by their fruits." I say of every form of morality: "It is a fruit, and from it I learn the Soil out of which it grew."
258. I have tried to understand all moral judgments as symptoms and a language of signs in which the processes of physiological prosperity or the reverse, as also the consciousness of the conditions of preservation and growth, are betrayed a mode of interpretation equal in worth to astrology, prejudices, created by instincts (peculiar to races, communities, and different stages of existence, as, for instance, youth or decay, etc.). Applying this principle to the morality of Christian Europe more particularly, we find that our moral values are signs of decline, of a dis belief in Life, and of a preparation for pes simism. My leading doctrine is this: there are no moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. The origin of this interpretation itself lies beyond the pale of morality. What is the meaning of the fact that we have 215 imagined a contradiction in existence? This is of paramount importance: behind all other valuations those moral valuations stand com- mandingly. Supposing they disappear, according to what standard shall we then measure? And then of what value would knowledge be, etc. etc.???
259. A point of view: in all valuations there is a definite purpose: the preservation of an individ ual, a community, a race, a state, a church, a belief, or a culture. Thanks to the fact that people forget that all valuing has a purpose, one and the same man may swarm with a host of contradictory valuations, and therefore zvitk a host of contradictory impulses. This is the expression of disease in man as opposed to the health of animals, in which all the instincts answer certain definite purposes. This creature full of contradictions, however, has in his being a grand method of acquiring knowledge: he feels the pros and cons, he elevates himself to Justice that is to say, to the ascertain ing of principles beyond the valuations good and evil. The wisest man would thus be the richest in contradictions, he would also be gifted with mental antennae wherewith he could understand all kinds of men; and with it all he would have his great moments, when all the chords in his being would ring in splendid unison the rarest of accidents even in us! A sort of planetary movement.
260. "To will" is to will an object. But "object," as an idea, involves a valuation. Whence do valuations originate? Is a permanent norm, "pleasant or painful," their basis? But in an incalculable number of cases we first of all make a thing painful, by investing it with a valuation. The compass of moral valuations: they play a part in almost every mental impression. To us the world is colored by them. We have imagined the purpose and value of all things: owing to this we possess an enormous fund of latent power but the study of compara tive values teaches us that values which were actually opposed to each other have been held in high esteem, and that there have been many tables of laws (they could not, therefore, have been worth anything per se). The analysis of individual tables of laws re vealed the fact that they were framed (often very badly) as the conditions of existence for limited groups of people, to ensure their maintenance. Upon examining modern men, we found that there are a large number of very different values to hand, and that they no longer contain any creative power the fundamental principle: "the condition of existence" is now quite divorced from the moral values. It is much more superfluous and not nearly so painful. It becomes an arbitrary matter. Chaos. Who creates the goal which stands above mankind and above the individual? Formerly morality was a preservative measure: but nobody wants to preserve any longer, there is nothing to preserve. Thus we are reduced to an experimental morality, each must postulate a goal for himself.
261. What is the criterion of a moral action? (i) Its disinterestedness, (2) its universal acceptation, etc. But this is parlour-morality. Races must be studied and observed, and, in each case, the criterion must be discovered, as also the thing it expresses: a belief such as: " This particular attitude or behaviour belongs to the principal condition of our existence." Immoral means " that which brings about ruin." Now all societies in which these principles were discovered have met with their ruin: a few of these principles have been used and used again, because every newly established community required them; this was the case, for instance, with " Thou shalt not steal." In ages when people could not be expected to show any marked social instinct (as, for instance, in the age of the Roman Empire) the latter was, religiously speaking, directed towards the idea of " spiritual salvation," or, in philosophical parlance, towards " the greatest happiness." For even the philosophers of Greece did not feel any more for their TroXt?.
262. The necessity of false values, A judgment may be refuted when it is shown that it was 2l8 conditioned: but the necessity of retaining it is not thereby cancelled. Reasons can no more eradicate false values than they can alter astig matism in a man s eyes. The need of their existence must be understood: they are the result of causes which have nothing to do with reasoning.
263. To see and reveal the problem of morality seems to me to be the new task and the principal thing of all. I deny that this has been done by moral philosophies heretofore.
264. How false and deceptive men have always been concerning the fundamental facts of their inner world! Here to have no eye; here to hold one s tongue, and here to open one s mouth,
265. There seems to be no knowledge or conscious ness of the many revolutions that have taken place in moral judgments, and of the number of times that " evil " has really and seriously been christened " good " and vice versa. I myself pointed to one of these transformations with the words " Sittlichkeit der Sitte." * Even conscience * The morality of custom. 2 19 has changed its sphere: formerly there was such a thing as a gregarious pang of conscience.
266. A. Morality as the work of Immorality. 1. In order that moral values may attain to supremacy, a host of immoral forces and passions must assist them. 2. The establishment of moral values is the work of immoral passions and considera tions. B. Morality as the work of error. C. Morality gradually contradicts itself, Requital Truthfulness, Doubt, CTTO, Judging. The " Immorality " of belief in morality. The steps: 1. Absolute dominion of morality: all bio logical phenomena measured &n& judged according to its values. 2. The attempt to identify Life with morality (symptom of awakened scepticism: mor ality must no longer be regarded as the opposite of Life); many means are sought even a transcendental one. 3. The opposition of Life and Morality. Morality condemned and sentenced by Life. D. To what extent was morality dangerous to Life? (a) It depreciated the joy of living and the gratitude felt towards Life, etc. 220 It checked the tendency to beautify and to ennoble Life. (c) It checked the knowledge of Life. (cT) It checked the unfolding of Life, because it tried to set the highest phenomena thereof at variance with itself. E. Centra-account: the usefulness of morality to Life. (1) Morality may be a preservative measure for the general whole, it may be a pro cess of uniting dispersed members: it is useful as an agent in the production of the man who is a " tool" (2) Morality may be a preservative measure mitigating the inner danger threatening man from the direction of his passions: it is useful to " mediocre people" (3) Morality may be a preservative measure resisting the life-poisoning influences of profound sorrow and bitterness: it is useful to the sufferers" (4) Morality may be a preservative measure opposed to the terrible outbursts of the mighty: it is useful to the " lowly"
267. It is an excellent thing when one can use the expressions " right " and " wrong " in a definite, narrow, and " bourgeois " sense, as for instance in the sentence: " Do right and fear no one "; * * " Thue Recht und scheue Niemand." 221 that is to say, to do one s duty, according to the rough scheme of life within the limit of which a community exists. Let us not think meanly of what a few thousand years of morality have inculcated upon our minds.
268. Two types of morality must not be confounded: the morality with which the instinct that has remained healthy defends itself from incipient decadence, and the other morality by means of which this decadence asserts itself, justifies itself, and leads downwards. The first-named is usually stoical, hard, tyran nical (Stoicism itself was an example of the sort of " drag-chain " morality we speak of); the other is gushing, sentimental, full of secrets, it has the women and " beautiful feelings " on its side (Primitive Christianity was an example of this morality).
269. I shall try to regard all moralising, with one glance, as a phenomenon also as a riddle. Moral phenomena have preoccupied me like riddles. Today I should be able to give a reply to the question: why should my neighbour s welfare be of greater value to me than my own? and why is it that my neighbour himself should value his welfare differently from the way in which 222 I value it that is to say, why should precisely my welfare be paramount in his mind? What is the meaning of this " Thou shalt," which is regarded as " given " even by philosophers them selves? The seemingly insane idea that a man should esteem the act he performs for a fellow-creature, higher than the one he performs for himself, and that the same fellow-creature should do so too (that only those acts should be held to be good which are performed with an eye to the neighbour and for his welfare) has its reasons namely, as the result of the social instinct which rests upon the valuation, that single individuals are of little importance although collectively their importance is very great. This, of course, pre supposes that they constitute a community with one feeling and one conscience pervading the whole. It is therefore a sort of exercise for keeping one s eyes in a certain direction; it is the will to a kind of optics which renders a view of one s self impossible. My idea: goals are wanting, and these must be individuals. We see the general drift: every individual gets sacrificed and serves as a tool. Let any one keep his eyes open in the streets is not every one he sees a slave? Whither? What is the purpose of it all?
270. How is it possible that a man can respect himself only in regard to moral values, that he 223 subordinates and despises everything in favour of good, evil, improvement, spiritual salvation, etc.? as, for instance, Henri Fre"d. Amiel. What is the meaning of the moral idiosyncrasy? I mean this both in the psychological and physio logical sense, as it was, for instance, in Pascal. In cases, then, in which other great qualities are not wanting; and even in the case of Schopen hauer, who obviously valued what he did not and could not have . . . is it not the result of a merely mechanical moral interpretation of real states of pain and displeasure? is it not a par ticular form of sensibility which does not happen to understand the cause of its many unpleasurable feelings, but thinks to explain them with moral hypotheses } In this way an occasional feeling of well-being and strength always appears under the optics of a " clean conscience," flooded with light through the proximity of God and the consciousness of salvation. . . . Thus the moral idiosyncratist has (i) either acquired his real worth in approximating to the virtuous type of society: " the good fellow," " the upright man " a sort of medium state of high respectability: mediocre in all his abilities, but honest, conscien tious, firm, respected, and tried, in all his aspira tions; (2) or, he imagines he has acquired that worth, simply because he cannot otherwise under stand all his states he is unknown to himself; he therefore interprets himself in this fashion. Morality is the only scheme of interpretation by means of which this type of man can tolerate himself: is it a form of vanity? 224
271. The predominance of moral values. The con- quence of this predominance: the corruption of psychology, etc.; the fatality which is associated with it everywhere. What is the meaning of this predominance? What does it point to? To a certain greater urgency of saying nay or yea definitely in this domain. All sorts of im peratives have been used in order to make moral values appear as if they were for ever fixed: they have been enjoined for the longest period of time: they almost appear to be instinctive, like inner commands. They are the expression of society s preservative measures, for they are felt to be almost beyond question. The practice that is to say, the utility of being agreed concerning superior values, has attained in this respect to a sort of sanction. We observe that every care is taken to paralyse reflection and criticism in this depart ment: look at Kant s attitude! not to speak of those who believe that it is immoral even to prosecute " research " in these matters.
272. My desire is to show the absolute homogeneity of all phenomena, and to ascribe to moral differ entiations but the value of perspective; to show that all that which is praised as moral is essentially the same as that which is immoral, and was only made possible, according to the law of all moral development that is to say, by means of immoral artifices and with a view to immoral ends just as all that which has been decried as immoral is, from the standpoint of economics, both superior and essential; and how development leading to a greater abundance of life necessarily involves progress in the realm of immorality. " Truth," that is the extent to which we allow ourselves to comprehend this fact.
273. But do not let us fear: as a matter of fact, we require a great deal of morality, in order to be immoral in this subtle way; let me speak in a parable: A physiologist interested in a certain illness, and an invalid who wishes to be cured of that same illness, have not the same interests. Let us suppose that the illness happens to be morality, for morality is an illness, and that we Europeans are the invalid: what an amount of subtle torment and difficulty would arise supposing we Europeans were, at once, our own inquisitive spectators and the physiologist above-mentioned! Should we under these circumstances earnestly desire to rid ourselves of morality? Should we want to? This is of course irrespective of the question whether we should be able to do so whether we can be cured at all? . p 226
2. THE HERD.
274. Whose will to power is morality? The common factor of all European history since the time of Socrates is the attempt to make the moral values dominate all other values, in order that they should not be only the leader and judge of life, but also: (i) knowledge, (2) Art, (3) political and social aspirations. " Amelioration " regarded as the only duty, everything else used as a means thereto (or as a force distributing, hindering, and endangering its realization, and therefore to be opposed and annihilated . . .). A similar move ment to be observed in China and India. What is the meaning of this will to power on the part of moral values, which has played such a part in the world s prodigious evolutions? Answer: Three powers lie concealed behind it; (i) The instinct of the herd opposed to the strong and the independent; (2) the instinct of all sufferers and all abortions opposed to the happy and well-constituted; (3) the instinct of the mediocre opposed to the exceptions. Enormous advantage of this movement, despite the cruelty, falseness, and narrow-mindedness which has helped it along (for the history of the struggle of morality with the fundamental instincts of life is in itself the greatest piece of- immorality that has ever yet been witnessed on earth . . .).
275. The fewest succeed in discovering a problem behind all that which constitutes our daily life, and to which we have become accustomed throughout the ages our eye does not seem focussed for such things: at least, this seems to me to be the case in so far as our morality is concerned. " Every man should be the preoccupation of his -Hows"; he who thinks in this way deserves honor: no one ought to think of himself. "Thou shalt": an impulse which, like the sexual impulse, cannot fathom itself, is set apart and is not condemned as all the other instincts are on the contrary, it is made to be their standard and their judge! The problem of " equality in the face of the fact that we all thirst for distinction: here, on the contrary, we should demand of ourselves what we demand of others. That is so tasteless and obviously insane; but it is felt to be holy and of a higher order. The fact that it is opposed to common sense is not even noticed. Self-sacrifice and self-abnegation are considered distinguishing, as are also the attempt to obey morality implicitly, and the belief that one should be every one s equal in its presence. The neglect and the surrender of Life and of well-being is held to be distinguished, as are also the complete renunciation of individual valuations and the severe exaction from every one of the same sacrifice. "The value of an action is once 228 and for all fixed; every individual must submit to this valuation." We see: an authority speaks who speaks? We must condone it in human pride, if man tried to make this authority as high as possible, for he wanted to feel as humble as he possibly could by the side of it. Thus God speaks! God was necessary as an unconditional sanction which has no superior,as a "Categorical Imperator": or, in so far as people believed in the authority of reason, what was needed was a "Unitarian metaphysics " by means of which this view could be made logical. Now, admitting that faith in God is dead: the question arises once more: " who speaks? " My answer, which I take from biology and not from metaphysics, is: " the gregarious instinct speaks" This is what desires to be master: hence its " thou shalt! " it will allow the individual to exist only as a part of a whole, only in favour of the whole, it hates those who detach themselves from every thing it turns the hatred of all individuals against him.
276. The whole of the morality of Europe is based upon the values which are useful to the herd-, the sorrow of all higher and exceptional men is explained by the fact that everything which distinguishes them from others reaches their consciousness in the form of a feeling of their own smallness and egregiousness. It is the virtues of modern men which are the causes of pessimistic gloominess; the mediocre, like the herd, are not troubled much with questions or with conscience they are cheerful. (Among the gloomy strong men, Pascal and Schopenhauer are noted examples.) The more dangerous a quality seems to the herd, the more completely it is condemned.
277. The morality of truthfulness in the herd. " Thou shalt be recognisable, thou shalt express thy inner nature by means of clear and constant signs otherwise thou art dangerous: and sup posing thou art evil, thy power of dissimulation is absolutely the worst thing for the herd. We despise the secretive and those whom we cannot identify. Consequently thou must regard thyself as recognisable, thou mayest not remain concealed from thyself, thou mayest not even believe in the possibility of thy ever changing? Thus, the in sistence upon truthfulness has as its main object the recognisability and the stability of the individual. As a matter of fact, it is the object of education to make each gregarious unit believe in a certain definite dogma concerning the nature of man: education first creates this dogma and thereupon exacts " truthfulness."
278. Within the confines of a herd or of a com munity that is to say, inter pares, the over-estima tion of truthfulness is very reasonable. A man must not allow himself to be deceived and con sequently he adopts as his own personal morality that he should deceive no one! a sort of mutual obligation among equals! In his dealings with the outside world caution and danger demand that he should be on his guard against deception: the first psychological condition of this attitude would mean that he is also on his guard against his own people. Mistrust thus appears as the source of truthfulness.
279. A criticism of the virtues of the herd. Inertia is active: (i) In confidence, because mistrust makes suspense, reflection, and observation necessary. (2) In veneration, where the gulf that separates power is great and submission necessary: then, so that fear may cease to exist, everybody tries to love and esteem, while the difference in power is interpreted as a difference of value: and thus the relationship to the powerful no longer has any thing revolting in it. (3) In the sense of truth. What is truth? Truth is that explanation of things which causes us the smallest amount of mental exertion (apart from this, lying is extremely fatiguing). (4) In sympathy. It is a relief to know one s self on the same level with all, to feel as all feel, and to accept a belief which is already current; it is something passive beside the activity which appropriates and continually carries into practice the most individual rights of valua tion (the latter process allows of no repose). (5) In 231 impartiality and coolness of judgment: people scout the strain of being moved, and prefer to be detached and " objective." (6) In uprightness: people prefer to obey a law which is to hand rather than to create a new one, rather than to command themselves and others: the fear of commanding it is better to submit than to rebel. (7) In toleration: the fear of exercising a right or of enforcing a judgment.
280. The instinct of the herd values the juste milieu and the average as the highest and most precious of all things: the spot where the majority is to be found, and the air that it breathes there. In this way it is the opponent of all order of rank; it regards a climb from the level to the heights in the same light as a descent from the majority to the minority. The herd regards the exception, whether it be above or beneath its general level, as something which is antagonistic and dangerous to itself. Their trick in dealing with the ex ceptions above them, the strong, the mighty, the wise, and the fruitful, is to persuade them to be come guardians, herdsmen, and watchmen in fact, to become their head-servants: thus they convert a danger into a thing which is useful. In the middle, fear ceases: here a man is alone with nothing; here there is not much room even for misunderstandings; here there is equality; here a man s individual existence is not felt as a reproach, but as the right existence; here contentment reigns supreme. Mistrust is active only towards the exceptions; to be an exception is to be a sinner.
281. If, in compliance with our communal instincts, we make certain regulations for ourselves and forbid certain acts, we do not of course, in common reason, forbid a certain kind of "existence," nor a certain attitude of mind, but only a particular application and development of this " existence " and " attitude of mind." But then the idealist of virtue, the moralist, comes along and says: " God sees into the human heart! What matters it that ye abstain from certain acts: ye are not any better on that account! " Answer: Mr. Longears and Virtue-Monger, we do not want to be better at all, we are quite satisfied with ourselves, all we desire is that we should not harm one another and that is why we forbid certain actions when they take a particular direction that is to say, when they are against our own interests: but that does not alter the fact that when these same actions are directed against the enemies of our community against you, for instance we are at a loss to know how to pay them sufficient honor. We educate our children up to them; we develop them to the fullest extent. Did we share that " god-fearing " radicalism which your holy craziness recommends, if we were green horns enough to condemn the source of those for bidden " acts " by condemning the " heart " and the " attitude of mind " which recommends them, that would mean condemning our very existence, and with it its greatest prerequisite an attitude of mind, a heart, a passion which we revere with all our soul. By our decrees we prevent this attitude of mind from breaking out and venting itself in a useless way we are prudent when we prescribe such laws for ourselves; we are also moral in so doing. . . . Have you no idea how ever vague what sacrifices it has cost us, how much self-control, self-subjection, and hardness it has compelled us to exercise? We are vehement in our desires; there are times when we even feel as if we could devour each other. . . . But the " communal spirit " is master of us: have you observed that this is almost a definition of morality?
282. The weakness of the gregarious animal gives rise to a morality which is precisely similar to that resulting from the weakness of the decadent man: they understand each other; they associate with each other (the great decadent religions always rely upon the support of the herd). The gregarious animal, as such, is free from all morbid characteristics, it is in itself an invaluable creature; but it is incapable of taking any initiative; it must have a " leader " the priests understand this. . . . The state is not subtle, not secret enough; the art of " directing consciences " slips its grasp. How is the gregarious animal infected with illness by the priest?
283. The hatred directed against the privileged in body and spirit: the revolt of the ugly and bungled souls against the beautiful, the proud, and the cheerful. The weapons used: contempt of beauty, of pride, of happiness: " There is no such thing as merit," " The danger is enormous: it is right that one should tremble and feel ill at ease," " Naturalness is evil; it is right to oppose all that is natural even reason " (all that is anti- natural is elevated to the highest place). It is again the priests who exploit this condition, and who win the " people " over to themselves. " The sinner " over whom there is more joy in heaven than over " the just person." This is the struggle against " paganism " (the pang of con science, a measure for disturbing the harmony of the soul). The hatred of the mediocre for the exceptions, and of the herd for its independent members. (Custom actually regarded as " morality.") The revulsion of feeling against " egotism ": that only is worth anything which is done " for another." " We are all equal "; against the love of dominion, against " dominion " in general; against privilege; against sectarians, free- spirits, and sceptics; against philosophy (a force opposing mechanical and automatic instincts); in philosophers themselves " the categorical imperative," the essential nature of morality, " general and universal."
284. The qualities and tendencies which are praised: peacefulness, equity, moderation, modesty, rever ence, respectfulness, bravery, chastity, honesty, fidelity, credulity, rectitude, confidence, resigna tion, pity, helpfulness, conscientiousness, simplicity, mildness, justice, generosity, leniency, obedience, disinterestedness, freedom from envy, good nature, industry. We must ascertain to what extent such qualities are conditioned as means to the attainment of certain desires and ends (often an " evil " end); or as results of dominating passions (for instance, intellectuality]: or as the expressions of certain states of need that is to say, as preservative measures (as in the case of citizens, slaves, women, etc.). In short, every one of them is not considered good" for its own sake, but rather because it approximates to a standard prescribed either by " society " or by the " herd," as a means to the ends of the latter, as necessary for their preserva tion and enhancement, and also as the result of an actual gregarious instinct in the individual; these qualities are thus in the service of an instinct which is fundamentally different from these states of virtue. For the herd is antagonistic, selfish, and pitiless to the outside world; it is full of a love of dominion and of feelings of mistrust, etc. In the " herdsman " this antagonism comes to the fore: he must have qualities which are the reverse of those possessed by the herd. The mortal enmity of the herd towards all order of rank: its instinct is in favour of the leveller (Christ). Towards all strong individuals (the sovereigns] it is hostile, unfair, intemperate, arrogant, cheeky, disrespectful, cowardly, false, lying, pitiless, deceitful, envious, revengeful.
285. My teaching is this, that the herd seeks to maintain and preserve one type of man, and that it defends itself on two sides that is to say, against those which are decadents from its ranks (criminals, etc.), and against those who rise superior to its dead level. The instincts of the herd tend to a stationary state of society; they merely preserve. They have no creative power. The pleasant feelings of goodness and benevol ence with which the just man fills us (as opposed to the suspense and the fear to which the great innovating man gives rise) are our own sensations of personal security and equality: in this way the gregarious animal glorifies the gregarious nature, and then begins to feel at ease. This judgment on the part of the " comfortable " ones rigs itself out in the most beautiful words and thus " morality " is born. Let any one observe, however, the hatred of the herd for all truthful men.
286. Let us not deceive ourselves! When a man hears the whisper of the moral imperative in his 237 breast, as altruism would have him hear it, he shows thereby that he belongs to the herd. When a man is conscious of the opposite feelings, that is to say, when he sees his danger and his undoing in disinterested and unselfish actions, then he does not belong to the herd.
287. My philosophy aims at a new order of rank: not at an individualistic morality.* The spirit of the herd should rule within the herd but not beyond it: the leaders of the herd require a fundamentally different valuation for their actions, as do also the independent ones or the beasts of prey, etc.
3. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING MORALITY.
288. Morality regarded as an attempt at establishing human pride. The " Free-Will " theory is anti- religious. Its ultimate object is to bestow the right upon man to regard himself as the cause of his highest states and actions: it is a form of the growing feeting of pride. Man feels his power his " happiness "; as they say: there must be a will behind these states * TRANSLATOR S NOTE. Here is a broad distinction be tween Nietzsche and Herbert Spencer. otherwise they do not belong to him. Virtue is an attempt at postulating a modicum of will, past or present, as the necessary antecedent to every exalted and strong feeling of happiness: if the will to certain actions is regularly present in consciousness, a sensation of power may be inter preted as its result. This is a merely psychological point of view, based upon the false assumption that nothing belongs to us which we have not consciously willed. The whole of the teaching of responsibility relies upon the ingenuous psycho logical rule that the will is the only cause, and that one must have been aware of having willed in order to be able to regard one s self as a cause. Then comes the counter-movement that of the moral-philosophers. These men still labour under the delusion that a man is responsible only for what he has willed. The value of man is then made a moral value: thus morality becomes a causa prima; for this there must be some kind of principle in man, and " free will " is posited as prima causa. The arriere pensee is always this: If man is not a causa prima through his will, he must be irresponsible, therefore he does not come within the jurisdiction of morals, virtue or vice is automatic and mechanical. . . . In short: in order that man may respect himself he must be capable of becoming evil.
289. Theatricalness regarded as the result of " Free Will " morality. It is a step in the development 239 of the feeling of power itself, to believe one s self to be the author of one s exalted moments (of one s perfection) and to have willed them. . . . (Criticism: all perfect action is precisely un conscious and not deliberate; consciousness is often the expression of an imperfect and often morbid constitution. Personal perfection regarded as determined by will, as an act of consciousness, as reason with dialectics, is a caricature, a sort of self- contradiction. . . . Any degree of consciousness renders perfection impossible. ... A form of theatricalness?)
290. The moral hypothesis, designed with a view to justifying God, said: evil must be voluntary (simply in order that the voluntariness of goodness might be believed in); and again, all evil and suffering have an object which is salvation. The notion " guilt " was considered as some thing which had no connection at all with the ultimate cause of existence, and the notion " punishment " was held to be an educating and beneficent act, consequently an act proceeding from a good God. The absolute dominion of moral valuations over all others: nobody doubted that God could not be evil and could do no harm that is to say, perfection was understood merely as moral perfection.
291. How false is the supposition that an action must depend upon what has preceded it in consciousness! And morality has been measured in the light of this supposition, as also crimin ality. . . . The value of an action must be judged by its results, say the utilitarians: to measure it according to its origin involves the impossibility of knowing that origin. But do we know its results? Five stages ahead, perhaps. Who can tell what an action provokes and sets in motion? As a stimulus? As the spark which fires a powder-magazine? Utilitarians are simpletons. . . . And finally, they would first of all have to know what is useful; here also their sight can travel only over five stages or so. ... They have no notion of the great economy which cannot dispense with evil. We do not know the origin or the results: has an action, then, any value? We have yet the action itself to consider: the states of consciousness that accompany it, the yea or nay which follows upon its performance: does the value of an action lie in the subjective states which accompany it? (In that case, the value of music would be measured according to the pleasure or displeasure which it occasions in us ... which it gives to the composer. . . .) Obviously feelings of value must accompany it, a sensation of power, restraint, or impotence for instance, freedom or lightsomeness. Or, putting the question differently: could the value of an action be reduced to physio logical terms? could it be the expression of completely free or constrained life? Maybe its biological value is expressed in this way. . . . 241 If, then, an action can be judged neither in the light of its origin, nor its results, nor its accom- paniments in consciousness, then its value must be x unknown. . . .
292. It amounts to a de naturalisation of morality to separate an action from a man; to direct hatred or contempt against " sin "; to believe that there are actions which are good or bad in themselves. The re-establishment of " Nature ": an action in itself is quite devoid of value; the whole question is this: who performed it? One and the same " crime " may, in one case, be the greatest privi lege, in the other infamy. As a matter of fact, it is the selfishness of the judges which interprets an action (in regard to its author) according as to whether it was useful or harmful to themselves (or in relation to its degree of likeness or unlikeness to them).
293. The concept " reprehensible action " presents us with some difficulties. Nothing in all that happens can be reprehensible in itself: one would not dare to eliminate it completely; for everything is so bound up with everything else, that to exclude one part would mean to exclude the whole. A reprehensible action, therefore, would mean a reprehensible world as a whole. . . . And even then, in a reprehensible world even reprehending would be reprehensible. . . . And the consequence of an attitude of mind that . Q 242 condemns everything, would be the affirmation of everything in practice. ... If Becoming is a huge ring, everything that forms a part of it is of equal value, is eternal and necessary. In all correlations of yea and nay, of preference and rejection, love and hate, all that is expressed is a certain point of view, peculiar to the interests of a certain type of living organism: everything that lives says yea by the very fact of its existence.
294. Criticism of the subjective feelings of value. Conscience. Formerly people argued: conscience condemns this action, therefore this action is reprehensible. But, as a matter of fact, conscience condemns an action because that action has been condemned for a long period of time: all conscience does is to imitate: it does not create values. That which first led to the condemnation of certain actions, was not conscience: but the knowledge of (or the prejudice against) its consequences. . . . The approbation of conscience, the feeling of well- being, of " inner peace," is of the same order of emotions as the artist s joy over his work it proves nothing. . . . Self-contentment proves no more in favour of that which gives rise to it, than its absence can prove anything against the value of the thing which fails to give rise to it. We are far too ignorant to be able to judge of the value of our actions: in this respect we lack the ability to regard things objectively. Even when we condemn an action, we do not do so as judges, but as adversaries. . . . When noble sentiments accompany an action, they prove nothing in its favour: an artist may present us with an absolutely insignificant thing, though he be in the throes of the most exalted pathos during its production. It were wiser to regard these sentiments as misleading: they actually beguile our eye and our power, away from criticism, from caution and from suspicion, and the result often is that we makeiwj of our selves . , . they actually make fools of us.
295. We are heirs to the conscience-vivisection and self-crucifixion of two thousand years: in these two practices lie perhaps our longest efforts at becoming perfect, our mastery, and certainly our subtlety; we have affiliated natural propensities with a heavy conscience. An attempt to produce an entirely opposite state of affairs would be possible: that is to say, to affiliate all desires of a beyond, all sympathy with things which are opposed to the senses, the intellect, and nature in fact, all the ideals that have existed hitherto (which were all anti-worldly), with a heavy conscience.
296. The great crimes in psychology: (i) That all pain and unhappiness should have been falsified by being associated with what is wrong (guilt). (Thus pain was robbed of its innocence.) (2) That all strong emotions (wantonness, voluptuousness, triumph, pride, audacity, knowledge, assurance, and happiness in itself) were branded as sinful, as seductive, and as suspicious. (3) That feelings of weakness, inner acts of cowardice, lack of personal courage, should have decked themselves in the most beautiful words, and have been taught as desirable in the highest degree. (4) That greatness in man should have been given the meaning of disinterestedness, self-sacrifice for another s good, for other people; that even in the scientist and the artist, the elimination of tJie individual personality is presented as the cause of the greatest knowledge and ability. (5) That love should have been twisted round to mean submission (and altruism), whereas it is in reality an act of appropriation or of bestowal, resulting in the last case from a superabundance in the wealth of a given personality. Only the wholest people can love; the disinterested ones, the " objective " ones, are the worst lovers (just ask the girls !). This principle also applies to the love of God or of the " home country ": a man must be able to rely absolutely upon himself. (Egotism may be regarded as the pre-eminence of the ego, altruism as the pre-eminence of others?) (6) Life regarded as a punishment (happiness as a means of seduction); the passions regarded as devilish; confidence in one s self as godless. The whole of psychology is a psychology of obstacles, a sort of barricade built out of fear; on the one hand we find the masses (the botched and bungled, the mediocre) defending themselves, by means of it, against the strong (and finally destroying them in their growth . . . ); on the other hand, we find all the instincts with which these classes are best able to prosper, sanctified and alone held in honor by them. Let any one examine the Jewish priesthood.
297. The vestiges of the depreciation of Nature through moral transcendence: The value of disinterested ness, the cult of altruism; the belief in a reward in the play of natural consequences; the belief in " goodness " and in genius itself, as if the one, like the other, were the result of disinterestedness; the continuation of the Church s sanction of the life of the citizen; the absolutely deliberate misunder standing of history (as a means of educating up to morality) or pessimism in the attitude taken up towards history (the latter is just as much a result of the depreciation of Nature, as is that pseudo-justification of history, that refusal to see history as the pessimist sees it).
298. " Morality for its own sake " this is an im portant step in the denaturalisation of morals: in itself it appears as a final value. In this phase religion has generally become saturated with it: as, for instance, in the case of Judaism. It likewise goes through a phase in which it separates itself from religion, and in which no God is " moral " enough for it: it then prefers the impersonal ideal. . . . This is how the case stands at present. "Art for Art s sake ": this is a similarly dangerous principle: by this means a false contrast is lent to things it culminates in the slander of reality ("idealising" into the hateful}. When an ideal is severed from reality, the latter is debased, im poverished, and calumniated. " Beauty for Beauty s sake" " Truth for Truths sake" " Goodness for Goodness sake " these are three forms of the evil eye for reality. Art, knowledge, and morality are means . instead of recognising a life-promoting tendency in them, they have been associated with the opposite of Life with " God," they have also been regarded as revelations of a higher world, which here and there transpires through them. . . . " Beautiful" and "ugly? "true" and "false" "good" and "evil" these things are distinctions and antagonisms which betray the preservative and promotive measures of Life, not necessarily of man alone, but of all stable and enduring organisms which take up a definite stand against their opponents. The war which thus ensues is the essential factor: it is a means of separating things, leading to stronger isolation. . . .
299. Moral naturalism: The tracing back of ap parently independent and supernatural values to their real " nature " that is to say, to natural immorality , to natural " utility," etc. Perhaps I may designate the tendency of these observations by the term moral naturalism: my object is to re-translate the moral values which have apparently become independent and un natural into their real nature that is to say, into their natural " immorality." N.B. Refer to Jewish " holiness " and its natural basis. The case is the same in regard to the moral law which has been made sovereign, emancipated from its real nature (until it is almost the opposite of Nature). The stages in the denaturalisation of morality (or so-called " Idealisation "): First it is a road to individual happiness, then it is the result of knowledge, then it is a Categorical Imperative, then it is a way to Salvation, then it is a denial of the will to live. (The gradual progress of the hostility of morality to Life.)
300. The suppressed and effaced Heresy in morality. Concepts: paganism, master-morality, virtu.
301. My problem: What harm has mankind suffered hitherto from morals, as also from its own morality? Intellectual harm, etc.
302. Why are not human values once more deposited nicely in the rut to which they alone have a right as routinary values? Many species of animals have already become extinct; supposing man were also to disappear, nothing would be lacking on earth. A man should be enough of a philo sopher to admire even this " nothing " (Nil admirarf).
303. Man, a small species of very excitable animals, which fortunately- has its time. Life in general on earth is a matter of a moment, an incident, an exception that has no consequence, something which is of no importance whatever to the general character of the earth; the earth itself is, like every star, a hiatus between two nonentities, an event without a plan, without reason, will, or self- consciousness the worst kind of necessity foolish necessity. . . . Something in us rebels against this view; the serpent vanity whispers to our hearts, " All this must be false because it is revolting. . . . Could not all this be appearance? And man in spite of all, to use Kant s words "
4. How VIRTUE is MADE TO DOMINATE.
304. Concerning the ideal of the moralist. In this treatise we wish to speak of the great politics of virtue. We wrote it for the use of all those who are interested, not so much in the process of becoming virtuous as in that of making others virtuous in how virtue is made to dominate. I even intend to prove that in order to desire this one thing the dominion of virtue the other must be systematically avoided; that is to say, one must renounce all hopes of becoming virtuous. This sacrifice is great: but such an end is perhaps a sufficient reward for such a sacrifice. And even greater sacrifices! . . . And some of the most famous moralists have risked as much. For these, indeed, had already recognized and anticipated the truth which is to be revealed for the first time in this treatise: that the dominion of virtue is absolutely attainable only by the use of the same means which are employed in the attainment of any other dominion, in any case not by means of virtue itself. . . . As I have already said, this treatise deals with the politics of virtue: it postulates an ideal of these politics; it describes it as it ought to be, if anything at all can be perfect on this earth. Now, no philosopher can be in any doubt as to what the type of perfection is in politics; it is, of course, Machiavellianism. But Machiavellianism which is#r, sans melange, cru, vert, dans toute sa force, dans toute son dprete", is superhuman, divine, transcendental, and can never be achieved by man the most he can do is to approximate it. Even in this narrower kind of politics in the politics of virtue the ideal never seems to have been realized. Plato, too, only bordered upon it Granted that one have eyes for concealed things, one can discover, even in the most guileless and most conscious moralists (and this is indeed the name of these moral politicians and of the founders of all newer moral forces), traces showing that they too paid their tribute to human weak ness. They all aspired to virtue on their own account at least in their moments of weariness; and this is the leading and most capital error on the part of any moralist whose duty it is to be an immoralist in deeds. That he must not exactly appear to be the latter, is another matter. Or rather it is not another matter: systematic self- denial of this kind (or, expressed morally: dis simulation) belongs to, and is part and parcel of, the moralist s canon and of his self-imposed duties: without it he can never attain to his particular kind of perfection. Freedom from morality and from truth when enjoyed for that purpose which rewards every sacrifice: for the sake of making morality dominate that is the canon. Moralists are in need of the attitudes of virtue, as also of the attitudes of truth; their error begins when they yield to virtue, when they lose control of virtue, when they themselves become moral or true. A great moralist is, among other things, necessarily a great actor; his only danger is that his pose may unconsciously become a second nature, just like his ideal, which is to keep his esse and his operari apart in a divine way; everything he does must be done sub specie boni a lofty, remote, and exacting ideal! A divine ideal! And, as a matter of fact, they say that 2$ I the moralist thus imitates a model which is no less than God Himself: Gocl, the greatest Immoralist in deeds that exists, but who nevertheless under stands how to remain what He is, the good God. . . .
305. The dominion of virtue is not established by means of virtue itself; with virtue itself, one re nounces power, one loses the Will to Power.
306. The victory of a moral ideal is achieved by the same " immoral " means as any other victory: violence, lies, slander, injustice.
307. He who knows the way fame originates will be suspicious even of the fame virtue enjoys.
308. Morality is just as " immoral " as any other thing on earth; morality is in itself a form of immorality. The great relief which this conviction brings. The contradiction between things disappears, the unity of all phenomena is saved
309. There are some who actually go in search of what is immoral. When they say: " this is 252 wrong," they believe it ought to be done away with or altered. On the other hand, I do not rest until I am quite clear concerning the im morality of any particular thing which happens to come under my notice. When I discover it, I recover my equanimity.
310. A. The ways which lead to power; the presenta tion of the new virtue under the name of an old one, the awakening of " interest " concerning it (" happiness " declared to be its reward, and vice versa}, artistic slandering of all that stands in its way, the exploitation of advantages and accidents with the view of glorifying it, the con version of its adherents into fanatics by means of sacrifices and separations, symbolism on a grand scale. B. Power attained: (i) Means of constraint of virtue; (2) seductive means of virtue; (3) the (court) etiquette of virtue.
311. By what means does a virtue attain to power? With precisely the same means as a political party: slander, suspicion, the undermining of opposing virtues that happen to be already in power, the changing of their names, systematic persecution and scorn; in short, by means of acts of general " immorality" How does a desire behave towards itself in order to become a virtue"} A process of re- christening; systematic denial of its intentions; practice in misunderstanding itself; alliance with established and recognized virtues; ostentatious enmity towards its adversaries. If possible, too, the protection of sacred powers must be purchased; people must also be intoxicated and fired with enthusiasm; idealistic humbug must be used, and a party must be won, which either triumphs or perishes one must be unconscious and naif.
312. Cruelty has become transformed and elevated into tragic pity, so that we no longer recognise it as such. The same has happened to the love of the sexes which has become amour-passion; the slavish attitude of mind appears as Christian obedience; wretchedness becomes humility; the disease of the nervus sympathicus for instance, is eulogised as Pessimism, Pascalism, or Carlylism, etc.
313. We should begin to entertain doubts concerning a man if we heard that he required reasons in order to remain respectable: we should, in any case, certainly avoid his society. The little word " for " in certain cases may be compromising; sometimes a single " for " is enough to refute one. If we should hear, in course of time, that such-and- such an aspirant for virtue was in need of bad reasons in order to remain respectable, it would not conduce to increasing our respect for him. But he goes further; he comes to us, and tells us quite openly: " You disturb my morality with your disbelief, Mr. Sceptic; so long as you cannot believe in my bad reasons that is to say, in my God, in a disciplinary Beyond, in free will, etc., you put obstacles in the way of my virtue. . . . Moral, sceptics must be suppressed: they prevent the moralisation of the masses"
314. Our most sacred convictions, those which are permanent in us concerning the highest values, are judgments emanating from our muscles.
315. Morality in the valuation of races and classes. In view of the fact that .}Q passions and. funda mental instincts in every race and class express the means which enable the latter to preserve themselves (or at least the means which have enabled them to live for the longest period of time), to call them " virtuous " practically means: That they change their character, shed their skins, and blot out their past. It means that they should cease from differen tiating themselves from others. It means that they are getting to resemble each other in their needs and aspirations or, more exactly, that they are declining. . . . It means that the will to one kind of morality 255 is merely the tyranny of the particular species, which is adapted to that kind of morality, over other species: it means a process of annihilation or general levelling in favour of the prevailing species (whether it be to render the non-prevailing species harmless, or to exploit them); the " Abolition of Slavery " a so-called tribute to " human dignity "; in truth, the annihilation of a fundamentally different species (the under mining of its values and its happiness). The qualities which constitute the strength of an opposing race or class are declared to be the most evil and pernicious things it has: for by means of them it may be harmful to us (its virtues are slandered and rechristened). When a man or a people harm us, their action constitutes an objection against them: but from their point of view we are desirable, because we are such as can be useful to them. The insistence upon spreading " humaneness " (which guilelessly starts out with the assumption that it is in possession of the formula " What is human ") is all humbug, beneath the cover of which a certain definite type of man strives to attain to power: or, more precisely, a very particular kind of instinct the gregarious instinct. " The equality of men ": this is what lies concealed behind the tendency of making ever more and more men alike as men. The " interested natre " of the morality of ordinary people. (The trick was to elevate the great passions for power and property to the positions of protectors of virtue.) 256 To what extent do all kinds of business men and money-grabbers all those who give and take credit find it necessary to promote the levelling of all characters and notions of value? the commerce and the exchange of the world leads to, and almost purchases, virtue. The State exercises the same influence, as does also any sort of ruling power at the head of officials and soldiers; science acts in the same way, in order that it may work in security and economise its forces. And the priesthood does the same. Communal morality is thus promoted here, because it is advantageous; and, in order to make it triumph, war and violence are waged against immorality with what " right "? Without any right whatsoever; but in accordance with the instinct of self-preservation. The same classes avail themselves of immorality when it serves their purpose to do so.
316. Observe the hypocritical color which all civil institutions are painted, just as if they were the offshoots of morality for instance: marriage, work, calling, patriotism, the family, order, and rights. But as they were all established in favour of the most mediocre type of man, to protect him from exceptions and the need of exceptions, one must not be surprised! find them sown with lies.
317. Virtue must be defended against its preachers: they are its worst enemies. For they teach virtue as an ideal for all; they divest virtue of the charm which consists in its rareness, its inimit- ableness, its exceptional and non - average character that is to say, of its aristocratic charm. A stand must also be made against those embittered idealists who eagerly tap all pots and are satisfied to hear them ring hollow: what in genuousness! to demand great and rare things, and then to declare, with anger and contempt of one s fellows, that they do not exist! It is obvious, for instance, that a marriage is worth only as much as those are worth whom it joins that is to say, that on the whole it is something wretched and indecent: no priest or registrar can make anything else of it. Virtue * has all the instincts of the average man against it: it is not profitable, it is not prudent, and it isolates. It is related to passion, and not very accessible to reason; it spoils the character, the head, and the senses always, of course, subject to the medium standard of men; it provokes hostility towards order, and towards the lies which are concealed beneath all order, all institutions, and all reality when seen in the light of its pernicious influence upon others, it is the worst of vices. * TRANSLATOR S NOTE. Virtue is used here, of course, in the sense of "the excellence of man, not in the sense of the Christian negative virtue. . . I recognise virtue in that: (i) it does not insist upon being recognized; (2) it does not presuppose the existence of virtue everywhere, but precisely something else; (3) it does not suffer from the absence of virtue, but regards it rather as a relation of perspective which throws virtue into relief: it does not proclaim itself; (4) it makes no propaganda; (5) it allows no one to pose as judge because it is always a personal virtue; (6) it does precisely what is generally forbidden: virtue as I understand it is the actual vetitum within all gregarious legislation; (7) in short, I recognise virtue in that it is in the Renaissance style virtu free from all moralic acid. . . .
318. In the first place,* Messrs. Virtue-mongers, you have no superiority over us; we should like to make you take modesty a little more to heart: it is wretched personal interests and prudence which suggest your virtue to you. And if you had more strength and courage in your bodies you would not lower yourselves thus to the level of virtuous nonentities. You make what you can of yourselves: partly what you are obliged to make, that is to say, what your circumstances force you to make, partly what suits your pleasure and seems useful to you. But if you do only what is in keeping with your inclinations, * TRANSLATOR S NOTE. Here Nietzsche returns to Christian virtue which is negative and moral. or what necessity exacts from you, or what is useful to you, you ought neither to praise your selves nor let others praise you! . . . One is a thoroughly puny kind of man when one is only virtuous: nothing should mislead you in this regard! Men who have to be considered at all, were never such donkeys of virtue: their inmost instinct, that which determined their quantum of power, did not find its reckoning thus: whereas with your minimum amount of power nothing can seem more full of wisdom to you than virtue. But the multitude are on your side: and because you tyrannise over us, we shall fight you. . . .
319. A virtuous man is of a lower species because, in the first place, he has no " personality," but acquires his value by conforming with a certain human scheme which has been once and for ever fixed. He has no independent value: he may be compared; he has his equals, he must not be an individual. Reckoning up the qualities of the good man, why is it they appear pleasant to us? Because they urge us neither to war, to mistrust, to caution, to the accumulating of forces, nor to severity: our laziness, our good nature, and our levity, have a good time. This, our feeling of well-being, is what we project into the good man in the form of a quality, in the form of a valuable possession. 20O
320. Under certain circumstances, virtue is merely a venerable form of stupidity: who could blame you for it? And this form of virtue has not been outlived even today. A sort of honest peasant-simplicity, which is possible, however, in all classes of society, and which one cannot meet with anything else than a respectful smile, still thinks today that everything is in good hands that is to say, in " God s hands ": and when it supports this proposition with that same modest assurance as that with which it would assert that two and two are four, we others naturally refrain from contradiction. Why disturb this pure foolery? Why darken it with our cares concerning man, people, goals, the future? Even if we wished to do so, we shouldn t succeed. In all things these people see the reflection of their own venerable stupidity and goodness (in them the old God deus myops still lives); we others see something else in everything: our problematic nature, our contra dictions, our deeper, more painful, and more suspicious wisdom.
321. He who finds a particular virtue an easy matter, ultimately laughs at it. Seriousness cannot be maintained once virtue is attained. As soon as a man has reached virtue, he jumps out of it whither? Into devilry. Meanwhile, how intelligent all our evil tend- 261 encies and impulses have become! What an amount of inquisitiveness torments them! They are all fishhooks of knowledge!
322. The idea is to associate vice with something so terrible that at last one is obliged to run away from it in order to be rid of its associations. This is the well-known case of Tannhauser. Tannhauser, brought to his wits end by Wagner- ian music, cannot endure life any longer even in the company of Mrs. Venus: suddenly virtue begins to have a charm for him; a Thuringian virgin goes up in price, and what is even worse still, he shows a liking for Wolfram von Eschen- bach s melody. . . .
323. The Patrons of Virtue. Lust of property, lust of power, laziness, simplicity, fear; all these things are interested in virtue; that is why it stands so securely.
324. Virtue is no longer believed in; its powers of attraction are dead; what is needed is some one who will once more bring it into the market in the form of an outlandish kind of adventure and of dissipation. It exacts too much extravagance and narrow-mindedness from its believers to allow of conscience not being against it today. Certainly, for people without either consciences or scruples, 262 this may constitute its new charm: it is now what it has never been before a vice.
325. Virtue is still the most expensive vice: let it remain so!
326. Virtues are as dangerous as vices, in so far as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and laws coming from outside, and not as qualities one develops one s self. The latter is the only right way; they should be the most personal means of defence and most individual needs the determin ing factors of precisely our existence and growth, which we recognise and acknowledge independ ently of the question whether others grow with us with the help of the same or of different principles. This view of the danger of the virtue which is understood as impersonal and objective also holds good of modesty: through modesty many of the choicest intellects perish. The morality of modesty is the worst possible softening influence for those souls for which it is pre-eminently necessary that they become hard betimes.
327. The domain of morality must be reduced and limited step by step; the names of the instincts which are really active in this sphere must be drawn into the light of day and honored, after 263 they have lain all this time in the concealment of hypocritical names of virtue. Out of respect for one s " honesty," which makes itself heard ever more and more imperiously, one ought to unlearn the shame which makes one deny and " explain away " all natural instincts. The extent to which , one can dispense with virtue is the measure of one s strength; and a height may be imagined where the notion " virtue " is understood in such a way as to be reminiscent of virtu the virtue of the Renaissance free from moralic acid. But for the moment how remote this ideal seems! The reduction of the domain of morality is a sign of its progress. Wherever, hitherto, thought has not been guided by causality, thinking has taken a moral turn.
328. After all, what have I achieved? Let us not close our eyes to this wonderful result: I have lent new charms to virtue it now affects one in the same way as something forbidden. It has our most subtle honesty against it, it is salted in the " cum grano salts " of the scientific pang of conscience. It savors of antiquity and of old fashion, and thus it is at last beginning to draw refined people and to make them inquisitive in short, it affects us like a vice. Only after we have once recognized that everything consists of lies and appearance, shall we have again earned the right to uphold this most beautiful of all fictions virtue. There will then remain no further reason to de prive ourselves of it: only when we have shown 264 virtue to be a form of immorality do we again justify it, it then becomes classified, and likened, in its fundamental features, to the profound and general immorality of all existence, of which it is then shown to be a part. It appears as a form of luxury of the first order, the most arrogant, the dearest, and rarest form of vice. We have robbed it of its grimaces and divested it of its drapery; we have delivered it from the importunate famili arity of the crowd; we have deprived it of its ridiculous rigidity, its empty expression, its stiff false hair, and its hieratic muscles.
329. And is it supposed that I have thereby done any harm to virtue? . . . Just as little as anar chists do to princes. Only since they have been shot at, have they once more sat securely on their thrones. . . . For thus it has always been and will ever be: one cannot do a thing a better service than to persecute it and to run it to earth. , This I have done.
5. THE MORAL IDEAL.
A. A Criticism of Ideals.
330. It were the thing to begin this criticism in such- wise as to do away with the word "Ideal": a criticism of desiderata.
331. Only the fewest amongst us are aware of what is involved, from the standpoint of desirability, in every " thus should it be, but it is not," or even " thus it ought to have been ": such expressions of opinion involve a condemnation of the whole course of events. For there is nothing quite isolated in the world: the smallest thing bears the largest on its back; on thy small injustice the whole nature of the future depends; the whole is condemned by every criticism which is directed at the smallest part of it. Now granting that the moral norm even as Kant understood it is never completely fulfilled, and remains like a sort of Beyond hanging over reality without ever falling down to it; then morality would contain in itself a judgment concerning the whole, which would still, however, allow of the question: whence does it get the right thereto? How does the part come to acquire this judicial position relative to the whole? And if, as some have declared, this moral condemnation of, and dissatisfaction with, reality, is an ineradicable instinct, is it not possible that this instinct may perhaps belong to the ineradicable stupidities and immodesties of our species? But in saying this, we are doing pre cisely what we deprecate; the point of view of desirability and of unauthorised fault-finding is part and parcel of the whole character of worldly phenomena just as every injustice and imperfection is it is our very notion of " perfection " which is never gratified. Every instinct which desires to be indulged gives expression to its dissatisfaction with the present state of things: how? Is the whole perhaps made up of a host of dissatisfied parts, which all have desiderata in their heads? Is the " course of things " perhaps " the road hence? the road leading away from reality" that is to say, eternal dissatisfaction in itself? Is the concep tion of desiderata perhaps the essential motive- power of all things? Is it dens? * It seems to me of the utmost importance that we should rid ourselves of the notion of the whole, of an entity, and of any kind of power or form of the unconditioned. For we shall never be able to resist the temptation of regarding it as the supreme being, and of christening it " God." The " All " must be subdivided; we must unlearn our respect for it, and reappropriate that which we have lent the unknown and an imaginary entity, for the purposes of our neighbour and our selves. Whereas, for instance, Kant said: " Two things remain for ever worthy of honor" (at the close of his Practical Reason] today we should prefer to say: " Digestion is more worthy of honor." The concept, " the All," will always give rise to the old problems, " How is evil possible? " etc. Therefore, there is no " All" there is no great sensorium or inventarium or power-magazine.
332. A man as he ought to be: this sounds to me in just as bad taste as: "A tree as it ought to be."
333. Ethics: or the " philosophy of desirability." " Things ought to be otherwise," " things ought to become different ": dissatisfaction would thus seem the heart of ethics. One could find a way out of it, firstj by select ing only those states in which one is free from emotion; secondly, by grasping the insolence and stupidity of the attitude of mind: for to desire that something should be otherwise than it is, means to desire that everything should be different it involves a damaging criticism of the whole. But life itself consists in such desiring! To ascertain what exists, how it exists seems an ever so much higher and more serious matter than every " thus should it be," because the latter, as a piece of human criticism and arrogance, appears to be condemned as ludicrous from the start. It expresses a need which would fain have the organization of the world correspond with our human well-being, and which directs the will as much as possible towards the accomplishment of that relationship. On the other hand, this desire, " thus it ought to be," has only called forth that other desire, " what exists? " The desire of knowing what exists, is already a consequence of the question, "how? is it possible? Why precisely so? " Our wonder at the disagreement between our desires and the course of the world has led to our learning to know the course of the world. Perhaps the matter stands differently: maybe the expression, " thus it ought to be," is merely the utterance of our desire to overcome the world
334. Today when every attempt at determining how man should be is received with some irony, when we adhere to the notion that in spite of all one only becomes what one is (in spite of all that is to say, education, instruction, environment, accident, and disaster), in the matter of morality we have learnt, in a very peculiar way, how to reverse the relation of cause and effect. Nothing perhaps distinguishes us more than this from the ancient believers in morality. We no longer say, for instance, " Vice is the cause of a man s physical ruin," and we no longer say, " A man prospers with virtue because it brings a long life and happiness." Our minds today are much more inclined to the belief that vice and virtue are not causes but only effects. A man becomes a respectable member of society because he was a respectable man from the start that is to say, because he was born in possession of good instincts and prosperous pro pensities. . . . Should a man enter the world poor, and the son of parents who are neither economical nor thrifty, he is insusceptible of being improved that is to say, he is only fit for the prison or the madhouse. . . . Today we are no longer able to separate moral from physical degeneration: the former is merely a complicated symptom of the latter; a man is necessarily bad just as he is necessarily ill. . . . Bad: this word here stands 269 for a certain lack of capacity which is related physiologically with the degenerating type for instance, a weak will, an uncertain and many-sided personality, the inability to resist reacting to a stimulus and to control one s self, and a certain constraint resulting from every suggestion pro ceeding from another s will. Vice is not a cause; it is an effect. . . . Vice is a somewhat arbitrary epitome of certain effects resulting from physio logical degeneracy. A general proposition such as that which Christianity teaches, namely, " Man is evil," would be justified provided one were justified in regarding a given type of degenerate man as normal. But this may be an exaggeration. Of course, wherever Christianity prospers and pre vails, the proposition holds good: for then the existence of an unhealthy soil of a degenerate territory is demonstrated.
335. It is difficult to have sufficient respect for man, when one sees how he understands the art of fighting his way, of enduring, of turning circum stances to his own advantage, and of overthrowing opponents; but when he is seen in the light of his desires, he is the most absurd of all animals. ... It is just as if he required a playground for his cowardice, his laziness, his feebleness, his sweetness, his submissiveness, where he recovers from his strong virile virtues. Just look at man s " desiderata " and his " ideals." Man, when he desires, tries to recover from that which is eternally valuable in him, from his deeds; and then he rushes into nonentity, absurdity, valueless- ness, childishness. The intellectual indigence and lack of inventive power of this resourceful and inventive animal is simply terrible. The " ideal " is at the same time the penalty man pays for the enormous expenditure which he has to defray in all real and pressing duties. Should reality cease to prevail, there follow dreams, fatigue, weakness: an " ideal " might even be regarded as a form of dream, fatigue, or weakness. The strongest and the most impotent men become alike when this condition overtakes them: they deify the cessation of work, of war, of passions, of suspense, of contrasts, of " reality " in short, of the struggle for knowledge and of the trouble of acquiring it. " Innocence " to them is idealised stultification; " blessedness " is idealised idleness; " love," the ideal state of the gregarious animal that will no longer have an enemy. And thus everything that lowers and belittles man is elevated to an ideal.
336. A desire magnifies the thing desired; and by not being realized it grows the greatest ideas are those which have been created by the strongest and longest desiring. Things grow ever more valuable in our estimation, the more our desire for them increases: if " moral values " have become the highest values, it simply shows that the moral ideal is the one which has been realized least (and 21 thus it represented the Beyond to all suffering, as a road to blessedness}. Man, with ever-increasing ardour, has only been embracing clouds: and ultimately called his desperation and impotence "God."
337. Think of the nai vetof all ultimate " desiderata " when the " wherefore " of man remains unknown.
338. What is the counterfeit coinage of morality? First of all we should know what " good and evil " mean. That is as good as wishing to know why man is here, and what his goal or his destiny is. And that means that one would fain know that man actually has a goal or a destiny.
339. The very obscure and arbitrary notion that humanity has a general duty to perform, and that, as a whole, it is striving towards a goal, is still in its infancy. Perhaps we shall once more be rid of it before it becomes a " fixed idea." . . . But humanity does not constitute a whole: it is an indissoluble multiplicity of ascending and descending organisms it knows no such thing as a state of youth followed by maturity and then age. But its strata lie confused and superimposed and in a few thousand years there may be even younger types of men than we can point out today. Decadence, on the other hand, belongs to all periods of human history: everywhere there is refuse and decaying matter, such things are in themselves vital pro cesses; for withering and decaying elements must be eliminated. * * Under the empire of Christian prejudice this question was never put at all: the purpose of life seemed to lie in the salvation of the individual soul; the question whether humanity might last for a long or a short time was not considered. The best Christians longed for the end to come as soon as possible; concerning the needs of the individual, there seemed to be no doubt whatsoever. . . . The duty of every individual for the present was identical with what it would be in any sort of future for the man of the future: the value, the purpose, the limit of values was for ever fixed, unconditioned, eternal, one with God. . . . What deviated from this eternal type was impious, diabolic, criminal. The centre of gravity of all values for each soul lay in that soul itself: salvation or damnation! The salvation of the immortal soul! The most extreme form of personalisation. . . . For each soul there was only one kind of perfection; only one ideal, only one road to salvation. . . . The most extreme form of the principle of equal rights, associated with an optical magnification of in dividual importance to the point of megalomania. . . Nothing but insanely important souls, re volving round their own axes with unspeakable terror. . . . 4 * Nobody believes in these assumed airs of im portance any longer today: and we have sifted our wisdom through the sieve of contempt. Nevertheless the optical habit survives, which would fain measure the value of man by his proximity to a certain ideal man: at bottom the personalisation view is upheld as firmly as that of the equality of rights as regards the ideal. In short: people seem to think that they know what the ultimate desideratum is in regard to the ideal man. . . . But this belief is merely the result of the exceedingly detrimental influence of the Christian ideal, as anybody can discover for himself every time he carefully examines the " ideal type." In the first place, it is believed that the approach to a given " type " is desirable; secondly , that this particular type is known; thirdly, that every deviation from this type is a retrograde movement, a stemming of the spirit of progress, a loss of power and might in man. . . . To dream of a state of affairs in which this perfect man will be in the majority: our friends the Socialists and even Messrs, the Utilitarians have not reached a higher level than this. In this way an aim seems to have crept into the evolution of man: at any rate the belief in a certain progress towards an ideal is the only shape in which an aim is con- . S 24 ceived in the history of mankind today. In short: the coming of the " Kingdom of God" has been placed in the future, and has been given an earthly, a human meaning but on the whole the faith in the old ideal is still maintained. . . .
340. The more concealed forms of the cult of Christian, moral ideals. The insipid and cowardly notion " Nature" invented by Nature-enthusiasts (without any knowledge whatsoever of the terrible, the implacable, and the cynical element in even " the most beautiful " aspects), is only a sort of attempt at reading the moral and Christian notion of " humanity " into Nature; Rousseau s concept of Nature, for instance, which took for granted that " Nature " meant freedom, goodness, innocence, equity, justice, and Idylls, was nothing more at bottom than the cult of Christian morality. We should collect passages from the poets in order to see what they admired, in lofty mountains, for instance. What Goethe had to do with them why he admired Spinoza. Absolute ignorance concerning the reasons of this cult. . . . The insipid and cowardly concept " Man" a la Comte and Stuart Mill, is at times the subject of a cult. . . . This is only the Christian moral ideal again under another name. . . . Refer also to the freethinkers Guyau for example. The insipid and cowardly concept " Art" which is held to mean sympathy with all suffering and with everything botched and bungled (the same 275 thing happens to history, cf. Thierry): again it is the cult of the Christian moral ideal. And now, as to the whole socialistic ideal: it is nothing but a blockheaded misunderstanding of the Christian moral ideal.
341. The origin of the ideal. The examination of the soil out of which it grows. A. Starting out from those " aesthetic " mental states during which the world seems rounder, fuller, and more perfect:: we have the pagan ideal with its dominating spirit of self-affirmation (people give of their abundance]. The highest type: the classical ideal regarded as an expres sion of the successful nature of all the more important instincts. In this classical ideal we find the grand style as the highest style. An expression of the " will to power " itself. The instinct which is most feared dares to acknow ledge itself. B. Starting out from the mental states in which the world seemed emptier, paler, and thinner, when " spiritualisation " and the absence of sensu ality assume the rank of perfection, and when all that is brutal, animal, direct, and proximate is avoided (people calculate and selecf): the " sage," " the angel "; priestliness = virginity = ignorance, are the physiological ideals of such idealists: the an&mic ideal. Under certain circumstances this anaemic ideal may be the ideal of such natures as represent paganism (thus Goethe sees his " saint " in Spinoza). C. Starting out from those mental states in which the world seemed more absurd, more evil, poorer, and more deceptive, an ideal cannot even be imagined or desired in it (people deny and annihilate]; the projection of the ideal into the sphere of the anti-natural, anti-actual, anti-logical; the state of him who judges thus (the " impover ishment " of the world as a result of suffering: people take, they no longer bestow): the anti-natural ideal. (The Christian ideal is a transitional form between the second and the third, now inclining more towards the former type, and anon inclining towards the latter.) The three ideals: A. Either a strengthening of Life (paganism}, or B. an impoverishment of Life (an&mid), or C. a denial of Life (anti-naturalism}. The state of beatitude in A. is the feeling of extreme abundance; in B. it is reached by the most fastidious selectiveness; in C. it is the contempt and the destruction of Life.
342. A. The consistent type understands that even evil must not be hated, must not be resisted, and that it is not allowable to make war against one s self; that it does not suffice merely to accept the pain which such behaviour brings in its train; that one lives entirely in positive feelings; that one takes the side of one s opponents in word and deed; that by means of a superfoetation of peaceful, kindly, conciliatory, helpful, and loving states, one impoverishes the soil of the other states, . . . that one is in need of unremitting practice. What is achieved thereby? The Buddhistic type, or the perfect cow. This point of view is possible only where no moral fanaticism prevails that is to say, when evil is not hated on its own account, but because it opens the road to conditions which are painful (unrest, work, care, complications, dependence). This is the Buddhistic point of view: there is no hatred of sin, the concept " sin," in fact, is entirely lacking. B. The inconsistent type. War is waged against evil there is a belief that war waged for Goodness sake does not involve the same moral results or affect character in the same way as war generally does (and owing to which tend encies it is detested as evil). As a matter of fact, a war of this sort carried on against evil is much more profoundly pernicious than any sort of personal hostility; and generally, it is " the person " which reassumes, at least in fancy, the position of opponent (the devil, evil spirits, etc.). The attitude of hostile observation and spying in regard to everything which may be bad in us, or hail from a bad source, culminates in a most tormented and most anxious state of mind: thus " miracles," rewards, ecstasy, and transcendental solutions of the earth-riddle now became desir able. . . . The Christian type: or the perfect bigot. C. The stoical type. Firmness, self-control, imperturbability, peace in the form of the rigidity of a will long active profound quiet, the de fensive state, the fortress, the mistrust of war firmness of principles; the unity of knowledge and will; great self-respect. The type of the anchorite. The perfect blockhead.
343. An ideal which is striving to prevail or to assert itself endeavours to further its purpose (a} by laying claim to a spurious origin; by assuming a relationship between itself and the powerful ideals already existing; (c] by means of the thrill produced by mystery, as though an unquestionable power were manifesting itself; (d) by the slander of its opponents ideals; (e) by a lying teaching of the advantages which follow in its wake, for instance: happiness, spiritual peace, general peace, or even the assistance of a mighty God, etc. Contributions to the psychology of the idealists: Carlyle, Schiller, Michelet. Supposing all the means of defence and protection, by means of which an ideal survives, are discovered, is it thereby refuted? It has merely availed itself of the means of which every thing lives and grows they are all " immoral." My view: all the forces and instincts which are the source of life are lying beneath the ban of morality: morality is the life-denying instinct. Morality must be annihilated if life is to be emancipated. 29
344. To avoid knowing himself is the prudence of the idealist. The idealist: a creature who has reasons for remaining in the dark concerning himself, and who is also clever enough to remain in the dark concerning these reasons also.
345. The tendency of moral evolution. Every one s desire is that there should be no other teaching and valuation of things than those by means of which he himself succeeds. Thus the fundamental tendency of the weak and mediocre of all times, has been to enfeeble the strong and to reduce them to the level of the weak: their chief weapon in this process was the moral principle. The attitude of the strong towards the weak is branded as evil; the highest states of the strong become bad bywords. The struggle of the many against the strong, of the ordinary against the extraordinary, of the weak against the strong: meets with one of its finest interruptions in the fact that the rare, the refined, the more exacting, present themselves as the weak, and repudiate the coarser weapons of power.
346. (1) The so-called pure instinct for knowledge of all philosophers is dictated to them by their moral " truths," and is only seemingly inde pendent. (2) The " Moral Truths," " thus shall things be done," are mere states of consciousness of an instinct which has grown tired, "thus and thus are things done by us." The " ideal " is supposed to re-establish and strengthen an instinct; it flatters man to feel he can obey when he is only an automaton.
347. Morality as a means of seduction. " Nature is good; for a wise and good God is its cause. Who, therefore, is responsible for the corruption of man? Tyrants and seducers and the ruling classes are responsible they must be wiped out ": this is Rousseau s logic (compare with Pascals logic, which concludes by an appeal to original sin). Refer also to Luther s logic, which is similar. In both cases a pretext is sought for the introduction of an insatiable lust of revenge as a moral and religious duty. The hatred directed against the ruling classes tries to sanctify itself . . . (the " sin fulness of Israel " is the basis of the priest s powerful position). Compare this with Paul s logic, which is similar. It is always under the cover of God s business that these reactions appear, under the cover of what is right, or of humanity, etc. In the case of Christ the rejoicings of the people appear as the cause of His crucifixion. It was an anti-priestly movement from the beginning. Even in the anti-Semitic movement we find the same trick: the opponent is overcome with moral condemnations, and those who attack him pose as retributive Justice.
348. The incidents of the fight: the fighter tries to transform his opponent into the exact opposite of himself imaginatively, of course. He tries to believe in himself to such an extent that he may have the courage necessary for the " good Cause " (as if he were the good Cause); as if reason, taste, and virtue were being assailed by his opponents. . . . The belief of which he is most in need, as the strongest means of defence and attack, is the belief in himself, which, however, knows how to misinterpret itself as a belief in God. He never pictures the advantages and the uses of victory, but only understands victory for the sake of victory for God s sake. Every small community (or individual), finding itself involved in a struggle, strives to convince itself of this: " Good taste, good judgment, and virtue are ours" War urges people to this exaggerated self-esteem. . . ,
349. Whatever kind of eccentric ideal one may have (whether as a " Christian," a " free - spirit," an " immoralist," or a German Imperialist), one should try to avoid insisting upon its being the ideal; for, by so doing, it is deprived of all its privileged nature. One should have an ideal as a distinction; one should not propagate it, and thus level one s self down to the rest of mankind. How is it, that in spite of this obvious fact, the majority of idealists indulge in propaganda for their ideal, just as if they had no right to it unless the majority acquiesce therein? For instance, all those plucky and insignificant girls behave in this way, who claim the right to study Latin and mathematics. What is it urges them to do this? I fear it is the instinct of the herd, and the terror of the herd: they fight for the " emancipation of woman," because they are best able to achieve their own private little distinction by fighting for it under the cover of a charitable movement, under the banner bearing the device " For others." The cleverness of idealists consists in their per sistently posing as the missionaries and " repre sentatives " of an ideal: they thus " beautify " themselves in the eyes of those who still believe in disinterestedness and heroism. Whereas real heroism consists, not in fighting under the banner of self-sacrifice, submission, and disinterestedness, but in not fighting at all. ..." I am thus; I will be thus and you can go to the devil! "
350. Every ideal assumes love, hate, reverence, and con tempt. Either positive feeling is ih&primum mobile, or negative feeling is. Hatred and contempt are the primum mobile in all the ideals which proceed from resentment.
B. A Criticism of the " Good Man" of the Saint, etc.
351. The "good man" Or, hemiplegia of virtue. In the opinion of every strong and natural man, love and hate, gratitude and revenge, goodness and anger, affirmative and negative action, belong to each other. A man is good on condition that he knows how to be evil; a man is evil, because otherwise he would not know how to be good. Whence comes the morbidness and ideological unnaturalness which repudiates these compounds which teaches a sort of one-sided efficiency as the highest of all things? Whence this hemiplegia of virtue, the invention of the good man? The object seems to be to make man amputate those instincts which enable him to be an enemy, to be harmful, to be angry, and to insist upon revenge. . . . This unnaturalness, then, corresponds to that dualistic concept of a wholly good and of a wholly bad creature (God, Spirit, Man); in the first are found all the positive, in the second all the negative forces, intentions, and states. This method of valuing thus believes itself to be " idealistic "; it never doubts that in its concept of the " good man," it has found the highest de sideratum. When aspiring to its zenith it fancies a state in which all evil is wiped out, and in which only good creatures have actually remained over. It does not therefore regard the mutual depend ence of the opposites good and evil as proved. On the contrary, the latter ought to vanish, and the former should remain. The first has a right to exist, the second ought not to be with us at all. . . . What, as a matter of fact, is the reason of this desire? In all ages, and particularly in the Christian age, much labour has been spent in trying to reduce men to this one-sided activity: and even today, among those who have been deformed and weakened by the Church, people are not lacking who desire precisely the same thing with their " humanisation " generally, or with their " Will of God," or with their " Salvation of the Soul." The principal injunction behind all these things is, that man should no longer do anything evil, that he should under no circum stances be harmful or desire harm. The way to arrive at this state of affairs is to amputate all hostile tendencies, to suppress all the instincts of resentment, and to establish " spiritual peace " as a chronic disease. This attitude of mind, in which a certain type of man is bred, starts out with this absurd hypothesis: good and evil are postulated as realities which are in a state of mutual contradic tion (not as complementary values, which they are), people are advised to take the side of the good, and it is insisted upon that a good man resists and forswears evil until every trace of it is uprooted but ivith this valuation Life is actually denied, for in all its instincts Life has both yea and nay. But far from understanding these facts, this valuation dreams rather of returning to the wholeness, oneness, and strengthfulness of Life: it actually believes that a state of blessedness will be reached when the inner anarchy and state of unrest which result from these opposed impulses is brought to an end. It is possible that no more dangerous ideology, no greater mischief in the science of psychology, has ever yet existed, as this will to good: the most repugnant type of man has been reared, the man who is not free, the bigot; it was taught that only in the form of a bigot could one tread the path which leads to God, and that only a bigot s life could be a godly life. And even here, Life is still in the right Life that knows not how to separate Yea from Nay: what is the good of declaring with all one s might that war is an evil, that one must harm no one, that one must not act negatively? One is still waging a war even in this, it is impossible to do otherwise! The good man who has renounced all evil, and who is afflicted according to his desire with the hemiplegia of virtue, does not therefore cease from waging war, or from making enemies, or from saying " nay " and doing " nay." The Christian, for instance, hates " sin "! and what on earth is there which he does not call " sin "! It is precisely because of his belief in a moral antagonism between good and evil, that the world for him has grown so full of hatefulness and things that must be combated eternally. The " good man " sees himself surrounded by evil, and, thanks to the continual onslaughts of the latter, his eye grows more keen, and in the end discovers traces of evil in every one of his acts. And thus he ultimately arrives at the conclusion, which to him is quite logical, that Nature is evil, that man is corrupted, and that being good is an act of grace (that is to say, it is impossible to man when he stands alone). In short: he denies Life, he sees how " good," as the highest value, condemns Life. . . . And thus his ideology concerning good and evil ought to strike him as refuted. But one cannot refute a disease. Therefore he is obliged to conceive another life! . . .
352. Power, whether in the hands of a god or of a man, is always understood to consist in the ability to harm as well as to help. This is the case with the Arabs and with the Hebrews, in fact with all strong and well-constituted races. The dualistic separation of the two powers is fatal. ... In this way morality becomes the poisoner of life.
353. A criticism of the good man. Honesty, dignity, dutifulness, justice, humanity, loyalty, uprightness, clean conscience is it really supposed that, by means of these fine-sounding words, the qualities they stand for are approved and affirmed for their own sake? Or is it this, that qualities and states indifferent in themselves have merely been looked at in a light which lends them some value? Does the worth of these qualities lie in themselves, or in the use and advantages to which they lead (or to which they seem to lead, to which they are expected to lead)? I naturally do not wish to imply that there is any opposition between the ego and the alter in the judgment: the question is, whether it is the results of these qualities, either in regard to him who possesses them or in regard to environment, society, " humanity," which lend them their value; or whether they have a value in themselves. . . . In other words: is it utility which bids men condemn, combat, and deny the opposite qualities (duplicity, falseness, perversity, lack of self- confidence, inhumanity)? Is the essence of such qualities condemned, or only their consequences? In other words: were it desirable that there should exist no men at all possessed of such qualities? In any case, this is believed. . . . But here lies the error, the shortsightedness, the monocularity of narrow egoism. Expressed otherwise: would it be desirable to create circumstances in which the whole advan tage would be on the side of the just so that all those with opposite natures and instincts would be discouraged and would slowly become extinct? At bottom, this is a question of taste and of (Esthetics: should we desire the most honorable types of men that is to say, the greatest bores alone to subsist? the rectangular, the virtuous, the upright, the good-natured, the straightforward, and the " blockheads "? If one can imagine the total suppression of the huge number constituting the " others," even the just man himself ceases from having a right to exist, he is, in fact, no longer necessary, and in this way it is seen that coarse utility alone could have elevated such an insufferable virtue to a place of honor. Desirability may lie precisely on the other side. It might be better to create conditions in which the "just man" would be reduced to the humble position of a " useful instrument " an " ideal gregarious animal," or at best a herdsman: in short, conditions in which he would no longer stand in the highest sphere, which requires other qualities.
354. The "good man" as a tyrant. Mankind has always repeated the same error: it has always transformed a mere vital measure into the measure and standard of life; instead of seeking the standard in the highest ascent of life, in the problem of growth and exhaustion, it takes the preservative measures of a very definite kind of life, and uses them to exclude all other kinds of life, and even to criticise Life itself and to select from among its forms. That is to say, man ultimately forgets that measures are a means to an end, and gets to like them for themselves: they take the place of a goal in his mind, and even become the standard of goals to him that is to say, a given species of man regards his means of existence as the only legitimate means, as the means which ought to be imposed upon all, as " truth," " goodness," " perfection ": the given species, in fact, begins to tyrannise. ... It is a form of faith, of instinct, when a certain species of man does not perceive that his kind has been conditioned, when he does not understand his relation to other species. At any rate, any species of men (a people or a race) seems to be doomed as soon as it becomes tolerant, grants equal rights, and no longer desires to be master.
355. " All good people are weak: they are good because they are not strong enough to be evil," said the Latuka chieftain Comorro to Baker. * " Disasters are not to the faint-hearted," is a Russian proverb.
356. Modest, industrious, benevolent, and temperate: thus you would that men were? that good men were? But such men I can only conceive as slaves, the slaves of the future.
357. The metamorphoses of slavery; its disguise in the cloak of religion; its transfiguration through morality.
358. The ideal slave (the " good man "). He who cannot regard himself as a " purpose," and who cannot give himself any aim whatsoever, in stinctively honors the morality of unselfishness. Everything urges him to this morality: his prudence, his experience, and his vanity. And even faith is a form of self-denial. A tavism: delightful feeling, to be able to obey unconditionally for once. * . T 2pO Industry, modesty, benevolence, temperance, are just so many obstacles in the way of sovereign sentiments, of great ingenuity, of an heroic purpose, of noble existence for one s self. It is not a question of going ahead (to that end all that is required is to be at best a herdsman, that is to say, the prime need of the herd), it is rather a matter of getting along alone, of being able to be another.
359. We must realize all that has been accumulated as the result of the highest moral idealism: how almost all other values have crystallised round it. This shows that it has been desired for a very long time and with the strongest passions and that it has not yet been attained: otherwise it would have disappointed everybody (that is to say, it would have been followed by a more moderate valuation). The saint as the most powerful type of man: this ideal it is which has elevated the value of moral perfection so high. One would think that the whole of science had been engaged in proving that the moral man is the revest powerful and most godly. The conquest of the senses and the passions everything inspired terror; the un natural seemed to the spectators to be super natural and transcendental.
360. Francis of Assisi: amorous and popular, a poet who combats the order of rank among souls, in favour of the lowest. The denial of spiritual hierarchy " all alike before God." Popular ideals: the good man, the unselfish man, the saint, the sage, the just man. O Marcus Aurelius!
361. I have declared war against the anaemic Christian ideal (together with what is closely related to it), not because I want to annihilate it, but only to put an end to its tyranny and clear the way for other ideals, for more robust ideals. . . . The continuance of the Christian ideal belongs to the most desirable of desiderata: if only for the sake of the ideals which wish to take their stand beside it and perhaps above it they must have opponents, and strong ones too, in order to grow strong themselves. That is why we im- moralists require the power of morality: our instinct of self-preservation insists upon our opponents maintaining their strength all it requires is to become master of them. C. Concerning the Slander of the so-called Evil Qualities.
362. Egoism and its problem! The Christian gloominess of La Rochefoucauld, who saw egoism 2p2 in everything, and imagined that he had therefore reduced the worth of things and virtues! In opposition to him, I first of all tried to show that nothing else could exist save egoism, that in those men whose ego is weak and thin, the power to love also grows weak, that the greatest lovers are such owing to the strength of their ego, that love is an expression of egoism, etc. As a matter of fact, the false valuation aims at the interest of those who find it useful, whom it helps in fact, the herd; it fosters a pessimistic mistrust towards the basis of Life; it would fain undermine the most glorious and most well-constituted men (out of fear); it would assist the lowly to have the upper hand of their conquerors; it is the cause of uni versal dishonesty, especially in the most useful type of men.
363. Man is an indifferent egoist: even the cleverest regards his habits as more important than his advantage.
364. Egoism! But no one has yet asked: what is the ego like? Everybody is rather inclined to see all egos alike. This is the result of the slave theory, of universal suffrage, and of "equality."
365. The behaviour of a higher man is the result of a very complex set of motives: any word such as " pity " betrays nothing of this complexity. The 293 most important factor is the feeling, " who am I? who is the other relative to me? " Thus the valuing spirit is continually active.
366. To think that the history of all moral pheno mena may be simplified, as Schopenhauer thought, that is to say, that pity is to be found at the root of every moral impulse that has ever existed hitherto, is to be guilty of a degree of nonsense and ingenuousness worthy only of a thinker who is devoid of all historical instincts and who has miraculously succeeded in evading the strong schooling in history which the Germans, from Herder to Hegel, have undergone.
367. My "pity? This is a feeling for which I can find no adequate term: I feel it when I am in the presence of any waste of precious capabilities, as, for instance, when I contemplate Luther: what power and what tasteless problems fit for back woodsmen! (At a time when the brave and light- hearted scepticism of a Montaigne was already possible in France !) Or when I see some one standing below where he might have stood, thanks to the development of a set of perfectly senseless accidents. Or even when, with the thought of man s destiny in my mind, I contemplate with horror and contempt the whole system of modern European politics, which is creating the circum- 294 stances and weaving the fabric of the whole future of mankind. Yes, to what could not "mankind" attain, if! This is my " pity "; despite the fact that no sufferer yet exists with whom I sympathise in this way.
368. Pity is a waste of feeling, a moral parasite which is injurious to the health, " it cannot possibly be our duty to increase the evil in the world." If one does good merely out of pity, it is one s self and not one s neighbour that one is succouring. Pity does not depend upon maxims, but upon emotions. The suffering we see infects us; pity is an infection.
369. There is no such thing as egoism which keeps within its bounds and does not exceed them consequently, the " allowable," the " morally in different" egoism of which some people speak, does not exist at all. " One is continually promoting the interests of one s ego at the cost of other people "; " Living consists in living at the cost of others " he who has not grasped this fact, has not taken the first step towards truth to himself.
370. The " subject " is a piece of fiction: the ego of which every one speaks when he blames egoism, does not exist at all.
371. Our " ego " which is not one with the unitary controlling force of our beings! is really only an imagined synthesis; therefore there can be no " egoistic" actions.
372. Since all instincts are unintelligent, utility cannot represent a standpoint as far as they are concerned. Every instinct, when it is active, sacrifices strength and other instincts into the bargain: in the end it is stemmed, otherwise it would be the end of everything owing to the waste it would bring about. Thus: that which is "unegoistic," self- sacrificing, and imprudent is nothing in particular it is common to all the instincts; they do not consider the welfare of the whole ego (because they simply do not think), they act counter to our interests, against the ego: and often for the ego innocent in both cases!
373. The origin of moral values. Selfishness has as much value as the physiological value of him who possesses it. Each individual represents the whole course of Evolution, and he is not, as morals teach, something that begins at his birth. If he re present the ascent of the line of mankind, his value is, in fact, very great; and the concern about his maintenance and the promoting of his growth may even be extreme. (It is the concern about 296 the promise of the future in him which gives the well-constituted individual such an extraordinary right to egoism.) If he represent descending development, decay, chronic sickening, he has little worth: and the greatest fairness would have him take as little room, strength, and sunshine as possible from the well-constituted. In this case society s duty is to suppress egoism (for the latter may sometimes manifest itself in an absurd, morbid, and seditious manner): whether it be a question of the decline and pining away of single individuals or of whole classes of mankind. A morality and a religion of" love," the curbing of the self-affirming spirit, and a doctrine encouraging patience, re signation, helpfulness, and co-operation in word and deed may be of the highest value within the confines of such classes, even in the eyes of their rulers: for it restrains the feelings of rivalry, of resentment, and of envy, feelings which are only too natural in the bungled and the botched, and it even deifies them under the ideal of humility, of obedience, of slave-life, of being ruled, of poverty, of illness, and of lowliness. This explains why the ruling classes (or races) and individuals of all ages have always upheld the cult of unselfishness, the gospel of the lowly and of " God on the Cross." The preponderance of an altruistic way of valuing is the result of a consciousness of the fact that one is botched and bungled. Upon ex amination, this point of view turns out to be: "I am not worth much," simply a psychological valua tion; more plainly still: it is the feeling of im potence, of the lack of the great self-asserting 297 impulses of power (in muscles, nerves, and ganglia). This valuation gets translated, according to the particular culture of these classes, into a moral or religious principle (the pre-eminence of religious or moral precepts is always a sign of low culture): it tries to justify itself in spheres whence, as far as it is concerned, the notion " value " hails. The interpretation by means of which the Christian sinner tries to understand himself, is an attempt at justifying his lack of power and of self-con fidence: he prefers to feel himself a sinner rather than feel bad for nothing: it is in itself a symptom of decay when interpretations of this sort are used at all. In some cases the bungled and the botched do not look for the reason of their unfortunate condition in their own guilt (as the Christian does), but in society: when, however, the Socialist, the Anarchist, and the Nihilist are conscious that their existence is something for which some one must be guilty, they are very closely related to the Christian, who also believes that he can more easily endure his ill ease and his wretched constitution when he has found some one whom he can hold responsible for it. The instinct of revenge and resentment appears in both cases here as a means of enduring life, as a self-preservative measure, as is also the favour shown to altruistic theory and practice. The hatred of egoism, whether it be one s own (as in the case of the Christian), or another s (as in the case of the Socialists), thus appears as a valua tion reached under the predominance of revenge; and also as an act of prudence on the part of the preservative instinct of the suffering, in the form 398 of an increase in their feelings of co-operation and unity. ... At bottom, as I have already suggested, the discharge of resentment which takes place in the act of judging, rejecting, and punishing egoism (one s own or that of others) is still a self-pre servative measure on the part of the bungled and the botched. In short: the cult of altruism is merely a particular form of egoism, which regularly appears under certain definite physiological cir cumstances. When the Socialist, with righteous indignation, cries for "justice," "rights," "equal rights," it only shows that he is oppressed by his inade quate culture, and is unable to understand why he suffers: he also finds pleasure in crying; if he were more at ease he would take jolly good care not to cry in that way: in that case he would seek his pleasure elsewhere. The same holds good of the Christian: he curses, condemns, and slanders the " world " and does not even except himself. But that is no reason for taking him seriously. In both cases we are in the presence of invalids who feel better for crying, and who find relief in slander.
374. Every society has a tendency to reduce its opponents to caricatures at least in its own imagination, as also to starve them. As an example of this sort of caricature we have our "criminal" In the midst of the Roman and aristocratic order of values, the Jew was reduced 299 to a caricature. Among artists, " Mrs. Grundy and the bourgeois " become caricatures; while among pious people it is the heretics, and among aristocrats, the plebeian. Among immoralists it is the moralist. Plato, for instance, in my books becomes a caricature.
375. All the instincts and forces which morality praises, seem to me to be essentially the same as those which it slanders and rejects: for instance, justice as will to power, will to truth as a means in the service of the will to power.
376. The turning of man s nature inivards. The process of turning a nature inwards arises when, owing to the establishment of peace and society, powerful instincts are prevented from venting themselves outwardly, and strive to survive harmlessly inside in conjunction with the imagi nation. The need of hostility, cruelty, revenge, and violence is reverted, " it steps backwards "; in the thirst for knowledge there lurks both the lust of gain and of conquest; in the artist, the powers of dissimulation and falsehood find their scope; the instincts are thus transformed into demons with whom a fight takes place, etc.
377. Falsity. Every sovereign instinct makes the others its instruments, its retainers and its sycophants: it never allows itself to be called by its more hateful name: and it brooks no terms of praise in which it cannot indirectly find its share. Around every sovereign instinct all praise and blame in general crystallises into a rigorous form of ceremonial and etiquette. This is one of the causes of falsity. Every instinct which aspires to dominion, but which finds itself under a yoke, requisitions all the most beautiful names and the most generally accepted values to strengthen it and to support its self-esteem, and this explains why as a rule it dares to come forward under the name of the " master " it is combating and from whom it would be free (for instance, under the domination of Christian values, the desires of the flesh and of power act in this way). This is the other cause of falsity. In both cases complete ingenuousness reigns: the falseness never even occurs to the mind of those concerned. It is the sign of a broken instinct when man sees the motive force and its " expression " (" the mask ") as separate things it is a sign of inner contradiction and is much less formidable. Absolute innocence in bearing, word, and passion, a " good conscience " in falseness, and the certainty wherewith all the grandest and most pompous words and attitudes are appro priated all these things are necessary for victory. In the other case: that is to say, when extreme clearsightedness is present, the genius of the actor is needful as well as tremendous discipline in self-control, if victory is to be achieved. That is why priests are the cleverest and most conscious hypo crites; and then come princes, in whom their position in life and their antecedents account for a certain histrionic gift. Society men and diplomatists come third, and women fourth. The fundamental thought: Falsity seems so deep, so many-sided, and the will is directed so inexorably against perfect self-knowledge and accurate self-classification, that one is very pro bably right in supposing that Truth and the will to truth are perhaps something quite different and only disguises. (The need of faith is the greatest obstacle in the way of truthfulness.)
378. " Thou shalt not tell a falsehood ": people insist upon truthfulness. But the acknowledg ment of facts (the refusal to allow one s self to be lied to) has always been greatest with liars: they actually recognized the reality of this popular " truthfulness." There is too much or too little being said continually: to insist upon people s exposing themselves with every word they say, is a piece of naivete". People say what they think, they are " truth ful "; but only under certain circumstances: that is to say, provided they be understood (inter pares) , and understood with good will into the bargain (once more inter pares]. One conceals one s self in the presence of the unfamiliar: and he who would attain to something, says what he would fain have 302 people think about him, but not what he thinks. (" The powerful man is always a liar.")
379. The great counterfeit coinage of Nihilism con* cealed beneath an artful abuse of moral values: (a) Love regarded as self-effacement; as also pity. (V) The most impersonal intellect (" the philo sopher ") can know the truth, " the true essence and nature of things." (c) Genius, great, men are great, because they do not strive to further their own interests: the value of man increases in proportion as he effaces himself. (d) Art as the work of the "pure free-willed subject "; misunderstanding of " objectivity." (e) Happiness as the object of life: virtue as a means to an end. The pessimistic condemnation of life by Scho penhauer is a moral one. Transference of the gregarious standards into the realm of meta physics. The " individual " lacks sense, he must there fore have his origin in " the thing in itself" (and the significance of his existence must be shown to be " error "); parents are only an " accidental cause." The mistake on the part of science in considering the individual as the result of all past life instead of the epitome of all past life, is now becoming known. 303
380. 1. Systematic falsification of history; so that it may present a proof of the moral valua tions: (a) The decline of a people and corruption. The rise of a people and virtue. (c) The zenith of a people (" its culture ") regarded as the result of high moral excellence. 2. Systematic falsification of great men, great creators, and great periods. The desire is to make faith that which distinguishes great men: whereas carelessness in this respect, scepticism, " immoral ity," the right to repudiate a belief, belongs to greatness (Caesar, Frederick the Great, Napoleon; but also Homer, Aristophanes, Leonardo, Goethe). The principal fact their " free will " is always suppressed.
381. A great lie in history; as if the corruption of the Church were the cause of the Reformation! This was only the pretext and self-deception of the agitators very strong needs were making themselves felt, the brutality of which sorely re quired a spiritual dressing.
382. Schopenhauer declared high intellectuality to be the emancipation from the will: he did not wish to recognise the freedom from moral pre judices which is coincident with the emancipation 304 of a great mind; he refused to see what is the typical immorality of genius; he artfully contrived to set up the only moral value he honored self-effacement, as the one condition of highest intellectual activity: " objective " contemplation. " Truth," even in art, only manifests itself after the withdrawal of the will. . . . Through all moral idiosyncrasies I see a fundamentally different valuation. Such absurd distinctions as " genius " and the world of will, of morality and immorality, knoiv nothing about at all. The moral is a lower kind of animal than the immoral, he is also weaker; indeed he is a type in regard to morality, but he is not a type of his own. He is a copy; at the best, a good copy the standard of his worth lies without him. I value a man according to the quantum of power and fullness of his will: not according to the enfeeblement and moribund state thereof. I con sider that a philosophy which teaches the denial of will is both defamatory and slanderous. ... I test the power of a will according to the amount of resistance it can offer and the amount of pain and torture it can endure and know how to turn to its own advantage; I do not point to the evil and pain of existence with the finger of reproach, but rather entertain the hope that life may one day be more evil and more full of suffering than it has ever been. The zenith of intellectuality, according to Schopenhauer, was to arrive at the knowledge that all is to no purpose in short, to recognise what the good man already does instinctively. . . . 30$ He denies that there can be higher states of intellectuality he regards his view as a non plus ultra. . . . Here intellectuality is placed much lower than goodness; its highest value (as art, for instance) would be to lead up to, and to advise the adoption of, morality, the absolute predomin ance of moral values. Next to Schopenhauer I will now characterise Kant: there was nothing Greek in Kant; he was quite anti-historical (cf. his attitude in regard to the French Revolution) and a moral fanatic (see Goethe s words concerning the radically evil element in human nature *). Saintliness also lurked somewhere in his soul. ... I require a criticism of the saintly type. Hegel s value: " Passion." Herbert Spencer s tea-grocer s philosophy: total absence of an ideal save that of the mediocre man. * TRANSLATOR S NOTE. This is doubtless a reference to a passage in a letter written by Goethe to Herder, on yth June 1793, from the camp at Marienborn, near Mainz, in which the following words occur: " Dagegen hat aber auch Kant seinen philosophischen Mantel, nachdem er ein langes Menschenleben gebraucht hat, ihn von mancherlei sudel- haften Vorurteilen zu reinigen, fre-ventlich mit dem Schand- fleck des radikalen Bosen beschlabbert, damit doch auch Christen herbeigelockt iverden den Saum zu kussen." (" Kant, on the other hand, after he had tried throughout his life to keep his philosophical cloak unsoiled by foul pre judices, wantonly dirtied it in the end with the disreputable stain of the radical evil in human nature, in order that Christians too might be lured into kissing its hem.") From this passage it will be seen how Goethe had anticipated Nietzsche s view of Kant; namely, that he was a Christian in disguise. . U 3C6 Fundamental instinct of all philosophers, historians, and psychologists: everything of value in mankind, art, history, science, religion, and technology must be shown to be morally valuable and morally conditioned in its aim, means, and result. Everything is seen in the light of this highest value; for instance, Rousseau s question concerning civilisation, " Will it make man grow better?" a funny question, for the reverse is obvious, and is a fact which speaks in favour of civilisation.
383. Religious morality. Passion, great desire; the passion for power, love, revenge, and property: the moralists wish to uproot and exterminate all these things, and " purify " the soul by driving them out of it. The argument is: the passions often lead to disaster therefore, they are evil and ought to be condemned. Man must wring himself free from them, otherwise he cannot be a good man. . . . This is of the same nature as: "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." In this particular case when, with that " bucolic simplicity," the Founder of Christianity recommended a certain practice to His disciples, in the event of sexual excitement, the result would not be only the loss of a parti cular member, but the actual castration of the whole of the man s character. . . . And the same applies to the moral mania, which, instead of insisting upon the control of the passions, sues for 307 their extirpation. Its conclusion always is: only the emasculated man is a good man. Instead of making use of and of economising the great sources of passion, those torrents of the soul which are often so dangerous, overwhelming, and impetuous, morality this most shortsighted and most corrupted of mental attitudes would fain make them dry up.
384. Conquest over the passions? No, not if this is to mean their enfeeblement and annihilation. They must be enlisted in our service: and to this end it may be necessary to tyrannise them a good deal (not as individuals, but as communities, races, etc.). At length we should trust them enough to restore their freedom to them: they love us like good servants, and willingly go wherever our best interests lie.
385. Intolerance on the part of morality is a sign of man s weakness: he is frightened of his own " immorality," he must deny his strongest instincts, because he does not yet know how to use them. Thus the most fruitful quarters of the globe remain uncultivated longest: the power is lack ing that might become master here. . . .
386. There are some very simple peoples and men who believe that continuous fine weather would be 308 a desirable thing: they still believe today in rebus moralibus, that the " good man " alone and nothing else than the " good man " is to be desired, and that the ultimate end of man s evolution will be that only the good man will remain on earth (and that it is only to that end that all efforts should be directed). This is in the highest degree an uneconomical thought; as we have already suggested, it is the very acme of simplicity, and it is nothing more than the expression of the agreeableness which the " good man " creates (he gives rise to no fear, he permits of relaxation, he gives what one is able to take). With a more educated eye one learns to desire exactly the reverse that is to say, an ever greater do-minion of evil, man s gradual emancipa tion from the narrow and aggravating bonds of morality, the growth of power around the greatest forces of Nature, and the ability to enlist the passions in one s service.
387. The whole idea of the hierarchy of passions: as if the only right and normal thing were to be led by reason whereas the passions are abnormal, dangerous, half-animal, and moreover, in so far as their end is concerned, nothing more than desires for pleasure. . . . Passion is deprived of its dignity (i) as if it only manifested itself in an unseemly way and were not necessary and always the motive force, 309 (2) inasmuch as it is supposed to aim at no high purpose merely at pleasure. . . . The misinterpretation of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity, and not a state of relationship between all the various passions and desires; and as though every passion did not possess its quantum of reason. . . .
388. How it was that, under the pressure of the dominion of an ascetic and self-effacing morality, it was precisely the passions love, goodness, pity, even justice, generosity, and heroism, which were necessarily misunderstood? It is the richness of a personality, the fullness of it, its power to flow over and to bestow, its instinctive feeling of ease, and its affirmative attitude towards itself, that creates great love and great sacrifices: these passions proceed from strong and godlike personalism as surely as do the desire to be master, to obtrude, and the inner certainty that one has a right to everything. The opposite views, according to the most accepted notions, are indeed common views; and if one does not stand firmly and bravely on one s legs, one has nothing to give, and it is perfectly useless to stretch out one s hand either to protect or to support others. . . . How was it possible to transform these instincts to such an extent that man could feel that to be of value which is directed against himself, so that he could sacrifice himself for another self! O the 310 psychological baseness and falseness which hither to has laid down the law in the Church and in Church-infected philosophy! If man is thoroughly sinful, then all he can do is to hate himself. As a matter of fact, he ought not to regard even his fellows otherwise than he does himself; the love of man requires a justifi cation, and it is found in the fact that God commanded it. From this it follows that all the natural instincts of man (to love, etc.) appear to him to be, in themselves, prohibited; and that he re-acquires a right to them only after having denied them as an obedient worshipper of God. . . . Pascal, the admirable logician of Christianity, went as far as this let any one examine his relations to his sister. " Not to make one s self loved," seemed Christian to him.
389. Let us consider how dearly a moral canon such as this (" an ideal ") makes us pay. (Its enemies are well? The " egoists.") The melancholy astuteness of self-abasement in Europe (Pascal, La Rochefoucauld) inner en- feeblement, discouragement, and self-consumption of the non-gregarious man. The perpetual process of laying stress upon mediocre qualities as being the most valuable (modesty in rank and file, Nature converted into an instrument). Pangs of conscience associated with all that 311 is self-glorifying and original: thus follows the unhappiness the gloominess of the world from the standpoint of stronger and better-constituted men! Gregarious consciousness and timorousness transferred to philosophy and religion. Let us leave the psychological impossibility of a purely unselfish action out of consideration!
390. My ultimate conclusion is, that the real man represents a much higher value than the " de sirable " man of any ideal that has ever existed hitherto; that all " desiderata " in regard to man kind have been absurd and dangerous dissipations by means of which a particular kind of man has sought to establish his measures of preservation and of growth as a law for all; that every " desideratum " of this kind which has been made to dominate has reduced man s worth, his strength, and his trust in the future; that the indigence and mediocre intellectuality of man becomes most apparent, even today, when he reveals a desire; that man s ability to fix values has hitherto been developed too inadequately to do justice to the actual, not merely to the "desirable," worth of man; that, up to the present, ideals have really been the power which has most slandered man and power, the poisonous fumes which have hung over reality, and which have seduced men to yearn for nonentity. . . . 312 D. A Criticism of the Words: Improving, Perfecting, Elevating.
391. The standard according to which the value of moral valuations is to be determined. The fundamental fact that has been overlooked: The contradiction between "becoming more moral " and the elevation and the strengthening of the type man. Homo natura: The " will to power."
392. Moral values regarded as values of appearance and compared with physiological values.
393. Reflecting upon generalities is always retrograde: the last of the " desiderata " concerning men, for instance, have never been regarded as problems by philosophers. They always postulate the "improvement" of man, quite guilelessly, as though by means of some intuition they had been helped over the note of interrogation following the question, why necessarily " improve "? To what extent is it desirable that man should be more virtuous, or more intelligent, or happier? Granting that nobody yet knows the " wherefore? " of mankind, all such desiderata have no sense whatever; and if one aspires to one of them who knows? perhaps one is frustrating the other. Is an increase of virtue compatible with an increase of intelligence and insight? Dubito: only too often shall I have occasion to show that the reverse is true. Has virtue, as an end, in the strict sense of the word, not always been opposed to happiness hitherto? And again, does it not require misfortune, abstinence, and self-castigation as a necessary means? And if the aim were to arrive at the highest insight, would it not therefore be necessary to renounce all hope of an increase in happiness, and to choose danger, adventure, mistrust, and seduction as a road to enlighten ment? . . . And suppose one will have happiness; maybe one should join the ranks of the "poor in spirit."
394. The wholesale deception and fraud of so-called moral improvement, We do not believe that one man can be another if he is not that other already that is to say, if he is not, as often happens, an accretion of person alities or at least of parts of persons. In this case it is possible to draw another set of actions from him into the foreground, and to drive back " the older man." . . . The man s aspect is altered, but not his actual nature. ... It is but the merest factum brutum that any one should cease from performing certain actions, and the fact allows of the most varied interpretations. Neither does it always follow therefrom that the habit of performing a certain action is entirely arrested, nor that the reasons for that action are dissipated. He whose destiny and abilities make him a criminal never unlearns anything, but is con tinually adding to his store of knowledge: and long abstinence acts as a sort of tonic on his talent. . . . Certainly, as far as society is con cerned, the only interesting fact is that some one has ceased from performing certain actions; and to this end society will often raise a man out of those circumstances which make him able to per form those actions: this is obviously a wiser course than that of trying to break his destiny and his particular nature. The Church, which has done nothing except to take the place of, and to appropriate, the philosophic treasures of antiquity, starting out from another standpoint and wishing to secure a " soul " or the " salvation " of a soul, believes in the expiatory power of punishment, as also in the obliterating power of forgiveness: both of which supposed processes are deceptions due to religious prejudice punishment expiates nothing, forgiveness obliterates nothing; what is done can not be undone. Because some one forgets some thing it by no means proves that something has been wiped out. . . . An action leads to certain consequences, both among men and away from men, and it matters not whether it has met with punishment, or whether it has been "expiated," " forgiven," or " obliterated," it matters not even if the Church meanwhile canonises the man who performed it. The Church believes in things that do not exist, it believes in " Souls "; it believes in "influences" that do not exist in divine influences; it believes in states that do not exist, in sin, redemption, and spiritual salvation: in all things it stops at the surface and is satisfied with signs, attitudes, words, to which it lends an arbitrary interpretation. It possesses a method of counterfeit psychology which is thought out quite systematically.
395. " Illness makes men better," this famous assumption which is to be met with in all ages, and in the mouth of the wizard quite as often as in the mouth and maw of the people, really makes one ponder. In view of discovering whether there is any truth in it, one might be allowed to ask whether there is not perhaps a fundamental relationship between morality and illness? Regarded as a whole, could not the " improvement of mankind " that is to say, the unquestionable softening, humanising, and taming which the European has undergone within the last two centuries be regarded as the result of a long course of secret and ghastly suffering, failure, abstinence, and grief? Has illness made " Euro peans " " better "? Or, put into other words, is not our modern soft-hearted European morality, which could be likened to that of the Chinese, perhaps an expression of physiological deteriora tion? ... It cannot be denied, for instance, that wherever history shows us " man " in a state of particular glory and power, his type is always dangerous, impetuous, and boisterous, and cares little for humanity; and perhaps, in those cases in which it seems otherwise, all that was required was the courage or subtlety to see sufficiently below the surface in psychological matters, in order even in them to discover the general pro position: " the more healthy, strong, rich, fruitful, and enterprising a man may feel, the more immoral he will be as well." A terrible thought, to which one should on no account give way. Pro vided, however, that one take a few steps forward with this thought, how wondrous does the future then appear! What will then be paid for more dearly on earth, than precisely this very thing which we are all trying to promote, by all means in our power the humanising, the improving, and the increased " civilisation " of man? Noth ing would then be more expensive than virtue: for by means of it the world would ultimately be turned into a hospital: and the last conclusion of wisdom would be, " everybody must be everybody else s nurse." Then we should certainly have attained to the " Peace on earth," so long desired! But how little "joy we should find in each other s company "! How little beauty, wanton spirits, daring, and danger! So few " actions " which would make life on earth worth living! Ah! and no longer any " deeds "! But have not all the great things and deeds which have re mained fresh in the memory of men, and which have not been destroyed by time, been immoral in the deepest sense of the word? . . .
396. The priests and with them the half-priests or philosophers of all ages have always called that doctrine true, the educating influence of which was a benevolent one or at least seemed so that is to say, tended to " improve." In this way they resemble an ingenuous plebeian empiric and miracle-worker who, because he had tried a certain poison as a cure, declared it to be no poison. " By their fruits ye shall know them " that is to say, " by our truths." This has been the reasoning of priests until this day. They have squandered their sagacity, with results that have been sufficiently fatal, in order to make the " proof of power " (or the proof " by the fruits ") pre-eminent and even supreme arbiter over all other forms of proof. " That which makes good must be good; that which is good cannot lie "- these are their inexorable conclusions " that which bears good fruit must consequently be true; there is no other criterion of truth." . . . But to the extent to which " improving " acts as an argument, deteriorating must also act as a refuta tion. The error can be shown to be an error, by examining the lives of those who represent it: a false step, a vice can refute. . . . This indecent form of opposition, which comes from below and behind the doglike kind of attack, has not died out either. Priests, as psychologists, never dis covered anything more interesting than spying out the secret vices of their adversaries they prove Christianity by looking about for the world s filth. They apply this principle more particu larly to the greatest on earth, to the geniuses: readers will remember how Goethe has been attacked on every conceivable occasion in Ger many (Klopstock and Herder were among the first to give a " good example " in this respect- birds of a feather flock together).
397. One must be very immoral in order to make people moral by deeds. The moralist s means are the most terrible that have ever been used; he who has not the courage to be an immoralist in deeds may be fit for anything else, but not for the duties of a moralist. Morality is a menagerie; it assumes that iron bars may be more useful than freedom, even for the creatures it imprisons; it also assumes that there are animal-tamers about who do not shrink from terrible means, and who are acquainted with the use of red-hot iron. This terrible species, which enters into a struggle with the wild animal, is called " priests." * Man, incarcerated in an iron cage of errors, has become a caricature of man; he is sick, emaciated, ill-disposed towards himself, filled with a loathing of the impulses of life, filled with a mistrust of all that is beautiful and happy in life in fact, he is a wandering monument of misery. How shall we ever succeed in vindicating this phenomenon this artificial, arbitrary, and recent mis carriage the sinner which the priests have bred on their territory? * In order to think fairly of morality, we must put two biological notions in its place: the taming of the wild beasts, and the rearing of a particular species. The priests of all ages have always pretended that they wished to " improve" . . . But we, of another persuasion, would laugh if a lion-tamer ever wished to speak to us of his " improved " animals. As a rule, the taming of a beast is only achieved by deteriorating it: even the moral man is not a better man; he is rather a weaker member of his species. But he is less harm ful. . . .
398. What I want to make clear, with all the means in my power, is: (a) That there is no worse confusion than that which confounds rearing and taming: and these two things have always been confused. . . . Rearing, as I understand it, is a means of hus banding the enormous powers of humanity in such a way that whole generations may build upon the foundations laid by their progenitors not only outwardly, but inwardly, organically, developing from the already existing stem and growing stronger. . . . ($) That there is an exceptional danger in believing that mankind as a whole is developing and growing stronger, if individuals are seen to grow more feeble and more equally mediocre. Humanity mankind is an abstract thing: the object of rearing, even in regard to the most individual cases, can only be the strong man (the man who has no breeding is weak, dissipated, and unstable).
6. CONCLUDING REMARKS CONCERNING THE CRITICISM OF MORALITY.
399. These are the things I demand of you how ever badly they may sound in your ears: that you subject moral valuations themselves to criticism. That you should put a stop to your instinctive moral impulse which in this case demands submission and not criticism with the question: " why precisely submission? " That this yearning for a " why? " for a criticism of morality should not only be your present form of morality, but the sublimest of all moralities, and an honor to the age you live in. That your honesty, your will, may give an account of itself, and not deceive you: " why not? " Before what tribunal?
400. The three postulates: All that is ignoble is high (the protest of the " vulgar man "). All that is contrary to Nature is high (the protest of the physiologically botched). 321 All that is of average worth is high (the pro test of the herd, of the " mediocre "). Thus in the history of morality a will to power finds expression, by means of which, either the slaves, the oppressed, the bungled and the botched, those that suffer from themselves, or the mediocre, attempt to make those valuations prevail which favour their existence. From a biological standpoint, therefore, the phenomenon Morality is of a highly suspicious nature. Up to the present, morality has developed at the cost of: the ruling classes and their specific instincts, the well - constituted and beautiful natures, the independent and privileged classes in all respects. Morality, then, is a sort of counter-movement opposing Nature s endeavours to arrive at a higher type. Its effects are: mistrust of life in general (in so far as its tendencies are felt to be immoral), hostility towards the senses (inasmuch as the highest values are felt to be opposed to the higher instincts), Degeneration and self-destruc tion of " higher natures," because it is precisely in them that the conflict becomes conscious.
401. Which values have been paramount hitherto? Morality as the leading value in all phases of philosophy (even with the Sceptics). Result: this world is no good, a " true world " must exist somewhere. What is it that here determines the highest . X value? What, in sooth, is morality? The instinct of decadence; it is the exhausted and the dis inherited who take their revenge in this way and play the masters. . . . Historical proof: philosophers have always been decadents and always in the pay of Nihilistic religions. The instinct of decadence appears as the will to power. The introduction of its system of means: its means are absolutely immoral. General aspect: the values that have been highest hitherto have been a special instance of the will to power; morality itself is a particular instance of immorality. * Why the Antagonistic Values always succumbed. 1. How was this actually possible! Question: why did life and physiological well-constitutedness succumb everywhere? Why was there no affirma tive philosophy, no affirmative religion? The historical signs of such movements: the pagan religion. Dionysos versus the Christ. The Renaissance. Art. 2. The strong and the weak: the healthy and the sick; the exception and the rule. There is no doubt as to who is the stronger. , o General view of history; Is man an exception in the history of life on this account? An objection to Darwinism. The means wherewith the weak suc ceed in ruling have become: instincts, " humanity," "institutions." . . . 3. The proof of this rule on the part of the 323 weak is to be found in our political instincts, in our social values, in our arts, and in our science. * The instincts of decadence have become master of the instincts of ascending life. . . . The will to nonentity has prevailed over the will to life Is this true? is there not perhaps a stronger guarantee of life and of the species in this victory of the weak and the mediocre? is it not perhaps only a means in the collective movement of life, a mere slackening of the pace, a protective measure against something even more dangerous? Suppose the strong were masters in all respects, even in valuing: let us try and think what their attitude would be towards illness, suffering, and sacrifice! Self -contempt on the part of the weak would be the result: they would do their utmost to disappear and to extirpate their kind. And would this be desirable! should we really like a world in which the subtlety, the consideration, the intellectuality, the plasticity in fact, the whole influence of the weak was lacking? * . . . * * TRANSLATOR S NOTE. We realize here the great differ ence between Nietzsche and those who draw premature con clusions from Darwinism. There is no brutal solution of modern problems in Nietzsche s philosophy. He did not advocate anything so ridiculous as the total suppression of the weak and the degenerate. What he wished to resist and to overthrow was their supremacy, their excessive power. He felt that there was a desirable and stronger type which was in need of having its hopes, aspirations, and instincts upheld in defiance of Christian values. We have seen two " wills to power " at war (in this special case we had a principle: that of agree ing with the one that has hitherto succumbed, and of disagreeing with the one that has hitherto triumphed): we have recognized the " real world " as a " world of lies" and morality as a form of immorality. We do not say "the stronger is wrong." We have understood what it is that has deter mined the highest values hitherto, and why the latter should have prevailed over the opposite value: it was numerically the stronger, If we now purify the opposite "value of the in fection, the half-heartedness, and the degeneration with which we identify it, we restore Nature to the throne, free from moralic acid.
402. Morality, a useful error; or, more clearly still, a necessary and expedient lie according to the greatest and most impartial of its supporters.
403. One ought to be able to acknowledge the truth up to that point where one is sufficiently elevated no longer to require the disciplinary school of moral error. When one judges life morally, it disgusts one. Neither should false personalities be invented; one should not say, for instance, " Nature is cruel." It is precisely when one perceives that there is no 325 such central controlling and responsible force that one is relieved! Evolution of man. A. He tried to attain to a certain power over Nature and over himself. (Morality was necessary in order to make man triumph in his struggle with Nature and " wild animals.") B. If power over Nature has been attained, this power can be used as a help in our development: Will to Power as a self-enhancing and self-strengthening principle.
404. Morality may be regarded as the illusion of a species, fostered with the view of urging the individual to sacrifice himself to the future, and seemingly granting him such a very great value, that with that self-consciousness he may tyrannise over, and constrain, other sides of his nature, and find it difficult to be pleased with himself. We ought to be most profoundly thankful for what morality has done hitherto: but now it is no more than a burden which may prove fatal. Morality itself in the form of honesty urges us to deny moralfty.
405. To what extent is the self-destruction of morality still a sign of its own strength? We Europeans have within us the blood of those who were ready to die for their faith; we have taken morality frightfully seriously, and there is nothing which we have not, at one time, sacrificed to it. On the other hand, our intellectual subtlety has been reached essentially through the vivisection of our consciences. We do not yet know the " whither " towards which we are urging our steps, now that we have departed from the soil of our forebears. But it was on this very soil that we acquired the strength which is now driving us from our homes in search of adventure, and it is thanks to that strength that we are now in mid-sea, surrounded by untried possibilities and things undiscovered we can no longer choose, we must be conquerors, now that we have no land in which we feel at home and in which we would fain " survive." A concealed "yea " is driving us forward, and it is stronger than all our " nays." Even our strength no longer bears with us in the old swampy land: we venture out into the open, we attempt the task. The world is still rich and undiscovered, and even to perish were better than to be half-men or poisonous men. Our very strength itself urges us to take to the sea; there where all suns have hitherto sunk we know of a new world.
III.
i. GENERAL REMARKS.
406. LET us rid ourselves of a few superstitions which heretofore have been fashionable among philosophers!
407. Philosophers are prejudiced against appearance, change, pain, death, the things of the body, the senses, fate, bondage, and all that which has no purpose. In the first place, they believe in: absolute knowledge, (2) in knowledge for its own sake, (3) in virtue and happiness as necessarily related, (4) in the recognisability of men s acts. They are led by instinctive determinations of values, in which former cultures are reflected (more danger ous cultures too).
408. What have philosophers lacked"} (i) A sense of history, (2) a knowledge of physiology, (3) a goal in the future. The ability to criticise without irony or moral condemnation.
409. Philosophers have had (i) from times im memorial a wonderful capacity for the contradictio in adjecto, (2) they have always trusted concepts as unconditionally as they have mistrusted the senses: it never seems to have occurred to them that notions and words are our inheritance of past ages in which thinking was neither very clear nor very exact. What seems to dawn upon philosophers last of all: that they must no longer allow themselves to be presented with concepts already conceived, nor must they merely purify and polish up those con cepts; but they must first make them, create them, themselves, and then present them and get people to accept them. Up to the present, people have trusted their concepts generally, as if they had been a wonderful dowry from some kind of wonderland: but they constitute the inheritance of our most remote, most foolish, and most intelli gent forefathers. This piety towards that which already exists in us is perhaps related to the moral element in science. What we needed above all is absolute scepticism towards all traditional concepts (like that which a certain philosopher may already have possessed and he was Plato, of course: for he taught the reverse]. 29
410. Profoundly mistrustful towards the dogmas of the theory of knowledge, I liked to look now out of this window, now out of that, though I took good care not to become finally fixed anywhere, indeed I should have thought it dangerous to have done so though finally: is it within the range of probabilities for an instrument to criticise its own fitness? What I noticed more particu larly was, that no scientific scepticism or dog matism has ever arisen quite free from all arrieres pense"es that it has only a secondary value as soon as the motive lying immediately behind it is discovered. Fundamental aspect: Kant s, Hegel s, Schopen hauer s, the sceptical and epochistical, the histori- fying and the pessimistic attitudes all have a moral origin. I have found no one who has dared to criticise the moral valuations, and I soon turned my back upon the meagre attempts that have been made to describe the evolution of these feelings (by English and German Darwinians). How can Spinoza s position, his denial and repudiation of the moral values, be explained? (It was the result of his Theodicy !)
411. Morality regarded as the highest form of protection. Our world is either the work and expression (the modus} of God, in which case it must be in the highest degree perfect (Leibnitz s 33O conclusion . . .), and no one doubted that he knew what perfection must be like, and then all evil can only be apparent (Spinoza is more radical he says this of good and evil), or it must be a part of God s high purpose (a consequence of a particu larly great mark of favour on God s part, who thus allows man to choose between good and evil: the privilege of being no automaton; " freedom," with the ever-present danger of making a mistake and of choosing wrongly. . . . See Simplicius, for instance, in the commentary to Epictetus). Or our world is imperfect; evil and guilt are real, determined, and are absolutely inherent to its being; in that case it cannot be the real world: consequently knowledge can only be a way of denying the world, for the latter is error which may be recognized as such. This is Schopenhauer s opinion, based upon Kantian first principles. Pascal was still more desperate: he thought that even knowledge must be corrupt and false- that revelation is a necessity if only in order to recognise that the world should be denied. . . .
412. Owing to our habit of believing in uncondi tional authorities, we have grown to feel a profound need for them: indeed, this feeling is so strong that, even in an age of criticism such as Kant s was, it showed itself to be superior to the need for criticism, and, in a certain sense, was able to subject the whole work of critical acumen, and to convert it to its own use. It proved its 31 superiority once more in the generation which followed, and which, owing to its historical instincts, naturally felt itself drawn to a relative view of all authority, when it converted even the Hegelian philosophy of evolution (history re- christened and called philosophy) to its own use, and represented history as being the self-revela tion and self-surpassing of moral ideas. Since Plato, philosophy has lain under the dominion of morality. Even in Plato s predecessors, moral interpretations play a most important role (Anaxi- mander declares that all things are made to perish as a punishment for their departure from pure being; Heraclitus thinks that the regularity of phenomena is a proof of the morally correct character of evolution in general).
413. The progress of philosophy has been hindered most seriously hitherto through the influence of moral arrieres-pensees.
414. In all ages, " fine feelings " have been regarded as arguments, " heaving breasts " have been the bellows of godliness, convictions have been the " criteria " of truth, and the need of opposition has been the note of interrogation affixed to wisdom. This falseness and fraud permeates the whole history of philosophy. But for a few- respected sceptics, no instinct for intellectual uprightness is to be found anywhere. Finally, 332 Kant guilelessly sought to make this thinker s corruption scientific by means of his concept, " practical reason? He expressly invented a reason which, in certain cases, would allow one not to bother about reason that is to say, in cases where the heart s desire, morality, or " duty " are the motive power.
415. Hegel: his popular side, the doctrine of war and of great men. Right is on the side of the victorious: he (the victorious man) stands for the progress of mankind. His is an attempt at proving the dominion of morality by means of history. Kant: a kingdom of moral values withdrawn from us, invisible, real. Hegel: a demonstrable process of evolution, the actualisation of the kingdom of morality. We shall not allow ourselves to be deceived either in Kant s or Hegel s way: We no longer believe, as they did, in morality, and therefore have no philosophies to found with the view of justify ing morality. Criticism and history have no charm for us in this respect: what is their charm, then?
416. The importance of German philosophy (Hegel), the thinking out of a kind of pantheism which would not reckon evil, error, and suffering as arguments against godliness. This grand initia tive was misused by the powers that were (State, 33 etc.) to sanction the rights of the people that happened to be paramount. Schopenhauer appears as a stubborn opponent of this idea; he is a moral man who, in order to keep in the right concerning his moral valuation, finally becomes a denier of the world. Ultimately he becomes a " mystic." I myself have sought an (Esthetic justification of the ugliness in this world. I regarded the desire for beauty and for the persistence of certain forms as a temporary preservative and recupera tive measure: what seemed to me to be funda mentally associated with pain, however, was the eternal lust of creating and the eternal compulsion to destroy. We call things ugly when we look at them with the desire of attributing some sense, some new sense, to what has become senseless: it is the accumulated power of the creator which compels him to regard what has existed hitherto as no longer acceptable, botched, worthy of being sup pressed ugly!
417. My first solution of the problem; Dionysian wisdom. The joy in the destruction of the most noble thing, and at the sight of its gradual undoing, regarded as the joy over what is coming and what lies in the future, which triumphs over actual things, however good they may be. Dionysian: temporary identification with the principle of life (voluptuousness of the martyr included). My innovations. The Development of Pessimism: intellectual pessimism; moral criticism, the dissolution of the last comfort. Knowledge, a sign of decay, veils by means of an illusion all strong action; isolated culture is unfair and therefore strong. (1) My fight against decay and the increas ing weakness of personality. I sought a new centrum. (2) The impossibility of this endeavour is recognized. (3) I therefore travelled farther along the road of dissolution and along it I found new sources of strength for individuals. We must be destroyers. I perceived that the state of dissolution is one in which individual beings are able to arrive at a kind of perfection not possible hitherto, it is an image and isolated example of life in general. To the paralysing feeling of general dissolution and imperfec tion, I opposed the Eternal Recurrence.
418. People naturally seek the picture of life in that philosophy which makes them most cheerful that is to say, in that philosophy which gives the highest sense of freedom to their strongest instinct. This is probably the case with me.
419. German philosophy, as a whole, Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, to mention the greatest, is the most out-and-out form of romanticism and home-sickness that has ever yet existed: it is a yearning for the best that has ever been known on earth. One is at home nowhere; that which is ultimately yearned after is a place where one can somehow feel at home; because one has been at home there before, and that place is the Greek world! But it is precisely in that direction that airbridges are broken down saveoji course, thlTrainbow of concepts! And the latter lead everywhere, to all the homes and " fatherlands " that ever existed for Greek souls! Certainly, one must be very light and thin in order to cross these bridges! But what happiness lies even in this desire for spirituality, almost for ghostliness! With it, how far one is from the " press and bustle " and the mechanical boorish- ness of the natural sciences, how far from the vulgar din of " modern ideas "! One wants toget back to the Greeks via the Fathers of the Church, from NortrTTo South, from formulae to forms;" the passage out of antiquity Christianity is still a source of joy as a means of access to antiquity, as a portion of the old world itself, as a glistening mosaic of ancient concepts and ancient valuations. Arabesques, scroll-work, rococo of scholastic abstractions always better, that is to say, finer and more slender, than the peasant and plebeian reality of Northern Europe, and still a protest on the part of higher intellectuality against the peasant war and insurrection of the mob which have become master of the intellectual taste of Northern Europe, and which had its leader in a man as great and unintellectual as Luther: in 336 this respect German philosophy belongs to the Counter-Reformation, it might even be looked upon as related to the Renaissance, or at least to the will to Renaissance, the will to get ahead with the discovery of antiquity, with the excavation of ancient philosophy, and 1 above all of pre-Socratic philosophy the most thoroughly dilapidated of all Greek temples! Possibly, in a few hundred years, people will be of the opinion that all German philosophy derived its dignity from this fact, that step by step it attempted to reclaim the soil of antiquity, and that therefore all demands for " originality " must appear both petty and foolish when compared with Germany s higher claim to having refastened the bonds which seemed for ever rent the bonds which bound us to the Greeks, the highest type of " men " ever evolved hitherto. Today we are once more approach ing all the fundamental principles of the cosmogony which the Greek mind in Anaximander, Hera- clitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus, and Anaxagoras, was responsible for. Day by day we are growing more Greek; at first, as is only natural, the change remains confined to concepts and valuations, and we hover around like Grecis- ing spirits: but it is to be hoped that some day our body will also be involved! Here lies (and has always lain) my hope for the German nation.
420. I do not wish to convert anybody to philosophy: it is both necessary and perhaps desirable that the 37 philosopher should be a rare plant. Nothing is more repugnant to me than the scholarly praise of philosophy which is to be found in Seneca and Cicero. Philosophy has not much in common with virtue. I trust I may be allowed to say that even the scientific man is a fundamentally different person from the philosopher. What I most desire is, that the genuine notion " philosopher " should not completely perish in Germany. There are so many incomplete creatures in Germany already who would fain conceal their ineptitude beneath such noble names.
421. I must set up the highest ideal of a philosopher. Learning is not everything! The scholar is the sheep in the kingdom of learning; he studies be cause he is told to do so, and because others have done so before him.
422. The superstition concern in g philosophers They are confounded with men of science. As if the value of things were inherent in them and required only to be held on to tightly! To what extent are their researches carried on under the influence of values which already prevail (their hatred of appearance of the body, etc.)? Schopenhauer concerning morality (scorn of Utilitarianism). Ultimately the confusion goes so far that Darwinism is regarded as philosophy, and thus at the present day power has gone over to the men of science. Even Frenchmen like Taine prosecute . Y research, or mean to prosecute research, without being already in possession of a standard of valuation. Prostration before " facts " of a kind of cult. As a matter of fact, they destroy the existing valuations. The explanation of this misunderstanding. The man who is able to command is a rare phenomenon; he misinterprets himself. What one wants to do, above all, is to disclaim all authority and to attribute it to circumstances. In Germany the critic s estimations belong to the history of awakening manhood. Lessing, etc. (Napoleon concerning Goethe). As a matter of fact, the movement is again made retrograde owing to German romanticism: and the fame of German philosophy relies upon it as if it dissipated the danger of scepticism and could demonstrate faith. Both tendencies culminate in Hegel: at bottom, what he did was to generalise the fact of German criticism and the fact of German romanticism, a kind of dialectical fatalism, but to the honor of intellectuality, with the actual submission of the philosopher to reality. The critic prepares the way: that is all! With Schopenhauer the philosopher s mission dawns; it is felt that the object is to determine values; still under the dominion of eudemonism. The ideal of Pessimism.
423. Theory and practice. This is a pernicious dis tinction, as if there were an instinct of knowledge, 39 which, without inquiring into the utility or harm- fulness of a thing, blindly charged at the truth; and then that, apart from this instinct, there were the whole world of practical interests. In contradiction of this, I try to show what instincts are active behind all these pure theorists, and how the latter, as a whole, under the dominion of their instincts, fatally make for some thing which to their minds is " truth," to their minds and only to their minds. The struggle between systems, together with the struggle between epistemological scruples, is one which involves very special instincts (forms of vitality, of decline, of classes, of races, etc.). The so-called thirst for knowledge may be traced to the lust of appropriation and of conquest: in obedience to this lust the senses, memory, and the instincts, etc., were developed. The quickest possible reduction of the phenomena, economy, the accumulation of spoil from the world of know ledge (i.e. that portion of the world which has been appropriated and made manageable). . . . Morality is therefore such a curious science, because it is in the highest degree practical: the purely scientific position, scientific uprightness, is thus immediately abandoned, as soon as morality calls for replies to its questions. Morality says: I require certain answers reasons, arguments; scruples may come afterwards, or they may not come at all. " How must one act? " If one considers that one is dealing with a supremely evolved type a type which has been " dealt with " for countless thousands of years, and in which everything has become instinct, expediency, automatism, fatality, the urgency of this moral question seems rather funny. " How must one act? " Morality has always been a subject of misunderstanding: as a matter of fact, a certain species, which was constituted to act in a certain way, wished to justify itself by making its norm paramount. " How must one act? " this is not a cause, but an effect. Morality follows, the ideal comes first. . . . On the other hand, the appearance of moral scruples (or in other words, the coming to conscious ness of the values which guide action) betray a certain morbidness; strong ages and people do not ponder over their rights, nor over the principles of action, over instinct or over reason. Conscious ness is a sign that the real morality that is to say, the certainty of instinct which leads to a definite course of action is going to the dogs. . . . Every time a new world of consciousness is created, the moralists are signs of a lesion, of impoverishment and of disorganization. Those who are deeply instinctive fear bandying words over duties: among them are found pyrrhonic opponents of dialectics and of knowableness in general. ... A virtue is refuted with a " for." . . . Thesis: The appearance of moralists belongs to periods when morality is declining. Thesis: The moralist is a dissipator of moral instincts, however much he may appear to be their restorer. 41 Thesis: That which really prompts the action of a moralist is not a moral instinct, but the instincts of decadence, translated into the forms of morality (he regards the growing uncertainty of the instincts as corruption). Thesis: The instincts of decadence which, thanks to moralists, wish to become master of the in stinctive morality of stronger races and ages, are: (1) The instincts of the weak and of the botched; (2) The instincts of the exceptions, of the anchorites, of the unhinged, of the abortions of quality or of the reverse; (3) The instincts of the habitually suffering, who require a noble interpretation of their condition, and who therefore require to be as poor physi ologists as possible.
424. The humbug of the scientific spirit. One should not affect the spirit of science, when the time to be scientific is not yet at hand; but even the genuine investigator has to abandon vanity, and has to affect a certain kind of method which is not yet seasonable. Neither should we falsify things and thoughts, which we have arrived at differently, by means of a false arrangement of deduction and dialectics. It is thus that Kant in his " morality " falsifies his inner tendency to psychology; a more modern example of the same thing is Herbert Spencer s Ethics. A man should neither conceal nor misrepresent the facts concerning the way in which he conceived his 54. thoughts. The deepest and most inexhaustible books will certainly always have something of the and impetuous character of Pascal s The motive forces and valuations have lain long below the surface; that which comes uppermost is their effect. 1 guard against all the humbug of a false sefcntinc spirit: (1) In respect of the manner of .ftmnuftufiin, if it does not correspond to the rro of the thoughts; (2) In respect of the demands far MrtftM& which, at a given period in science, may be quite impossible; (3) In respect of the demand for tiyertnxtr, far cold impersonal treatment, where, as in the case of all valuations, we describe ourselves and our intimate experiences in a couple of words. There are ludicrous forms of vanity, as, for instance, Saaate-Beuve s. He actually worried himself all his life bctMBie- he had shown some warmth or passion either " no "or * amf and he would fain have led that fact out of his life. *
425. Objectivity in the philosopher: moral indifference in regard to one's self, blindness in regard to either favourable or fetal circumstances, Un- scrupuloasness in the use of dangerous means: peiveufcy and complexity of character considered as an advantage and exploited. My ptofonad iuJUfaeace to myself: I refuse to derive any advantage from my knowledge, nor do I wish to escape any disadvantages which it may entail. I include among these disadvantages that which is called the perversion of character; this prospect is beside the point: I use my char acter, but I try neither to understand it nor to change it the personal calculation of virtue has not entered my head once. It strikes me that one closes the doors of knowledge as soon as one becomes interested in one s own personal case or even in the " Salvation of one s soul "! . . . One should not take one s morality too seriously, nor should one forfeit a modest right to the opposite of morality. . . . A sort of heritage of morality is perhaps pre supposed here: one feels that one can be lavish with it and fling a great deal of it out of the window without materially reducing one s means. One is never tempted to admire " beautiful souls," one always knows one s self to be their superior. The monsters of virtue should be met with inner scorn; deniaiser la vertu Oh, the joy of it! One should revolve round one s self, have no desire to be " better " or " anything else " at all than one is. One should be too interested to omit throwing the tentacles or meshes of every mor ality out to things.
426. Concerning the psychology of philosophers. They should be psychologists this was possible only from the nineteenth century onwards and no longer little Jack Homers, who see three or four feet in front of them, and are almost satisfied to burrow inside themselves. We psychologists of the future are not very intent on self-contempla tion: we regard it almost as a sign of degeneration when an instrument endeavours " to know itself": * we are instruments of knowledge and we would fain possess all the precision and ingenuousness of an instrument consequently we may not analyse or " know " ourselves. The first sign of a great psychologist s self-preservative instinct: he never goes in search of himself, he has no eye, no interest, no inquisitiveness where he himself is concerned. . . . The great egoism of our dominating will insists on our completely shutting our eyes to ourselves, and on our appearing " impersonal, " " disinterested "! Oh to what a ridiculous degree we are the reverse of this! We are no Pascals, we are not particularly in terested in the " Salvation of the soul," in our own happiness, and in our own virtue. We have neither enough time nor enough curiosity to be so con cerned with ourselves. Regarded more deeply, the case is again different, we thoroughly mistrust all men who thus contemplate their own navels: be cause introspection seems to us a degenerate form of the psychologist s genius, as a note of interroga tion affixed to the psychologist s instinct: just as a painter s eye is degenerate which is actuated by the will to see for the sake of seeing. * TRANSLATOR S NOTE. Goethe invariably inveighed against the " yvS6i. vfavrov " of the Socratic school; he was of the opinion that an animal which tries to see its inner self must be sick.
2. A CRITICISM OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
427. The apparition of Greek philosophers since the time nfjnrrateft i* a symptom, of decadence; the instincts become-parainount. The " Sophist " Js still quite Hellenic as are also Anaxagoras, Democritus, and the great lonians; but only as transitional forms. The polis loses its faith in the unity of its culture, in its rights of dominion over every "ofHer polls. 7TT ultttresytfiaT is to say7 T He gods," are exchanged, and thus the belief in the exclusive prerogative of the deus autochthonus is lost. Good and Evil of whatever origin get mixed: the boundaries separ ating good from evil gradually vanish. . . . This is the " Sophist." . . . On the other hand, the " philosopher " is the reactionary: he insists upon the old virtues. He" sees the reason of decay in fHe decay~of~tnstitu- tions: he therefore wishes to revive old institutions; he sees decay in the decline of authority: he therefore endeavours to find new authorities (he travels abroad, explores foreign literature and exotic religions. . . .); he will reinstate the ideal polis, after the concept " polis " has become super annuated (just as the Jews kept themselves to gether as a " people " after they had fallen into slavery). They b_ecpme_interested in all tyrants: their desire is to re-establish virtue with force majeure. 346 Gradually_every thing- genuinely Hellenic is held responsible for the state of decay (and Plato is just as ungrateful to Pericles, Homer, tragedy, and rhetoric as the prophets are to David and Saul). [The downfall of Greece is conceived as an objection }to the fundamental principles of Hellenic culture; the profound error of philosophers. Conclusion: the Greek world perishes. The cause thereof: Homer, mythology, ancient morality, etc. The fl#V-Hellenic development of philosophers valuations: the Egyptian influence (" Life after death " made into law. . . .); the Semitic influence (the " dignity of the sage," the " Sheik "); the Pythagorean influence, the subterranean cults, Silence, means of terrorisation consisting of appeals to a " Beyond," mathematics: the religious valua tion consisting of a sort of intimacy with a cosmic entity; the sacerdotal, ascetic, and transcendental influences; the dialectical influence, I am of opinion that even Plato already betrays revolting and pedantic meticulousness in his concepts! Decline of good intellectual taste: the hateful noisiness of every kind of direct dialectics seems no longer to be felt. The two decadent tendencies and extremes run side by side: (a) the luxuriant and more charming kind of decadence which shows a love of pomp and art, and the gloomy kind, with its religious and moral pathos, its stoical self-hardening tendency, its Platonic denial of the senses, and its preparation of the soil for the coming of Christianity.
428. To what extent psychologists have been cor rupted by the moral idiosyncrasy! Not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage to advance the theory of the non-free will (that is to say, the theory that denies morality); not one had the courage to identify the typical feature of happiness, of every kind of happiness (" pleasure "), with the will to power: for the pleasure of power was considered immoral; not one had the courage to regard virtue as a result of immorality (as a result of a will to power) in the service of a species (or of a race, or of a0); for the will to power was considered immoral. In the whole of moral evolution, there is no sign of truth: all the conceptual elements which come into play are fictions; all the psychological tenets are false; all the forms of logic employed in this department of prevarication are sophisms. The chief feature of all moral philosophers is their total lack of intellectual cleanliness and self-control: they regard " fine feelings " as arguments: their heaving breasts seem to them the bellows of godliness. . . . Moral philosophy is the most suspicious period in the history of the human intellect. The first great example: in the name of morality and under its patronage, a great wrong was committed, which as a matter of fact was in every respect an act of decadence. Sufficient stress cannot be laid upon this fact, that the great Greek philosophers not only represented the-4eadencc Gi-evet~kmd~of-.Greek ability, but also mzfajtjxmtag-ious. . . . This " virtue " made Whdllyabstract was the highest form of seduction; to make oneself abstract means to turn one s back on the world. The moment is a very remarkable one: -the . Sophists .are, withiiusight of the first rriticismof morality, the_first knowledge of morality: they classify the majority of moFal valuations (in view of their dependence upon local conditions) together; they lead one to understand_thatevery form of morality is capable" of belrTgupJheld dialectically?: that isrtcT say, they guessed that all the funefa- -men1sri~rjriTTc1pTeir ofa morality must Jx a propositiorr-whrch "wasafter wards proved in the grandest possible style by the ancient philoso phers from Plato onwards (up to Kant); they postulate the primary truth that there is no such thing as a " moral per se" a " good per se" and that it is madness to talk of " truth " in this respect. Wherever was intellectual uprightness to be found in those days? The Greek culture of the Sophists had grown out of all the Greek instincts; it "Belongs to the* culture of the age of Pericles as necessarily as* Plato does noFPit has its predecessorsin Hera- clftus7 Democritus, and irT iFe~scientific types of the old philosophy; it finds expression in the elevated culture of Thucydides, for instance. And FTTaTuliimately shown itseTTto~be right: every step m the science of psychology and morality has confirmed the_attitude of the Sophists. . .~T Our 49 modern attitude of mind is, to a great extent, HeracIItean, Democritean7~and Pro tagoreafTT . . to say that i_s_Protagorean is even sufficient: because Protagoras was in himself a synthesis of the two men Heraclitus and Democritus. (Plato: a great Cagliostro, let us think of how Epicurus judged him; how Timon, Pyrrho s friend, judged him Is Plato s integrity by any chance beyond question? . . . But we at least know what he wished to have taught as absolute truth namely, things which were to him not even relative truths: the separate and immortal life of " souls.")
429. The Sophists _are nothing more nor Jess than realists: they elevate all the values and practices which are common property to the rank of values they have the courage, peculiar to all strong intellects, which consists in knowing their im morality. . . . Is it to be sjjposed_that__these__smallreek independent republics, so filled with rage and envy that. tjiey_woulcT faTn~TTave~o evbured each other, were led by principles_of humanity and honesty? Is Thucydides by any chance reproached with the words he puts into the mouths of the Athenian ambassadors when they were treating with the Melii anent the question of destruction or sub mission? Only the most perfect Tartuffes could have been able to speak of virtue in the midst of that dreadful strain or if not Tartuffes, at least detached philosophers, anchorites, exiles, and fleers 35O from reality. . . . All of them, people who denied things in order to be able to exist. The Sophists were Greeks: when Socrates and Plato adopted.the-xaiise_Qf .virtue and justice, they "were Jews or I know not what. Grate s tactics in the defence of the Sophists are false: he would like to raise them to the rank of men of honor and moralisers but it was their honor not to indulge in any humbug with grand words and virtues.
430. The great reasonableness underlying all moral education lay in the fact that it always attempted to attain to the certainty of an instinct: so that neither good intentions nor good means, as such, first required to enter consciousness. Just as the soldier learns his exercises, so should man learn how to act in life. In truth this unconsciousness belongs to every kind of perfection: even the mathematician carries out his calculations un consciously. . . . What, then, does Socrates reaction mean, which recommended dialectics as the way to virtue, and which was charmed when morality was unaBleT to justify itself logically? But_thjs_is precisely what proves its superiority without unconsciousness it is worth nothing _In_ reaHty_jt means the dissolution of Greek instincts, when demonstrability is posited as Ue first "condition of personal excellence in virtue. All these great " men of virtue " and of words are themselves types of dissolution. 51 In practice, it means that moral judgments have been torn from the conditions among which they grew and in which alone they had some sense, from their Greek and Graeco-political soil, in order to _ be denaturalised under the cover of being made sublime. The great concepts " good " and " just " are divorced from the first principles of which they form a part, and, as " ideas " become free, degenerate into subjects for discussion. A certain truth is sought behind them; they are regarded as entities or as symbols of entities: a world is invented where they are " at home," and from which they are supposed to hail. In short: the scandal reaches its ajpotheosis in Plato. . . . And then it was necessary to invent the perfectly abstract man also: good, just, wise? anoTa dialectician to boot -in short, the scarecrow of Trief ancient philosopher: aplant without any soil whatsoever; a human race devoid of all definite ruling instincts; a virtue which "justifies" itself with reasons. The perlectly absurd " in- dividual "~per seTthe highest form of Artifici ality. . . Briefly, the denaturalisation of moral values resulted in the creation of a degenerate type of man " the good man," " the happy man," " the wise man." Socrates represents a moment of the most profound perversity in the history of values.
431. Socrates. This veering round of Greek taste in favour of dialectics is a great question. What really happened then? Socrates, the roturier who was responsible for it, was thus able to triumph over a more noble taste, the taste of tJie noble:-the mob gets the upper hand along with dialectics. Previous to Socrates dialectic manners were repudiated_in good society; they were re garded as indecent; the youths were warned against them. W T hat was the purpose of this display of reasons? Why demonstrate? Against others one could use authority. One commanded, and that sufficed. Among friends, inter pares, there was tradition also a form of authority: and last but not least, one understood each other. There was no room found for dialectics. Besides, all such modes of presenting reasons were dis trusted. All honest things do not carry their reasons in their hands in such fashion. It is indecent to show all the five fingers at the same time. That which can be " demonstrated " is little worth. The instinct of every party-speaker tells him that dialectics excites mistrust and carries little conviction. Nothing is more easily wiped away than the effect of a dialectician. It can only be a last defence. One must be in an extremity; it is necessary to have to extort one s rights; otherwise one makes no use of dialectics. That is why the Jews were dialecticians, Reynard the Fox was a dialectician, and so was Socrates. As a dialectician a person has a merciless instru ment in his fianil: he can play the tyrant with it; he compromises when He conquers. The fljalgptician leaves if to hiV~<pjntwvj- fr demon strate that hfi_ iajiojLan Jdio4he is made furious 53 and helpless, while the dialectician himself remains calm and still possessed of his triumphant reason ing powers he paralyses hisopponent s jntellect. The dialectician s irony is a form of mob- revenge: the ferocity of the oppressed lies in the cold knife-cuts of the syllogism. . . . In Plato, as in all men of excessive sensuality and wild fancies, the charm of concepts was so great, that he involuntarily honored and deified the concept as a form of ideal. Dialectical intoxi cation: as th consciousness of being able to exercise_cpntrol over one s self by means of it as an instrument of the Will to Power.
432. The problem of Socrates. The two antitheses: ancT &~Socratic spirits measured atcording~to the law ot Lite. T6~ wTiat extent is the Socratic spirit a decadent phenomenon? to what extent are" "robust health" and power still revealed by the whole attitude of the scientific man, his dialectics, his ability, and his severity? (the health of the plebeian; whose malice, esprit frondeur, whose astuteness, whose rascally depths, are held in check by his cleverness; the whole type is " ugly "). Uglification; self-derision, dialectical dryness, intelligence in the form of a tyrant against the " tyrant " (instinct). Everything in Socrates is exaggeration, eccentricity, caricature; he is a buffoon with the blood of Voltaire in his veins. . Z 354 He discovers a new form of agon; he is the first fencing-master in the superior classed of Athens; he stands for nothing else than the higJiest form oj cleverness: he calls it " virtue " (he regarded it as a means of salvation; he did not choose to be clever, cleverness was de rigueur); the proper thing is to control one s self in suchwise that one enters into a struggle not with passions but with reasons as one s weapons (Spinoza s stratagem the unravelment of the errors of passion); it is desirable to discover how every one may be caught once he is goaded into a passion, and to know how illogically passion proceeds; self-mockery is practiced in order to injure the very roots of the feelings of resentment. It is my wish to understand which idiosyncratic states form a part of the Socratic problem: its association of reason, virtue, and happiness. With this absurd doctrine of the identity of these things it succeeded in charming the world: ancient philo sophy could not rid itself of this doctrine. . . . Absolute lack of objective interestj__hatrgd of science: the idiosyncrasy of considering one s self a problem. AcousticnTaWcIna.tions in Socrates: morbid element. When the intellect is ricrrtfnd independent, it most strongly resists preoccupying itself with morality. How is it that Socrates is .a moral-maniac? Every " practical" philosophy immediately steps into the foreground in times of distress. When morality and religion become the chief interests of a com munityneVlire~ signs of a +-9 . a* state of distress.
433. InteXljgHr-lcarncos, hardness, aad._lQgic__ag weapons against the wildness of the instincts. The latter must be dangerous and must threaten ruin, Otherwise no purpose can be served by developing intelligence to this degree of tyranny. In order to mate li tyran7~oT~ intelligence ~ffle instincts must first have proved themselves tyrants. This is the problem. It was a very timely one in those days. Reason became virtue virtue equalled,, happiness. Solution; Greek philosophers stand upon the same fundamental fact of their inner experiences as Socrates does; five feet from excess, from anarchy and from dissolution all decadent men. TKey regard him as a doctor: Logic as will to power, as will to control self, as will to TiappinessT The" wlldhess ancFanarchy of Socrates instincts is a sign of decadencies is also the superfcetation of logic and clear reasoning in him. Both are abnormities, each belongs to the other. Criticism. Decadence reveals itself in this con cern about " happiness " (i.e. about the " salvation of the soul "; i.e. to feel that one s condition is a danger}. Tts_ fanatical interest -- JQ ihappines shows the pathological conditicm of the subcon scious self: it was a vital interest. The alternative "which faced them all was: to be reasonable or to perish. The morality of Greek philosophers shows that they felt they were in danger.
434. Why everything resolved itself into mummery. Rudimentary psychology, which only considered the conscious lapses of men (as causes), which re garded " consciousness " as an attribute of the soul, and which sought a will behind every action (i.e. an intention), could only answer " Happiness " to the question: " What does man desire? " (it was impossible to answer " Power," because that would have been immoral}; consequently behind all men s actions there is the intention of attaining to happiness by means of them. Secondly: if man as a matter of fact does not attain to happi ness, why is it? Because he mistakes the means thereto. What is the unfailing means of acquiring happiness f Answer: virtue. Why virtue? Be cause virtue is supreme rationalness, and rational- ness makes mistakes in the choice of means impossible: virtue in the form of reason is the way to happiness. Dialectics is the constant occupation of virtue, because it does away with passion and intellectual cloudiness. As a matter of fact, man does not desire " happiness." Pleasure is a sensation of power: if the passions are excluded, those states of the mind are also excluded which afford the greatest sensation of power and therefore of pleasure. The highest rationalism is a state of cool clearness, which is very far from being able to bring about that feeling of power which every kind of exalta tion involves. . . . combat everything 57 that intoxicates and exalts everything that im pairs the perfect coolness and impartiality of the mind. . . . They were consistent with their first false principle: that consciousness was the highest, the supreme state of mind, the prerequisite of perfection whereas the reverse is true. . . . Any kind of action is imperfect in proportion as it has been willed or conscious. The philosophers of antiquity were the greatest duffers in practice, because they condemned themselves theoreticaj]y_ to dufferdom. . . 7"Th practice everything resolved itself into theatricalness: and he who saw through it, as Pyrrho did, for instance, thought as every body did that is to say, that in goodness and uprightness " paltry people " were far superior to philosophers. All the deeper natures of antiquity were dis- gusted at the philosophers of vW#?7~alFpeople saw m them was brawlers and actors. (This was the judgment passed on Plato by Epicurus and Pyrrho} Result; In practical life, in patience, goodness, and mutual assistance, paltry people were above them: this is something like the judgment Dostoiewsky or Tolstoy claims for his muzhiks: they are more philosophical in practice, they are more courageous in their way of dealing with the exigencies of life. . . .
435. A criticism of the philosopher. Philosophers and moralists merely deceive themselves when they imagine that they escape from decadence by opposing it. _ That lies beyond their wills: afj d however lyttle they may be aware of the lact. it is generally discovered subsequently_Jhat they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence. ~~IIeFus examine the philosophers of Greece Plato, for instance. He it was who separated the ingtjjrf s fmm te polis, Jrom the love of contest, from military efficiency, from art, beauty, the mysteries, and the___bgli_ef in tradition and in ancestors.. . . He was the seducer ortEeTnbbies: he himself seduces through the roturier Socrates. . . . He denied all the first principles of the " noble Greek " of sterling worth; he made dialectics an everyday practice, conspired with the tyrants, dabbled In politics for~the future, and was jthe e_xa nipple of a man whose instincts were m QSt_ perfec: tly separated from tradition. He is profound and passionate in everything that is One after the other, these great philosophers represent the typical forms of decadence: the moral and religious idiosyncrasy, anarchy, nihilism, (a&idfopa), cynicism, hardening principles, hedon ism, and reaction. The question of " happiness," of " virtue," and of the " salvation of the soul," is the expression of physiological contradictoriness in these declining natures: their instincts lack all balance and purpose.
436. To what extent do dialectics and the faith in reason rest upon moral prejudices? With Plato we are as the temporary inhabitants of an in telligible world of goodness, still in possession of a bequest from former times: divine dialectics taking its root in goodness leads to everything good (it follows, therefore, that it must lead " backwards "). Even Descartes had a notion of the fact that, according to a thoroughly Christian and moral attitude of mind, which includes a belief in a good God as the Creator of all things, the truthfulness of God guarantees the judgments of our senses for us. But for this religious sanction and warrant of our senses and our reason, whence should we obtain our right to trust in existence? That thinking must be a measure of reality, that what cannot be the subject of thought, cannot exist, is a coarse non plus ultra of a moral blind confidence (ih the essential principle of truth at the root of all things); this in itself is a mad assumption which our experience contradicts every minute. We cannot think of anything precisely as it is. ...
437. The real philosophers of Greece are those which came before Socrates (with Socrates something changes). They are all distinguished men, they take their stand away from the people and from usage; they have travelled; they are earnest to the point of sombreness, their eyes are calm, and they are not unacquainted with the business of state and diplomacy. They anticipated all the great concepts which coming sages were to have concerning things in general: they themselves re presented these concepts, they made systems out of themselves. Nothing can g?vi_a higher idea of Greek intellect than tins sudden fruitfulness in typesthan_this involunTary completeness in trie !rawing up of all the~~great possibilities of- the philosophical ideal. I can see_only one original" figure in those that came afterwards: a late arrival but_ jiecessarily the last Pyrrho the" nihilist. His instincts were opposed to the in-" 1 fluences which had become ascendant in the mean time: the Socratic school, Plato, and the artistic optimism of Heraclitus (Pyrrho goes back Q Democritus via Protagoras. . . .) Wise weariness: Pyrrho. To live humbly among the humble. Devoid of pride. To live in the vulgar way; to honor and believe what every one believes. To be on one s guard against science and intellect, and against everything that puffs one out. ... To be simply patient in the extreme, careless and mild; aTrddeia, or, better still, Trpavrrjs. A Buddhist for Greece, bred amid the tumult of the Schools; born after his time"; Aweary; an example ol the protesT against the eagerness of dialectician s the credulity of the tired man m regard to the hn- 61 portance of everything. He had seen Alexander; fie~TTad seen the Indian penitents. To such late- arrfvals aricTcreatures of great subtlety, everything lowly, poor, and idiotic, is seductive. It narcoti- cises: it gives them relaxation (Pascal). On the other hand, they mix with the crowd, and get con founded with the rest. These weary creatures need warmth. . . . To overcome contradiction; to do away with contests; to haye__nowill to excel in any way; fro He.py the Greek instincts? (Pyrrho lived with his sister, who was a midwife.) To rig out wisdom in _such a way that it no longer dis~ tinguishesj to give it the ragged mantle of poverty; "to perform the lowest offices, and to go to market ancl sell sucking-pigs. . . . Sweetness, clearness, IfTdTfference; no need of virtues that require atti tudes; to be equal to all even in virtue: final conquest of one s self, final indifference. _ Pyrrho and Epicurusj - twc_forrns of Greek decadence, they are_relatcd in their hatred of dialectics and all theatrical virtues. These two things together were then Called pKilosopEjTT ~~Pyrrho and Epicurus intentionally held that which they loved in low esteem; they chose common and even contemptible names for it, and they re presented a state in which one is neither ill, healthy, lively, nor dead. . . . Epicurus was more naif, more idyllic, more grateful; Pyrrho had more experience of the world, had travelled more, and was more nihilistic. His life was a protest against_ thejyreat doctrine of Identity = Knowledge). _ The proper way ot living is not promoted by science: wisdom does not make "wise." . . . The proper way ofliving does not desire happiness, it turns away from happiness. . . .
438. The war against the " old faith," as Epicures waged it, was, strictly speaking, a struggle against pre-existing Christianity theTtruggle against a world then already gloomy, moralised, acidified throughout with feelings of guilt, and grown old and sick. Not the " moral corruption " of antiquity, but precisely its moral infectedness was the prerequisite which enabtett~CfTristiamty to" become its master. Moral fanaticism (in short: Plato) destroyed pliganism by trnnsvaluing its values and jpoispning its innocence. We~~6ught at lastto understand {Eat what was then destroyed was higher than what prevailed! Christianity grew on the soil of psychological corruption, and could only take root in rotten ground.
439. Science; as a disciplinary tnj.asure_qr as an instinct. I see a decline of the _in$_titt.cts jrjL_Greek philosophers,;, otherwise they could not have been guilty of the profound error of regarding the conscious state as the more valuable state. The intensity of consciousness stands in the inverse ratio to the ease and speed of cerebral transmis sion. Greek philosophy upheld the opposite view, which is always the sign of weakened instincts. We must, in sooth, seek perfect life there where it is least conscious (that is to say, there where it is least aware of its logic, its reasons, its means, its intentions, and its utility]. The return to the facts of common sense, the facts of the common man and of " paltry people." Honesty and intelli-_ jrence_ stored up forjenerations by people who are quite unconscjousof their principles, and who even have some fear_pf principles It is not reasonable to desire a reasoning virtue. ... A philosopher is compromised by such a desire.
440. When morality that is to say, refinement, prudence, bravery, and equity have been stored up in the same way, thanks to the moral efforts of a whole succession of generations, the collec tive power of this hoard of virtue projects its rays even into that sphere where honesty is most seldom present the sphere of intellect. When a thing becomes conscious, it is the sign of a state of ill-ease in the organism; something new has got to be found, the organism is not satisfied or adapted, it is subject to distress, suspense, and it is hypersensitive precisely all this is consciousness. . . . Geniua__lies_Jn the instincts goodness does too. One only acts perfectly_when one acts in stinctively. Even from the moral point of view air fRInkTng which is conscious is merely a process of groping, and in the majority of cases an attack on morality. Scientific honesty is always sacrificed when a thinker begins to reason: let any one try the experiment: put the wisest man in the balance, and then let him discourse upon morality. . . . It could also be proved that the whole of a man s conscious thinking shows a much lower standard of morality than the thoughts of the same man would show if they were led by his instincts.
441. The struggle against Socrates, Plato, and all the Socratic schools, proceeds from the proTojancT instrnct"tfactt~man is noTTna de ggj? when he is shown that virtue may be demonstrated or based upon reason. . . . This in the encf !s the nig gardly fact, it was the agonal instinct in all these born dialecticians, which drove them to glorify their personal abilities as the highest of all qualities and to represent every other form of goodness as conditioned by them. Q_anti-scientific spirit _xf all this "philosophy it will neytr admit that it-is not right.
442. This is extraordinary. JFrom its very earliest beginnings, Greek philosophy carries on a struggle* against-science with" the weapons of a "tfieory oT. knowledge,jespeciaTIy of scepticism: and why is this? It is always in favour of morality. . . . f Vhysiqgts apfl tnerliraj rnerfare hatedj Socrates. Aristippus, the Megarian school, the Cynics, Epicurus, and .Pyrrho-a generalonslaughtjirjti 65 knowledge in favour of morality. . . . (Hatred of d]alectics_aliQi There is still a problerntobe solved: they approacrisopriistry in order to -be ricTof science. On the other hand, the physicists are subjected to such an extent that, among their first principles, they include the theory of truth and of real being: for instance, the atom, the four elements {juxtaposition of being, in order to explain its multiformity and its transformations). Contempt of objectivity in interests is taught: return to practical interest, and to the personal utility of all knowledge. . . . The struggle against science is directed at: (i) its pathos (objectivity); (2) its means (that is to say, at its utility); (3) its results (which are considered childish). It is the same struggle which is taken up later on by the Church in the name of piety: the Church inherited the whole arsenal of antiquity for her war with science. The theory of knowledge played the same part in the affair as it did in Kant s or the Indians case. There is no desire whatever to be troubled with it, a free hand is wanted for the " purpose " that is envisaged. Against what powers are they actually defend ing themselves? Against dutifulness, against obedience to law, against the compulsion of going hand in hand I believe this is what is called Freedom. . . . This is how decadence manifests itself: the instinct of solidarity is so degenerate that solidarity itself gets to be regarded as tyranny: no authority or solidarity is brooked, nobody any longer 366 desires to fall in with the rank and file, and to adopt its ignobly slow pace. The slow move ment which is the tempo of science is generally hated, as are also the scientific man s indifference in regard to getting on, his long breath, and his impersonal attitude.
443. At bottom, morality is hostileto science: Socrates was so already too and trie reason *ts", that science "CofiEiders" "certain" things important which have no jrelation whatsoever to " good " and " evil," and which therefore reduce the gravity 1SI our feelings concerning "good" and "~evif5" What morality requires is that the whole" of a man should serve it with all his power: it considers it waste on the part of a creature that can ill afford waste, when a man earnestly troubles his head about stars or plants. That is why science very quickly declined in Greece, once Socrates had inoculated scientificjvork with the disease of morality. The mental - attitudes reached by a Democritus, a Hippocrates, and a Thucydides, have "ribT ~15een reacHe"3 a second Jtime.
444. The problem of the philosopher and of the scientific man. The influence of age; depressing Tfabits (sedentary study a la Kant; over-work; inadequate nourishment of the brain; reading). A more essential question still: is it not already perhaps a symptom of decadence when thinking tends to establish generalities? 67 Objectivity regarded as the disintegration of the will (to be able to remain as detached as possible . . .). This presupposes a tremendous adiaphora in regard to the strong passions: a kind of isolation, an exceptional position, opposi tion to the normal passions. Type: desertion of home -country; emigrants go ever greater distances afield; growing exoticism; the voice of the old imperative dies away; and the continual question " whither? " (" happiness ") is a sign of emancipation from forms of organisa tion, a sign of breaking loose from everything. Problem: is the man of science more of a decadeni symptom IHanthe _p_hilosopher? as a whole the scientific man is-noi -xut loose_Jrprn everything, only a part of his being is consecrated exclusively__tp_ the service of Jcnowledge and disciplined to maintain a special attitude and pbihT of view; in his departmentJTiejisr in need of all the virtues of a strong race, of robust health, ol great seventy, maHliness, and gence; He-is Fahcr-~asymptonT~oTThe great multiformity~bf culture thar of~the effetenessbf decadent __ scholar is a Inia scholar. Whereas the decadent philosopher has alway_s_ J3eeji_rje_ckoned_ hitherto_ as the typical ~ philosopher.
445. Among philosophers, nothing is more rare than intellectual uprightness: they perhaps say the very reverse, and even believe it. But the prerequisite of all their work is, that they can only admit of 368 certain truths; they know what they have to prove; and the fact that they must be agreed as to these " truths " is almost what makes them recog nise one another as philosophers. There are, for instance, the truths of morality. But belief in morality is not a proof of morality: there are cases and the philosopher s case is one in point when a belief of this sort is simply a piece of immorality.
446. What is the retrograde factor in a philosopher? He teaches that the qualities which he happens to possess are the only qualities that exist, that they are indispensable to those who wish to attain to the " highest good " (for instance, dialectics with Plato). He would have all men raise themselves, gradating to his type as the highest. He de spises what is generally esteemed by him a gulf is cleft between the highest priestly values and the values of the world. He knows what is true, who God is, what every one s goal should be, and the way thereto. . . . The typical philosopher is . thus an absolute dogmatist; if he requires scepti cism at all it is only in order to be able to speak dogmatically of his principal purpose.
447. When the philosopher is confronted with his rival science, for instance, he becomes a sceptic; then he appropriates a form of knowledge which he denies to the man of science; he goes hand in 69 hand with the priest so that he may not be sus pected of atheism or materialism; he considers an attack made upon himself as an attack upon morals, religion, virtue, and order he knows how to bring his opponents into ill repute by calling them " seducers " and " underminers ": then he marches shoulder to shoulder with power. The philosopher at war with other philosophers: he does his best to compel them to appear like anarchists, disbelievers, opponents of authority. In short, when he rights, he fights exactly like a priest and like the priesthood.
3. THE TRUTHS AND ERRORS OF PHILOSOPHERS.
448. Philosophy defined by Kant: " The science of the limitations of reason "! !
449. Accord ing_to Aristotle, Philosophy is the art of discovering truth? Un the other hanctpthe Kplcnrean.s, who availed themselves_ofAristotle s~ sensual theory of knowledge, retorted in ironical opposition Jto jhe searcjh for truth; " Philosophy Is the arfof Life"
450. The three great naivete s: Knowledge as a means of happiness (as if . 2 A 0; 370 Knowledge as a means to virtue (as if . . .); Knowledge as a means to the " denial of Life " inasmuch as it leads to disappointment (as if . . .)
451. As if there were a " truth " which one could by some means approach!
452. Error and ignorance are fatal. The assump tion that truth has been found and that ignorance and error are at an end, constitutes one of the most seductive thoughts in the world. Granted that it be generally accepted, it paralyses the will to test, to investigate, to be cautious, and to gather experience: it may even be regarded as criminal that is to say, as a doubt concerning truth. . . . " Truth " is therefore more fatal than error and ignorance, because it paralyses the forces which lead to enlightenment and knowledge. The passion for idleness now stands up for " truth " (" Thought is pain and misery! "), as also do order, rule, the joy of possession, the pride of wisdom in fact, vanity: it is easier to obey than to examine; it is more gratifying to think " I possess the truth," than to see only darkness in all direc tions; . . . but, above all, it is reassuring, it lends confidence, and alleviates life it " improves " the character inasmuch as it reduces mistrust. " Spirit ual peace," "a quiet conscience" these things 71 are inventions which are only possible provided " Truth be found" " By their fruits ye shall know them." ..." Truth " is the truth because it makes men better. . . . The process goes on: all goodness and all success is placed to the credit of " truth." This is the proof by success: the happiness, contentment, and the welfare of a community or of an individual, are now understood to be the result of the belief in morality. . . . Conversely . failure is ascribed to a lack of faith.
453. The causes of error lie just as much in the good as in the bad will of man: in an incalculable number of cases he conceals reality from himself, he falsifies it, so that he may not suffer from his good or bad will. God, for instance, is considered the shaper of man s destiny; he interprets his little lot as though everything were intentionally sent to him for the salvation of his soul, this act of ignorance in " philology," which to a more subtle intellect would seem unclean and false, is done, in the majority of cases, with perfect good faith. Goodwill, " noble feelings," and " lofty states of the soul " are just as underhand and deceptive in the means they use as are the passions love, hatred, and revenge, which morality has repudiated and declared to be egotistic. Errors are what mankind has had to pay for most dearly: and taking them all in all, the errors which have resulted from goodwill are those which have wrought the most harm. The illusion which makes people happy is more harmful than the illusion which is immediately followed by evil results: the latter increases keenness and mistrust, and purifies the understanding; the former merely narcoticises. . . . Fine feelings and noble impulses ought, speak ing physiologically, to be classified with the narcotics: their abuse is followed by precisely the same results as the abuse of any other opiate weak nerves.
454. Error is the most expensive luxury that man can indulge in: and if the error happen to be a physiological one, it is fatal to life. What has mankind paid for most dearly hitherto? For its " truths ": for every one of these were errors in physiologicis, . . .
455. Psychological confusions: the desire for belief is confounded with the " will to truth " (for instance, in Carlyle). But the desire for disbelief has also been confounded with the " will to truth " (a need of ridding one s self of a belief for a hundred reasons: in order to carry one s point against certain " believers "). What is it that inspires Sceptics? The hatred of dogmatists or a need of repose, weariness as in Pyrrho s case. The advantages which were expected to come from truth, were the advantages resulting from a belief in it: for, in itself, truth could have been 73 thoroughly painful, harmful, and even fatal. Likewise truth was combated only on account of the advantages which a victory over it would provide for instance, emancipation from the yoke of the ruling powers. The method of truth was not based upon motives of truthfulness, but upon motives of power; upon the. desire to be superior. How is truth proved"? By means of the feeling of increased power, by means of utility, by means of indispensability, in short, by means of its advantages (that is to say, hypotheses concerning what truth should be like in order that it may be embraced by us). But this involves prejudice: it is a sign that truth does not enter the question at all. . . . What is the meaning of the " will to truth," for instance in the Goncourts? and in the naturalists? A criticism of " objectivity." Why should we know: why should we not prefer to be deceived? . . . But what was needed was always belief and not truth. . . . Belief is created by means which are quite opposed to the method of investigation: it even depends upon the exclusion of the latter.
456. A certain degree of faith suffices today to give us an objection to what is believed it does more, it makes us question the spiritual healthi ness of the believer. 374
457. Martyrs. To combat anything that is based upon reverence, opponents must be possessed of both daring and recklessness, and be hindered by no scruples. . . . Now, if one considers that for thousands of years man has sanctified as truths only those things which were in reality errors, and that he has branded any criticism of them with the hall-mark of badness, one will have to acknowledge, however reluctantly, that a goodly amount of immoral deeds were necessary in order to give the initiative to an attack I mean to reason. . . . That these immoralists have always posed as the " martyrs of truth " should be forgiven them: the truth of the matter is that they did not stand up and deny owing to an instinct for truth; but because of a love of dis solution, criminal scepticism, and the love of adventure. In other cases it is personal rancour which drives them into the province of problems they only combat certain points of view in order to be able to carry their point against certain people. But, above all, it is revenge which has become scientifically useful the revenge of the oppressed, those who, thanks to the truth that happens to be ruling, have been pressed aside and even smothered. . . . Truth, that is to say the scientific method, was grasped and favoured by such as recognized that it was a useful weapon of war an instru ment of destruction. . . . In order to be honored as opponents, they 75 were moreover obliged to use an apparatus similar to that used by those whom they were attacking: they therefore brandished the concept " truth " as absolutely as their adversaries did they became fanatics at least in their poses, because no other pose could be expected to be taken seriously. What still remained to be done was left to persecution, to passion, and the un certainty of the persecuted hatred waxed great, and the first impulse began to die away and to leave the field entirely to science. Ultimately all of them wanted to be right in the same absurd way as their opponents. . . . The word " con viction," " faith," the pride of martyrdom these things are most unfavourable to knowledge. The adversaries of truth finally adopt the whole subjective manner of deciding about truth, that is to say, by means of poses, sacrifices, and heroic resolutions, and thus prolong the dominion of the anti-scientific method. As martyrs they com promise their very own deed.
458. The dangerous distinction between " theoretical " and "practical" in Kant for instance, but also in the ancient philosophers: they behave as if pure intellectuality presented them with the prob lems of science and metaphysics; they behave as if practice should be judged by a measure of its own, whatever the judgment of theory may be. Against the first tendency I set up my psychology of philosophers: their strangest calcula tions and "intellectuality" are still but the last pallid impress of a physiological fact; spontaneity is absolutely lacking in them, everything is instinct, everything is intended to follow a certain direction from the first. . . . Against the second tendency I put my question: whether we know another method of acting correctly, besides that of thinking correctly; the last case is action, the first presupposes thought Are we possessed of a means whereby we can judge of the value of a method of life differently from the value of a theory: through induction or comparison? . . . Guileless people imagine that in this respect we are better equipped, we know what is " good" and the philosophers are content to repeat this view. We conclude that some sort of faith is at work in this matter, and nothing more. . . . " Men must act; consequently rules of conduct are necessary " this is what even the ancient Sceptics thought. The urgent need of a definite decision in this department of knowledge is used as an argument in favour of regarding something as true! . . . " Men must not act " said their more con sistent brothers, the Buddhists, and then thought out a mode of conduct which would deliver man from the yoke of action. . . . To adapt one s self, to live as the " common man " lives, and to regard as right and proper what he regards as right: this is submission to the gregarious instinct. One must carry one s courage 77 and severity so far as to learn to consider such submission a disgrace. One should not live according to two standards! . . . One should not separate theory and practice! . . .
459. Of all that which was formerly held to be true, not one word is to be credited. Everything which was formerly disdained as unholy, for bidden, contemptible, and fatal all these flowers now bloom on the most charming paths of truth. The whole of this old morality concerns us no longer: it contains not one idea which is still worthy of respect. We have outlived it we are no longer sufficiently coarse and guileless to be forced to allow ourselves to be lied to in this way. ... In more polite language: we are too virtuous for it. ... And if truth in the old sense were " true " only because the old morality said " yea " to it, and had a right to say " yea " to it: it follows that no truth of the past can any longer be of use to us. ... Our criterion of truth is certainly not morality: we reftite an assertion when we show that it is dependent upon morality and is inspired by noble feelings.
460. All these values are empirical and conditioned. But he who believes in them and who honors them, refuses to acknowledge this aspect of them. All philosophers believe in these values, and one form their reverence takes is the endeavour to make a priori truths out of them. The falsifying nature of reverence. . . . Reverence is the supreme test of intellectual honesty: but in the whole history of philosophy there is no such thing as intellectual honesty, but the " love of goodness. . . ." On the one hand, there is an absolute lack of method in testing the value of these values; secondly, there is a general disinclination either to test them or to regard them as conditioned at all. All anti-scientific instincts assembled round moral values in order to keep science out of this department....
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS
461. Why philosophers are slanderers. The artful and blind hostility of philosophers towards the senses what an amount of mob and middle-class qualities lie in all this hatred! The crowd always believes that an abuse of which it feels the harmful results, constitutes an objection to the thing which happens to be abused: all insurrectionary movements against principles, whether in politics or agriculture, always follow a line of argument suggested by this ulterior motive: the abuse must be shown to be necessary to, and inherent in, the principle.. 79 It is a woeful history: mankind looks for a principle, from the standpoint of which he will be able to contemn man he invents a world in order to be able to slander and throw mud at this world: as a matter of fact, he snatches every time at nothing, and construes this nothing as " God," as " Truth," and, in any case, as judge and detractor of this existence. . . . If one should require a proof of how deeply and thoroughly the actually barbarous needs of man, even in his present state of tameness and " civilisation," still seek gratification, one should contemplate the " leitmotifs " of the whole of the evolution of philosophy: a sort of revenge upon reality, a surreptitious process of destroying the values by means of which men live, a dissatisfied soul to which the conditions of discipline is one of torture, and which takes a particular pleasure in morbidly severing all the bonds that bind it to such a condition. The history of philosophy is the story of a secret and mad hatred of the prerequisities of Life, of the feelings which make for the real values of Life, and of all partisanship in favour of Life. Philosophers have never hesitated to affirm a fanciful world, provided it contradicted this world, and furnished them with a weapon wherewith they could calumniate this world. Up to the present, philosophy has been the grand school of slander: and its power has been so great, that even today our science, which pretends to be the advocate of Life, has accepted the fundamental position of slander, and treats this world as 380 " appearance," and this chain of causes as though it were only phenomenal. What is the hatred which is active here? I fear that it is still the Circe of philosophers Morality, which plays them the trick of compelling them to be ever slanderers. . . . They believed in moral " truths," in these they thought they had found the highest values; what alternative had they left, save that of denying existence ever more emphatically the more they got to know about it? ... For this life is immoral. . . . And it is based upon immoral first principles: and morality says nay to Life. Let us suppress the real world: and in order to do this, we must first suppress the highest values current hitherto morals. ... It is enough to show that morality itself is immoral, in the same sense as that in which immorality has been condemned heretofore. If an end be thus made to the tyranny of the former values, if we have suppressed the " real world," a new order of values must follow of its own accord. The world of appearance and the world of lies: this constitutes the contradiction. The latter hitherto has been the " real world," " truth," " God." This is the one which we still have to suppress. The logic of my conception: (1) Morality as the highest value (it is master of all the phases of philosophy, even of the Sceptics). Result: this world is no good, it is not the " real world." (2) What is it that determines the highest value here? What, in sooth, is morality? It is 81 the instinct of decadence; it is the means whereby the exhausted and the degenerate revenge them selves. Historical proof: philosophers have always been decadents ... in the service of nihilistic religions. (3) It is the instinct of decadence coming to the fore as will to power. Proof: the absolute immorality of the means employed by morality throughout its history. General aspect: the values which have been highest hitherto constitute a specific case of the will to power; morality itself is a specific case of immorality.
462. The principal innovations: Instead of " moral values," nothing but naturalistic values. Natural isation of morality. In the place of " sociology," a doctrine of the forms of dominion. In the place of " society," the complex whole of culture which is my chief interest (whether in its entirety or in parts). In the place of the " theory of knowledge," a doctrine which laid down tJie value of the passions (to this a hierarchy of the passions would belong: the passions transfigured-, their superior rank, their " spirituality "). In the place of " metaphysics " and religion, the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence (this being regarded as a means to the breeding and selection of men).
463. My precursors: Schopenhauer. To what extent I deepened pessimism, and first brought its full meaning within my grasp, by means of its most extreme opposite. Likewise: the higher Europeans, the pioneers of great politics. Likewise: the Greeks and their genesis.
464. I have named those who were unconsciously my workers and precursors. But in what direc tion may I turn with any hope of finding my particular kind of philosophers themselves, or at least my yearning for new philosophers! In that direction, alone, where a noble attitude of mind prevails, an attitude of mind which believes in slavery and in manifold orders of rank, as the pre requisites of any high degree of culture. In that direction, alone, where a creative attitude of mind prevails, an attitude of mind which does not re gard the world of happiness and repose, the " Sabbath of Sabbaths " as an end to be desired, and which, even in peace, honors the means which lead to new wars; an attitude of mind which would prescribe laws for the future, which for the sake of the future would treat everything that exists today with harshness and even tyranny; a daring and " immoral " attitude of mind, which would wish to see both the good and the evil qualities in man developed to their fullest extent, because it would feel itself able to put each in its right place that is to say, in that place in which each would need the other. But what prospect has he of finding what he seeks, who goes in search of philosophers today? Is it not probable that, even with the best Diogenes-lantern in his hand, he will wander about by night and day in vain? This age is possessed of the opposite in stincts. What it wants, above all, is comfort; secondly, it wants publicity and the deafening din of actors voices, the big drum which appeals to its Bank-Holiday tastes; thirdly, that every one should lie on his belly in utter subjection before the greatest of all lies which is " the equality of men " and should honor only those virtues which make men equal and place them in equal positions. But in this way, the rise of the philo sopher, as I understand him, is made completely impossible despite the fact that many may re gard the present tendencies as rather favourable to his advent. As a matter of fact, the whole world mourns, today, the hard times that philo sophers used to have, hemmed in between the fear of the stake, a guilty conscience, and the presump tuous wisdom of the Fathers of the Church: but the truth is, that precisely these conditions were ever so much more favourable to the education of a mighty, extensive, subtle, rash, and daring intellect than the conditions prevailing today. At present another kind of intellect, the intellect of the demagogue, of the actor, and perhaps of the beaver- and ant-like scholar too, finds the best possible conditions for its development But even for artists of a superior calibre the conditions are already far from favourable: for does not every one of them, almost, perish owing to his want of discipline? They are no longer tyrannised over by an outside power by the tables of absolute values enforced by a Church or by a monarch: and thus they no longer learn to de velop their " inner tyrant," their will. And what holds good of artists also holds good, to a greater and more fatal degree, of philosophers. Where, then, are free spirits to be found today? Let any one show me a free spirit today!
465. Under " Spiritual freedom " I understand some thing very definite: it is a state in which one is a hundred times superior to philosophers and other disciples of " truth " in one s severity towards one s self, in one s uprightness, in one s courage, and in one s absolute will to say nay even when it is dangerous to say nay. I regard the philosophers that have appeared heretofore as contemptible libertines hiding behind the petticoats of the female " Truth."
THIRD BOOK. THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW VALUATION.
I. THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE
(a) THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATION.
466. THE distinguishing feature of our nineteenth century is not the triumph of science, but the triumph of the scientific method over science.
467. The history of scientific methods was regarded by Auguste Comte almost as philosophy itself.
468. The great Methodologists: Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Auguste Comte.
469. The most valuable knowledge is always discovered last: but the most valuable knowledge consists of methods. All methods, all the hypotheses on which the science of our day depends, were treated with the profoundest contempt for centuries: on their account a man used to be banished from the society of respectable people he was held to be an "enemy of God" a reviler of the highest ideal, a madman. We had the whole pathos of mankind against us, our notion of what "truth" ought to be, of what the service of truth ought to be, our objectivity, our method, our calm, cautious and distrustful manner were altogether despicable. . . . At bottom, that which has kept men back most, is an aesthetic taste: they believed in the picturesque effect of truth; what they demanded of the scientist was, that he should make a strong appeal to their imagination. From the above, it would almost seem as if the very reverse had been achieved, as if a sudden jump had been made: as a matter of fact, the schooling which the moral hyperboles afforded, gradually prepared the way for that milder form of pathos which at last became incarnate in the scientific man. . . . Conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the religious man, was a preparatory school for the scientific character, as was also, in a very pre-eminent sense, the attitude of mind which makes a man take problems seriously, irrespective of what personal advantage he may derive from them.
(b) THE STARTING-POINT OF EPISTEMOLOGY.
470. Profound disinclination to halt once and for all at any collective view of the world. The charm of the opposite point of view: the refusal to relinquish the stimulus residing in the enigmatical.
471. The hypothesis that, at bottom, things proceed in such a moral fashion that human reason must be right, is a mere piece of good-natured and simple-minded trustfulness, the result of the belief in Divine truthfulness God regarded as the Creator of all things. These concepts are our in heritance from a former existence in a Beyond.
472. The contradiction of the so-called "facts of consciousness." Observation a thousand times more difficult, error is perhaps the absolute condition of observation.
473. The intellect cannot criticize itself, simply be cause it can be compared with no other kind of intellect, and also because its ability to know would only reveal itself in the presence of "actual reality"; that is to say, because, in order to criticize the intellect, we should have to be higher creatures with "absolute knowledge." This would presuppose the existence of something, a "thing-in-itself," apart from all the perspective kinds of observation and senso-spiritual perception. But the psychological origin of the belief in things, forbids our speaking of "things in themselves."
474. The idea that a sort of adequate relation exists between subject and object, that the object is some thing which when seen from inside would be a subject, is a well-meant invention which, I believe, has seen its best days. The measure of that which we are conscious of, is perforce entirely dependent upon the coarse utility of the function of consciousness: how could this little garret- prospect of consciousness warrant our asserting anything in regard to "subject" and "object," which would bear any relation to reality!
475. Criticism of modern philosophy: erroneous starting-point, as if there were such things as "facts of consciousness " and no phenomenalism in introspection.
476. "Consciousness" to what extent is the idea which is thought of, the idea of will, or the idea of a feeling (which is known by us alone) quite superficial? Our inner world is also "appearance.”
477. I am convinced of the phenomenalism of the inner world also: everything that reaches our consciousness is utterly and completely adjusted, simplified, schematized, interpreted, the actual process of inner "perception," the relation of causes between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject and object, is absolutely concealed from us, and: may be purely imaginary. This "inner world of appearance" is treated with precisely the same forms and procedures as the "outer" world. We never come across a single "fact": pleasure and pain are more recently evolved intellectual phenomena. . . . Causality evades us; to assume the existence of an immediate causal relation between thoughts, as Logic does, is the result of the coarsest and most clumsy observation. There are all sorts of passions that may intervene between two thoughts: but the interaction is too rapid that is why we fail to recognize them, that is why we actually deny their existence. . . . "Thinking," as the epistemologists understand it, never takes place at all: it is an absolutely gratuitous fabrication, arrived at by selecting one element from the process and by eliminating all the rest an artificial adjustment for the purpose of the understanding. . . . The "mind," something that thinks: at times, even, "the mind absolute and pure" this concept is an evolved and second result of false introspection, which believes in "thinking": in the first place an act is imagined here which does not really occur at all, i.e. "thinking"; and, secondly , a subject-substratum is imagined in which every process of this thinking has its origin, and nothing else that is to say, both the action and the agent are fanciful.
478. Phenomenalism must not be sought in the wrong quarter: nothing is more phenomenal, 01, to be more precise, nothing is so much deception, as this inner world, which we observe with the " inner sense." Our belief that the will is a cause was so great, that, according to our personal experiences in general, we projected a cause into all phenomena (i.e. a certain motive is posited as the cause of all phenomena). We believe that the thoughts which follow one upon the other in our minds are linked by some sort of causal relation: the logician, more especially, who actually speaks of a host of facts which have never once been seen in reality, has grown accustomed to the prejudice that thoughts are the *l cause of thoughts. We believe and even our philosophers believe it still that pleasure and pain are the causes of reactions, that the very purpose of pleasure and pain is to occasion reactions. For hundreds of years, pleasure and pain have been represented as the motives for every action. Upon reflection, however, we are bound to concede that everything f would have proceeded in exactly the same way,according to precisely the same sequence of cause and effect, if the states " pleasure " and " pain had been entirely absent; and that we are simply deceived when we believe that they actually cause anything: they are the attendant phenomena, and they have quite a different purpose from that of provoking reactions; they are in themselves effects involved in the process of reaction which takes place. In short: Everything that becomes conscious is a final phenomenon, a conclusion and is the cause of nothing; all succession of phenomena in consciousness is absolutely atomistic. And we tried to understand the universe from the opposite point of view as if nothing were effective or real, save thinking, feeling, willing! . . . 7
479. The phenomenalism of the " inner world A chronological inversion takes place, so that the cause reaches consciousness as the effect. We know that pain is projected into a certain part of the body although it is not really situated there; we have learnt that all sensations which were ingenuously supposed to be conditioned by the outer world are, as a matter of fact, conditioned by the inner world: that the real action of the outer world never takes place in a way of which we can become conscious. . . . That fragment of the outer world of which we become conscious, is born after the effect produced by the outer world } has been recorded, and is subsequently interpreted as the " cause " of that effect. 10 In the phenomenalism of the " inner world," the chronological order of cause and effect is inverted. The fundamental fact of " inner experience " is, that the cause is imagined after the effect has been recorded. . . . The same holds good of the sequence of thoughts: we seek for the reason of a thought, before it has reached our consciousness; and then the reason reaches consciousness first, whereupon follows its effect ... All our dreams are the interpretation of our collective feelings with the view of discovering the possible causes of the latter; and the process is such that a condition only becomes conscious, when the supposed causal link has reached consciousness. The whole of " inner experience " is founded on this: that a cause is sought and imagined which accounts for a certain irritation in our nerve-centers, and that it is only the cause which is found in this way which reaches consciousness; this cause may have absolutely nothing to do with the real cause it is a sort of groping assisted by former " inner experiences," that is to say, by memory. The memory, however, retains the habit of old interpretations, that is to say, of erroneous causality, so that " inner experience " comprises in itself all the results of former erroneous fabrications of causes. Our " outside world," as we conceive it every instant, is indissolubly bound up with the * When in our dream we hear a bell ringing, or a tapping at our door, we scarcely ever wake before having already accounted for the sound, in the terms of the dream-world we were in. TR. II old error of cause: we interpret by means of the schematism of " the thing," etc. " Inner experience " only enters consciousness when it has found a language which the individual can understand that is to say, a translation 01" a certain condition into conditions with which he is familiar; "understand" means simply this: to be able to express something new in the terms of something old or familiar. For instance, " I feel unwell " a judgment of this sort presupposes a very great and recent neutrality on the part of the observer: the simple man always says, " This and that make me feel unwell," he begins to be clear concerning his indisposition only after he has discovered a reason for it. ... This is what I call a lack of philological knowledge; to be able to read a text, as such, without reading an interpretation into it, is the latest form of " inner experience," it is perhaps a barely possible form. . . .
480. There are no such things as "mind," reason, thought, consciousness, soul, will, or truth: they all belong to fiction, and can serve no purpose. It is not a question of " subject and object," but of a particular species of animal which can prosper only by means of a certain exactness, or, better still, regularity in recording its perceptions (in order that experience may be capitalized). . . . Knowledge works as an instrument of power. It is therefore obvious that it increases with each advance of power. . . , 12 The purpose of " knowledge ": in this case, as in the case of " good " or " beautiful," the concept must be regarded strictly and narrowly from an anthropocentric and biological standpoint. In order that a particular species may maintain and increase its power, its conception of reality must contain enough which is calculable and constant to allow of its formulating a scheme of conduct. The utility of preservation and not some abstract or theoretical need to eschew deception stands as the motive force behind the development of the organs of knowledge; . . . they evolve in such a way that their observations may suffice for our preservation. In other words, the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the extent to which the Will to Power grows in a certain species: a species gets a grasp of a given amount of reality, in order to master it, in order to enlist that amount in its service.
(c) THE BELIEF IN THE " EGO." SUBJECT.
481. In opposition to Positivism, which halts at phenomena and says, " These are only facts and nothing more," I would say: No, facts are precisely what is lacking, all that exists consists of interpretations. We cannot establish any fact " in itself": it may even be nonsense to desire to do such a thing. " Everything is subjective" ye say: but that in it self is interpretation. The " subject " is nothing given, but something superimposed by fancy, some- 13 thing introduced behind. Is it necessary to set an f interpreter behind the interpretation already to hand? Even that would be fantasy, hypothesis. To the extent to which knowledge has any * sense at all, the world is knowable: but it may be , interpreted differently , it has not one sense behind it, but hundreds of senses. "perspectivity." it is our needs that interpret the world our instincts and their impulses for and against. Every instinct is a sort of thirst for power; each has its point of view, which it would fain impose upon all f the other instincts as their norm.
482. Where our ignorance really begins, at that point from which we can see no further, we set a word; for instance, the word " I," the word " do," the word " suffer " these concepts may be the horizon lines of our knowledge, but they are not " truths."
483. Owing to the phenomenon " thought," the ego is taken for granted; but up to the present every body believed, like the people, that there was something unconditionally certain in the notion " I think," and that by analogy with our under standing of all other causal reactions this " I " was the given cause of the thinking. However customary and indispensable this fiction may have become now, this fact proves nothing against the imaginary nature of its origin; it might be a life-preserving belief and still be false.
484. " Something is thought, therefore there is some thing that thinks ": this is what Descartes argument amounts to. But this is tantamount to considering our belief in the notion "substance" as an a priori truth: that there must be something that thinks " when we think, is merely a formulation of a grammatical custom which sets an agent to every action. In short, a metaphysico-logical postulate is already put forward here and it is not merely an ascertainment of fact. . . . On Descartes lines nothing absolutely certain is attained, but only the fact of a very powerful faith. If the proposition be reduced to " Something is thought, therefore there are thoughts," the result is mere tautology; and precisely the one factor which is in question, the " reality of thought," is not touched upon, so that, in this form, the "apparitional character" of thought cannot be denied. What Descartes wanted to prove was, that thought not only had apparent reality, but absolute reality.
485. The concept substance is an outcome of the C concept subject , and not conversely! If we surrender the concept soul, "the subject, the very conditions for the concept " substance " are lacking. Degrees of Being are obtained, but Being is lost. 1C Criticism of " reality ": what does a "plus or minus of reality " lead to, the gradation of Being in which we believe? The degree of our feeling of life and power (the logic and relationship of past life) presents us with the measure of " Being," " reality," " non- appearance." Subject: this is the term we apply to our belief in an entity underlying all the different moments of the most intense sensations of reality: we regard this belief as the effect of a cause, and we believe in our belief to such an extent that, on its account alone, we imagine " truth," " reality," " substantiality." " Subject " is the fiction which would fain make us believe that several similar states were the effect of one substratum: but we it was who first created the " similarity " of these states; the similising and adjusting of them is the fact not their similarity (on the contrary, this ought rather to be denied).
486. One would have to know what Being is, in order to be able to decide whether this or that is real (for instance, " the facts of consciousness "); it would also be necessary to know what certainty and knowledge are, and so forth. But, as we do not know these things, a criticism of the faculty of knowledge is nonsensical: how is it possible for an instrument to criticize itself, when it is itself that exercises the critical faculty. It cannot even de-: fine itself! 16 ,
487. Should not all philosophy ultimately disclose the first principles on which the reasoning processes depend? that is to say, our belief in the " ego " as a substance, as the only reality according to which, alone, we are able to ascribe reality to things? The oldest realism at length comes to light, simultaneously with man s recognition of the fact that his whole religious history is no more than a history of soul-superstitions. Here there is a barrier; our very thinking, itself, involves that belief (with its distinctions substance, accident, action, agent, etc.); to abandon it would mean to cease from being able to think. But that a belief, however useful it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with the truth, may be seen from the fact that we must believe in time, space, and motion, without feeling ourselves compelled to regard them as absolute realities.
488. The psychological origin of our belief in reason. The ideas " reality," " Being," are derived from our subject-feeling. " Subject," interpreted through ourselves so that the ego may stand as substance, as the cause of action, as the agent. The metaphysico-logical postulates, the belief in substance, accident, attribute, etc. etc., draws its convincing character from our habit of regarding all our actions as the result of our will: so that 17 the ego, as substance, does not vanish in the multiplicity of changes. But there is no such thing as will. We have no categories which allow us to separate a " world as thing-in-itself," from " a world of appearance." All our categories of reason have a sensual origin: they are deductions from the empirical world. "The soul," "the ego" the history of these concepts shows that here, also, the oldest distinction ("spiritus" "life") obtains. . . . If there is nothing material, then there can be nothing immaterial. The concept no longer means anything. No subject-" atoms." The sphere of a subject increasing or diminishing unremittingly, the centre of the system continually displacing itself; in the event of the system no longer being able to organize the appropriated mass, it divides into two. On the other hand, it is able, without destroying it, to transform a weaker subject into one of its own functionaries, and, to a certain extent, to compose a new entity with it. Not a " substance," but rather something which in itself strives after greater strength; and which wishes to " preserve " itself only indirectly (it wishes to surpass itself).
489. Everything that reaches consciousness as an " entity " is already enormously complicated: we never have anything more than the semblance of an entity. The phenomenon of the body is the richer, more I. B 1 8 distinct, and more tangible phenomenon: it should be methodically drawn to the front, and no mention should be made of its ultimate significance.
490. The assumption of a single subject is perhaps not necessary; it may be equally permissible to assume a plurality of subjects, whose interaction and struggle lie at the bottom of our thought and our consciousness in general. A sort of aristocracy of " cells " in which the ruling power is vested? Of course an aristocracy of equals, who are accustomed to ruling co-operatively, and understand how to command? My hypotheses: The subject as a plurality. Pain intellectual and dependent upon the judgment " harmful," projected. The effect always " unconscious ": the inferred and imagined cause is projected, it follows the event. Pleasure is a form of pain. The only kind of power that exists is of the same nature as the power of will: a commanding of other subjects which thereupon alter themselves. The unremitting transientness and volatility of the subject. " Mortal soul." Number as perspective form.
491. The belief in the body is more fundamental than the belief in the soul: the latter arose from 19 the unscientific observation of the agonies of the body. (Something which leaves it. The belief in the truth of dreams?)
492. The body and physiology the starting-point: why? We obtain a correct image of the nature of our subject-entity, that is to say, as a number of regents at the head of a community (not as " souls " or as " life-forces "), as also of the dependence of these regents upon their subjects, and upon the conditions of a hierarchy, and of the division of labor, as the means ensuring the existence of the part and the whole. We also obtain a correct image of the way in which the living entities continually come into being and expire, and we see how eternity cannot belong to the " subject "; we realize that the struggle finds expression in obeying as well as in commanding, and that a fluctuating definition of the limits of power is a factor of life. The comparative ignorance in which the ruler is kept, of the individual performances and even disturbances taking place in the community, also belong to the conditions under which government may be carried on. In short, we obtain a valuation even of want-of-knowledge, of seeing-things- generally-as-a-whole, of simplification, of falsification, and of perspective. What is most important, however, is, that we regard the ruler and his subjects as of the same kind, all feeling, willing, thinking and that wherever we see or suspect movement in a body, we conclude that there is 2O co-operative-subjective and invisible life. Movement as a symbol for the eye; it denotes that something has been felt, willed, thought. The danger of directly questioning the subject concerning the subject, and all spiritual self-reflection, consists in this, that it might be a necessary condition of its activity to interpret itself erroneously. That is why we appeal to the body and lay the evidence of sharpened senses aside: or we try and see whether the subjects themselves cannot enter into communication with us.
(d) BIOLOGY OF THE INSTINCT OF KNOWLEDGE. PERSPECTIVITY.
493. Truth is that kind of error without which a certain species of living being cannot exist. The value for Life is ultimately decisive.
494. It is unlikely that our " knowledge " extends farther than is exactly necessary for our self-preservation. Morphology shows us how the senses and the nerves as well as the brain evolve in pro portion as the difficulties of acquiring sustenance increase.
495. If the morality of "Thou shalt not lie" be refuted, the sense for truth will then have to justify itself before another tribunal as a means to the preservation of man, as Will to Power. Likewise our love of the beautiful: it is also the creative will. Both senses stand side by side; the sense of truth is the means wherewith the power is appropriated to adjust things according to one s taste. The love of adjusting and reforming a primeval love! We can only take cognizance of a world which we ourselves have made.
496. Concerning the multifariousness of knowledge. The tracing of its relation to many other things (or the relation of kind) how should " knowledge " be of another? The way to know and to investigate is in itself among the conditions of life; that is why the conclusion that there could be no other kind of intellect (for ourselves) than the kind which serves the purpose of our preservation is an excessively hasty one: this actual condition may be only an accidental, not in the least an essential one. Our apparatus for acquiring knowledge is not adjusted for " knowledge."
497. strongly credited a priori " truths " are, to my mind, mere assumptions pending further investigation; for instance, the law of causation is ) 22 a belief so thoroughly acquired by practice and so completely assimilated, that to disbelieve in it would mean the ruin of our kind. But is it therefore true? What an extraordinary conclusion! As if truth were proved by the mere fact that man survives!
498. To what extent is our intellect also a result of the conditions of life? We should not have it did we not need to have it, and we should not have it as we have it, if we did not need it as we need it that is to say, if we could live otherwise.
499. " Thinking " in a primitive (inorganic) state is to Persevere in forms, as in the case of the crystal. In thought, the essential factor is the harmonizing of the new material with the old schemes ( = Procrustes' bed), the assimilation of the unfamiliar.
500. The perception of the senses projected out wards: " inwards " and " outwards " does the body command here? The same equalizing and ordering power which rules in the idioplasma, also rules in the incorporation of the outer world: our sensual perceptions are already the result of this process of adaptation 23 and harmonization in regard to all the past in us; they do not follow directly upon the " impression."
501. All thought, judgment, perception, regarded as an act of comparing? has as a first condition the act of equalizing, and earlier still the act of "making equal" The process of making equal is the same as the assimilation by the amoeba of the nutritive matter it appropriates. " Memory " late, in so far as the equalizing instinct appears to have been subdued: the difference is preserved. Memory a process of classification and collocation; active who?
502. In regard to the memory, we must unlearn a great deal: here we meet with the greatest temptation to assume the existence of a " soul," which, irrespective of time, reproduces and recognizes again and again, etc. What I have experienced, however, continues to live " in the memory "; I have nothing to do with it when memory " comes," my will is inactive in regard to it, as in the case of the coming and going of a thought. Something happens, of which I become conscious: now some thing similar comes who has called it forth? Who has awakened it? * The German word vergleichen, meaning " to compare, contains the root "equal" (gleich) which cannot be rendered in English. TR. 24
503. The whole apparatus of knowledge is an abstracting- and simplifying apparatus not directed at knowledge, but at the appropriation of things: " end " and " means " are as remote from the essence of this apparatus as " concepts " are. By the " end " and the " means " a process is appropriated ( a process is invented which may be grasped), but by " concepts " one appropriates the " things " which constitute the process.
504. Consciousness begins outwardly as co-ordination and knowledge of impressions, at first it is at the point which is remotest from the biological centre of the individual; but it is a process which deepens and which tends to become more and more ) an inner function, continually approaching nearer to the centre.
505. Our perceptions, as we understand them that is to say, the sum of all those perceptions the consciousness whereof was useful and essential to us and to the whole organic processes which preceded us: therefore they do not include all perceptions (for instance, not the electrical ones); that is to say, we have senses only for a definite selection of perceptions such perceptions as concern us with a f view to our self-preservation. Consciousness extends so far only as it is useful. There can be no doubt that all our sense-perceptions are entirely .per- 25 permeated by valuations (useful or harmful consequently, pleasant or painful). Every particular color, besides being a color, expresses a value to us (although we seldom admit it, or do so only after it has affected us exclusively for a long time, as in the case of convicts in jail or lunatics). In sects likewise react in different ways to different colors: some like this shade, the others that. Ants are a case in point.
506. In the beginning images how images originate in the mind must be explained. Then words, applied to images. Finally concepts, possible only when there are words the assembling of several pictures into a whole which is not for the eye but for the ear (word). The small amount of emotion which the " word " generates, that is, then, which the view of the similar pictures generates, for which one word is used, this simple emotion is the common factor, the basis of a concept. That weak feelings should all be regarded as alike, as the same, is the fundamental fact. There is therefore a con fusion of two very intimately associated feelings in the ascertainment of these feelings; but who is it that ascertains? Faith is the very first step in every sensual impression: a sort of yea-saying is the first intellectual activity! A "holding-a-thing-to-be-true" is the beginning. It were our business, therefore, to explain how the "holding-of-a-thing- to-be-true" arose! What sensation lies beneath the comment "true"?
507. The valuation, " I believe that this and so, *~ls~"tlu. -: of "tiuLi. In all valuations, the conditions of preservation and of growth find expression. All our organs and senses of know ledge have been developed only in view of the conditions of preservation and growth. The trust in reason and its categories, the trust in dialectics, and also the valuation of logic, prove only that experience has taught the usefulness of these things , to life: not their " truth." The pre-requisites of all living things and of their lives is: that there should be a large amount of faith, that it should be possible to pass definite judgments on things, and that there should be no doubt at all concerning all essential values. Thus it is necessary that something should be assumed to be true, not that it is true. " The real world and the world of appearance " I trace this contrast to the relation of values. We have posited our conditions of existence as the attributes of being in general. Owing to the fact that, in order to prosper, we must be stable in our belief, we developed the idea that the real world was neither a changing nor an evolving one, but a world of being.
(e) THE ORIGIN OF REASON AND LOGIC.
508. Originally there was chaos among our ideas. Those ideas which were able to stand side by side remained over, the greater number perished and are still perishing.
509. "* The kingdom of desires out of which I! . the gregarious instinct in the background. * " - r - -i r 4.U assumption of similar facts is the first c< . for " similar souls." For the purpose of . , understanding and government. . ,
510. Concerning the origin of logic. The fundamental proneness to equalize things and to see them equal, gets to be modified, and kept within bounds, by the consideration of what is useful or harmful in fact, by considerations of success: it then becomes adapted in suchwise as to be gratified in a milder way, without at the same time denying life or endangering it. This whole process corresponds entirely with that external and mechanical process (which is its symbol) by which the protoplasm continually assimilates, makes equal to itself, what it appropriates, and arranges it according to its own forms and requirements.
511. Likeness and Similarity. 1. The coarser the organ the more apparent likenesses it sees; 2. The mind will have likeness that is to say, the identification of one sensual impression with others already experienced: just as the body assimilates inorganic matter. For the understanding of Logic: The will which tends to see likeness everywhere is the will to power--the belief that something is so and so (the essence of a judgment), is the result of a willnwhich would fain have it as similar as possible.
512. Logic is bound up with the proviso; granted that identical cases exist. As a matter of fact, before one can think and conclude in a logical fashion, this condition must first be assumed. That is to say, the Will to logical truth cannot be consummated before a fundamental falsification of all phenomena has been assumed. From which it follows that an instinct rules here, which is capable of employing both means: first, falsification; and secondly, the carrying out of its own point of view: logic does not spring from a will to truth.
513. The inventive force which devised the categories, worked in the service of our need of security, of quick intelligibility, in the form of signs, sounds, and abbreviations. " Substance," " subject," " object," " Being," " Becoming," are not matters of metaphysical truth. It was the powerful who made the names of things into law, and, among the powerful, it was the greatest artists in abstraction who created the categories.
514. A moral that is to say, a method of living which long experience and experiment have tested and proved efficient, at last enters consciousness as a law, as dominant. . . . And then the whole group of related values and conditions become part of it: it becomes venerable, unassailable, holy, true; a necessary part of its evolution is that its origin should be forgotten. . . . That is a sign that it has become master. Exactly the same thing might have happened with the categories of reason: the latter, after much groping and many trials, might have proved true through relative usefulness. . . A stage was reached when they were grasped as a whole, and when they appealed to consciousness as a whole, when belief in them was commanded, that is to say, when they acted as if they commanded. . . . From that time forward they passed as a priori as beyond experience, as irrefutable. And, possibly, they may have been the expression of no more than a certain practicality answering the ends of a race and a species, their usefulness alone is their " truth." -
515. The object is, not " to know," but to schematize to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos, as our practical needs require. In the formation of reason, logic, and the categories, it was a need in us that was the determining power: not the need " to know," but - to classify, to schematize, for the purpose of|! intelligibility and calculation. (The adjustment and interpretation of all similar and equal things, the same process, which every sensual impression 30 [ undergoes, is the development of reason!) No I pre-existing "idea" had anything to do with it: j but utility, which teaches us that things can be reckoned with and managed, only when we view them roughly as equal. . . . Finality in reason is an effect, not a cause: Life degenerates with every other form of reason, although constant at tempts are being made to attain to those other forms of reason; for Life would then become too obscure, too unequal. The categories are " truths " only in the sense that they are the conditions our. existence, just as Euclid s Space is a conditional " truth." (Between ourselves, as no one will maintain that men are absolutely necessary, reason, as well as Euclid s Space, are seen to be but an idiosyncrasy of one particular species of animals, one idiosyncrasy alone among many others. . . .) The subjective constraint which prevents one from contradicting here, is a biological constraint: the instinct which makes us see the utility of concluding as we do conclude, is in our blood, we are almost this instinct . . . But what simplicity it is to attempt to derive from this fact that we possess an absolute truth! . . . The inability to contradict anything is a proof of impotence but not of "truth."
516. We are not able to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: that is a principle of subjective experience which is not in the least " necessary," but only a sign of inability. If, according to Aristotle, the principium contradiction is the most certain of all principles; if it is the most ultimate of all, and the basis of every demonstration; if the principle of every other axiom lie within it: then one should analyze it all the more severely, in order to discover how many assumptions already lie at its root. It either assumes something concerning reality and Being, as if these had become known in some other sphere that is to say, as if it were impossible to ascribe the opposite attributes to it; or the proposition means: that the opposites should not be ascribed to it. In that case, logic would be an imperative, not directed at the knowledge of truth, but at the adjusting and fixing of a world which must seem true to us. In short, the question is a debatable one: are the axioms of logic adequate to reality, or are they measures and means by which alone we can, create realities, or the concept " reality "? . . . In order to affirm the first alternative, however, one would, as we have seen, require a previous knowledge of Being; which is certainly not the case. The pro position therefore contains no criterion of truth, but an imperative concerning that which should pass as true. Supposing there were no such thing as A identical with itself, as every logical (and mathematical) proposition presupposes, and that A is in itself an appearance, then logic would have a mere world of appearance as its first condition. As a matter of fact, we believe in that proposition, under the influence of an endless empiricism which seems to confirm it every minute. The " thing " that is the real sub stratum of A; our belief in things is the first condition of our faith in logic. The A in logic is, like the atom, a reconstruction of the " thing." ... By not understanding this, and by making logic into a criterion of real being, we are already on the road to the classification of all those hypostases: substance, attribute, object, subject, action, etc., as realities that is to say, the conception of a metaphysical world or a " real world " ( this is, however, once more the world of appearance . . .). The primitive acts of thought, affirmation, and negation, the holding of a thing for true, and the holding of a thing for not true, in so far as they do not only presuppose a mere habit, but the very right to postulate truth or untruth at all, are already dominated by a belief, that there is such a tiling as knowledge for us, and that judgments can really hit the truth: in short, logic never doubts that it is able to pronounce something concerning truth in itself ( that is to say, that to the thing which is in itself true, no opposite attributes can be ascribed). In this belief there reigns the sensual and coarse prejudice that our sensations teach us truths concerning things, that I cannot at the same moment of time say of one and the same thing that it is hard and soft. (The instinctive proof, " I cannot have two opposite sensations at once," is quite coarse and false) That all contradiction in concepts should be 33 forbidden, is the result of a belief, that we are able to form concepts, that a concept not only characterizes but also holds the essence of a thing. ... As a matter of fact, logic (like geometry and arithmetic) only holds good of assumed existences which we have created. Logic is the attempt on our part to under- stand the actual world according to a scheme of Being devised by ourselves; or, more exactly, it is attempt at making the actual world more calculable and more susceptible to formulation, for our own purposes. . . .-.
517. In order to be able to think and to draw conclusions, it is necessary to acknowledge that which exists: logic only deals with formulae for things which are constant. That is why this acknowledgment would not in the least prove reality: " that which is " is part of our optics. The " ego " regarded as Being (not affected by either Becoming or evolution). The assumed world of subject, substance, " reason," etc., is necessary: an adjusting, simplifying, falsifying, artificially-separating power resides in us. " Truth " is the will to be master over the? manifold sensations that reach consciousness; it is I the will to classify phenomena according to definite I categories. In this way we start out with a belief 1 in the " true nature " of things (we regard j phenomena as real). The character of the world in the process of Becoming is not susceptible of formulation; it is " false " and " contradicts itself." Knowledge and I. C 34 the process of evolution exclude each other. Consequently , knowledge must be something else: it must be preceded by a will to make things knowable, a kind of Becoming in itself must create the illusion of Being.
518. If our " ego " is the only form of Being, according to which we make and understand all Being: very good! In that case it were very proper to doubt whether an illusion of perspective were not active here the apparent unity which every thing assumes in our eyes on the horizon-line. Appealing to the body for our guidance, we are confronted by such appalling manifoldness, that for the sake of method it is allowable to use that phenomenon which is richer and more easily studied as a clue to the understanding of the poorer phenomenon. (Finally: admitting that all is Becoming, know ledge is only possible when based on a belief in Being.
519. If there is " only one form of Being, the ego," and all other forms of Being are made in its own image, if, in short, the belief in the " ego," together with the belief in logic, stands and falls with the metaphysical truth of the categories of reason: if, in addition, the " ego " is shown to be something that is evolving: then 35
520. The continual transitions that occur, forbid our speaking of the "individual," etc.; the "number" of beings itself fluctuates. We should know no thing of time or of movement, if, in a rough way, we did not believe we saw things " standing still: behind or in front of things moving. We should also know just as little about cause and effect, and without the erroneous idea of " empty space " we should never have arrived at the concept of space at all. The principle of identity is based on the " fact of appearance " that there are some things alike. Strictly speaking, it would not be possible to " understand " and " know " an evolving world; something which is called " knowledge " exists only in so far as the " understanding " and " knowing " intellect already finds an adjusted and rough world to hand, fashioned out of a host? of mere appearances, but become fixed to the extent in which this kind of appearance has helped; to preserve life; only to this extent is " knowledge " j, possible that is to say, as a measuring of earlier j and more recent errors by one another.
521. Concerning "logical appearance The concept " individual " and the concept " species " are equally false and only apparent. " Species " only expresses the fact that an abundance of similar creatures come forth at the same time, and that the speed of their further growth and of their 36 further transformation has been made almost imperceptible for a long time: so that the actual and trivial changes and increase of growth are of no account at all ( a stage of evolution in which the process of evolving is not visible, so that, not only does a state of equilibrium seem to have been reached, but the road is also made clear for the error of supposing that an actual goal has been reached and that evolution had a goal . . .)- The form seems to be something enduring, and therefore valuable; but the form was invented merely by ourselves; and however often " the same form is attained," it does not signify that it is the same form, because something new always appears; and we alone, who compare, reckon the new with the old, in so far as it resembles the latter, and embody the two in the unity of " form." As if a type had to be reached and were actually intended by the formative processes. Form, species, law, idea, purpose the same fault is made in respect of all these concepts, namely, that of giving a false realism to a piece of fiction: as if all phenomena were infused with some sort of obedient spirit an artificial distinction is here made between that which acts and that which guides action (but both these things are only fixed in order to agree with our metaphysico-logical dogma: they are not " facts "). We should not interpret this constraint in our selves, to imagine concepts, species, forms, purposes, and laws ("a world of identical cases ") as if we were in a position to construct a real world; but as 37 a constraint to adjust a world by means of which our existence will be ensured: we thereby create a world which is determinable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us. The very same constraint is active in the functions of the senses which support the reason by means of simplification, coarsening, accentuation, and interpretation; whereon all " recognition," all the ability of making one s self intelligible rests. Our needs have made our senses so precise, that the " same world of appearance " always returns, and has thus acquired the semblance of reality. Our subjective constraint to have faith in logic, is expressive only of the fact that long before logic itself became conscious in us, we did nothing save introduce its postulates into the nature of things: now we find ourselves in their presence, we can no longer help it, and now we would fain believe that this constraint is a guarantee of " truth." We it was who created the " thing," the " same thing," the subject, the attribute, the action, the object, the substance, and the form, after we had carried the process of equalizing, coarsening, and simplifying as far as possible. The world seems logical to us, because we have already made it logical.
522. Fundamental solution. We believe in reason: this is, however, the philosophy of colorless concepts. Language is built upon the most naive prejudices. 38 Now we read discord and problems into things, because we are able to think only in the form of language we also believe in the " eternal truth " of " wisdom " (for instance, subject, attribute, etc.). We cease from thinking if we do not wish to think under the control of language; the most we can do is to attain to an attitude of doubt concerning the question whether the boundary here really is a boundary. Rational thought is a process of interpreting according to a scheme which we cannot reject.
(f) CONSCIOUSNESS.
523. There is no greater error than that of making psychical and physical phenomena the two faces, the two manifestations of the same substance. By this means nothing is explained: the concept "substance" is utterly useless as a means of explanation. Consciousness may be regarded as secondary, almost an indifferent and superfluous thing, prob ably destined to disappear and to be superseded by perfect automatism When we observe mental phenomena we may be likened to the deaf and dumb who divine the spoken word, which they do not hear, from the movements of the speaker s lips. From the appearance of the inner mind we draw conclusions concerning invisible and other phenomena, which we could ascertain if our powers of observation were adequate for the purpose. 39 For this inner world we have no finer organs, and that is why a complexity which is thousandfold reaches our consciousness as a simple entity, and we invent a process of causation in it, despite the fact that we can perceive no cause either of the movement or of the change the sequence of thoughts and feelings is nothing more than their becoming visible to consciousness. That this sequence has anything to do with a chain of causes is not worthy of belief: consciousness never communicates an example of cause and effect to us.
524. The part " consciousness " plays. It is essential that one should not mistake the part that " consciousness " plays: it is our relation to the outer world; it was the oulcr world that developed it. On the other hand, the direction that is to say, the care and cautiousness which is concerned with the inter-relation of the bodily functions, does not enter into our consciousness any more than does the storing activity of the intellect: that there is a superior controlling force at work in these things cannot be doubted a sort of directing committee, in which the various leading desires make their votes and their power felt. " Pleasure " and " pain " are indications which reach us from this sphere: as are also acts of will and ideas. In short: That which becomes conscious has causal relations which are completely and absolutely concealed from our knowledge the sequence ofthoughts, feelings, and ideas, in consciousness, does 40 not signify that the order in which they come is a causal order: it is so apparently, however, in the highest degree. We have based the whole of our notion of intellect, reason, logic, etc., upon this apparent truth (all these things do not exist: they are imaginary syntheses and entities), and we then projected the latter into and behind all things! As a rule copiousness itself is understood to be the general sensorium and highest ruling centre; albeit, it is only a means of communication: it was developed by intercourse, and with a view to the interests of intercourse. . . . " Intercourse " is under stood, here, as <! relation," and is intended to cover the action of the outer world upon us and our necessary response to it, as also our actual influence upon the outer world. It is not the conducting force, but an organ of the latter.
525. My principle, compressed into a formula which savors of antiquity, of Christianity, Scholasticism, and other kinds of musk: in the concept, " God is spirit! God as perfection is denied. .
526. Wherever people have observed a certain unity in the grouping of things, spirit has always been regarded as the cause of this co-ordination: an assumption for which reasons are entirely lacking. Why should the idea of a complex fact be one of the conditions of that fact? Or why should 41 the notion of a complex fact have to precede it as its cause? We must be on our guard against explaining finality by the spirit: there is absolutely no reason whatever for ascribing to spirit the peculiar power of organizing and systematizing. The domain of the nervous system is much more extensive: the realm of consciousness is superadded. In the collective process of adaptation and systematizing, consciousness plays no part at all.
527. Physiologists, like philosophers, believe that consciousness increases in value in proportion as it gains in clearness: the most lucid consciousness and the most logical and impassive thought are of the first order. Meanwhile according to what standard is this value determined? In regard to the discharge of will-power the most superficial and most simple thought is the most useful it might therefore, etc. etc. (because it leaves few motives over). Precision in action is opposed to ttt far-sighted and often uncertain judgments of caution: the latter is led by the deeper instinct.
528. The chief error of psychologists: they regard the indistinct idea as of a lower kind than the distinct;but that which keeps at a distance from our consciousness and which is therefore obscure, may on 42 that very account be quite clear in itself. The fact that a thing becomes obscure is a question of the perspective of consciousness
529. The_great misapprehensions: (1) The senseless over estimation of consciousness, its elevation to the dignity of an entity: " a spirit," " a soul," something that feels, thinks, and wills; (2) The spirit regarded as a cause, especially where finality, system, and co-ordination appear; (3) Consciousness classed as the highest form attainable, as the most superior kind of being, as " God "; (4) Will introduced wherever effects are observed; (5) The "real world" regarded as the spiritual world, accessible by means of the facts of consciousness; (6) Absolute knowledge regarded as the faculty of consciousness, wherever knowledge exists at all. Consequences: Every step forward consists of a step forward in consciousness; every step backwards is a step into unconsciousness (unconsciousness was regarded as a falling-back upon the passions and senses as a state of animalism. . . .). Man approaches reality and " real being " through dialectics: man departs from them by means of instincts, senses, and automatism. . . . To convert man into a spirit, would mean to make a god of him: spirit, will, goodness all one. 43 All goodness must take its root in spirituality, must be a fact of consciousness. Every step made towards something better can be only a step forward in consciousness.
(g) JUDGMENT. TRUE FALSE.
530. Kant s theological bias, his unconscious dogmatism, his moral outlook, ruled, guided, and directed him. The TTpwrov -vre8o9: how is the fact knowledge possible? Is knowledge a fact at all? What is knowledge? If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly reply to the question, "Is there such a thing as knowledge?" Very jinel But if I do not already " know " whether there is, or can be, such a thing as knowledge, I cannot reason ably ask the question, " What is knowledge?" Kant believes in the fact of knowledge: what he requires is a piece of naivete: the knowledge of knowledge " Knowledge is judgment." But judgment is a belief that something is this or that! And not knowledge! " All knowledge consists in synthetic judgments " which have the character of being universally true (the fact is so in all cases, and does not change), and which have the character of being necessary (the reverse of the proposition cannot be imagined to exist). The validity of a belief in knowledge is always taken for granted; as is also the validity of the feelings which conscience dictates. Here moral ontology is the ruling bias. 44 The conclusion, therefore, is: (i) there are pro positions which we believe to be universally true and necessary. (2) This character of universal truth and of necessity cannot spring from experience. (3) Consequently it must base itself upon no experience at all, but upon something else; it must be derived from another source of knowledge! (Kant concludes (i) that there are some pro positions which hold good only on one condition; (2) this condition is that they do not spring from experience, but from pure reason.) Thus, the question is, whence do we derive our reasons for believing in the truth of such propositions? No, whence does our belief get its cause? But the origin of a belief, of a strong conviction, is a psychological problem: and very limited and narrow experience frequently brings about such a belief! It already presupposes that there are not only " data a posteriori " but also " data a priori " that is to say, " previous to experience." Necessary and universal truth cannot be given by experience: it is therefore quite clear that it has come to us without experience at all? There is no such thing as an isolated judgment! An isolated judgment is never " true," it is never knowledge; only in connection with, and when related to, many other judgments, is a guarantee of its truth forthcoming. What is the difference between true and false belief? What is knowledge? He "knows" it, that is heavenly! Necessary and universal truth cannot be given by experience! It is therefore independent of experience, of all experience! The view which comes quite a priori, and therefore independent of all experience, merely out of reason, is " pure knowledge "! " The principles of logic, the principle of identity and of contradiction, are examples of pure know ledge, because they precede all experience." But these principles are not cognitions, but regulative articles of faith. In order to establish the a priori character (the pure rationality) of mathematical axioms, space must be conceived as a form of pure reason. Hume had declared that there were no a priori synthetic judgments. Kant says there are the mathematical ones! And if there are such judgments, there may also be such things as metaphysics and a knowledge of things by means of pure reason! Mathematics is possible under conditions which are not allowed to metaphysics. All human know ledge is either experience or mathematics. A judgment is synthetic that is to say, it co ordinates various ideas. It is a priori that is to say, this co-ordination is universally true and necessary, and is arrived at, not by sensual experience, but by pure reason. If there are such things as a priori judgments, then reason must be able to co-ordinate: co-ordination is a form. Reason must possess a formative faculty.
531. Judging is our oldest faith; it is our habit of believing this to be true or false, of asserting or denying, our certainty that something is thus and not otherwise, our belief that we really " know "- what is believed to be true in all judgments? What are attributes * We did not regard changes in ourselves merely as such, but as " things in themselves," which are strange to us, and which we only " perceive "; and we did not class them as phenomena, but as Being, as " attributes "; and in addition we invented a creature to which they attach themselves that is to say, we made the effect the working cause, and the latter we made Being. But even in this plain statement, the concept " effect " is arbitrary: for in regard to those changes which occur in us, and of which we are convinced we ourselves are not the cause, we still argue that they must be effects: and this is in accordance with the belief that " every change must have its author "; but this belief in itself is already mythology; for it separates the working cause from the cause in work. When I say the " lightning flashes," I set the flash down, once as an action and a second time as a subject acting; and thus a thing is fancifully affixed to a phenomenon, which is not one with it, but which is stable, which is, and does not "come." To make the phenomenon the working cause, and to make the effect into a thing into Being: this is the double error, or interpretation of which we are guilty.
532. The Judgment that is the faith: "This and p this is so." In every judgment, therefore, there lies the admission that an " identical case " has been met with: it thus takes some sort of comparison for granted, with the help of the memory. Judgment does not create the idea that an identical case seems to be there. It believes rather that it actually perceives such a case; it works on the hypothesis that there are such things as identical cases. But what is that much older function called, which must have been active much earlier, and which in itself equalizes unequal cases and makes them alike? What is that second function called, which with this first one as a basis, etc. etc. " That which provokes the same sensations as another thing is equal to that other thing ": but what is that called which makes sensations equal, which regards them as equal? There could be no judgments if a sort of equalizing process were not active within all sensations: memory is only possible by means of the underscoring of all that has already been experienced and learned. Before a judgment can be formed, the process of assimilation must already have been completed-, thus, even here, an intellectual activity is to be observed which does not enter consciousness in at all the same way as the pain which accompanies a wound. Probably the 1 psychic phenomena correspond to all the organic functions that is to say, they consist of assimilation, rejection, growth, etc. The essential thing is to start out from the body and to use it as the general clue. It is by far the richer phenomenon, and allows of much more accur ate observation. The belief in the body is much more soundly established than the belief in spirit. r? 48 " However strongly a thing may be believed, the degree of belief is no criterion of its truth." But what is truth? Perhaps it is a form of faith, which has become a condition of existence? Then strength would certainly be a criterion; for in stance, in regard to causality.
533. Logical accuracy, transparency, considered as the criterion of truth (" omne illud verum est, quod dare et distincte percipitur? Descartes): by this means the mechanical hypothesis of the world becomes desirable and credible. But this is gross confusion: like simplex sigillum f veri. Whence comes the knowledge that the real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect? Could it not be otherwise? Could it j not be this, that the hypothesis which gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, is preferred valued, and marked as true. The intellect sets its freest and strongest faculty and ability as the criterion of what is most valuable, consequently of what is true. . . . * " True " from the standpoint of sentiment is that which most provokes sentiment (" I "); from the standpoint of thought is that which gives thought the greatest sensation of strength; from the standpoint of touch, sight, and hearing is that which calls forth the greatest resistance. $1 Thus it is the highest degrees of activity which awaken belief in regard to the object, in regard to its " reality." The sensations of strength, struggle, and resistance convince the subject that there is something which is being resisted.
534. The criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power.
535. According to my way of thinking, " truth " does not necessarily mean the opposite of error, but, in the most fundamental cases, merely the relation of different errors to each other: thus one error might be older, deeper than another, perhaps altogether ineradicable, one without which organic creatures like ourselves could not exist; whereas other errors might not tyrannize over us to that extent as conditions of existence, but when measured according to the standard of those other " tyrants," could even be laid aside and " refuted." Why should an irrefutable assumption necessarily be " true "? This question may exasperate the logicians who limit things according to the limitations they find in themselves: but I have long since declared war with this logician s optimism.
536. Everything simple is simply imaginary, but not "true." That which is real and true is, however, neither a unity nor reducible to a unity.
537. What is truth f Inertia; that hypothesis which brings satisfaction, the smallest expense of intellectual strength, etc.
538. First proposition. The easier way of thinking * always triumphs over the more difficult way; dogmatically: simplex sigillum veri. Dico: to sup pose that clearness is any proof of truth, is absolute childishness. . . . Second proposition. The teaching of Being, of things, and of all those constant entities, is a hundred times more easy than the teaching of Becoming and of evolution. . . . Third proposition. Logic was intended to be a method ot facilitating thought: a means of expression, not truth. . . . Later on it got to act like truth. . . .
539. Parmenides said: " One can form no concept of the non-existent "; we are at the other extreme, and say, " That of which a concept can be formed, is certainly fictional."
540. There are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes therefore there must be many kinds of " truths," and consequently there can be no truth. $1
541. Inscriptions over the porch of a modern lunatic asylum. "That which is necessarily true in thought must be necessarily true in morality." HERBERT SPENCER. " The ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the inconceivableness of its negation." HERBERT SPENCER.
542. If the character of existence were false, and this would be possible, what would truth then be, all our truth? ... An unprincipled falsification of the false? A higher degree of falseness? . . .
543. In a world which was essentially false, truthfulness would be an anti-natural tendency: its only purpose would be to provide a means of attaining to a higher degree of falsity. For a world of truth and Being to be simulated, the truthful one would first have to be created (it being understood that he must believe himself to be " truthful "). Simple, transparent, not in contradiction with himself, lasting, remaining always the same to him self, free from faults, sudden changes, dissimulation, and form: such a man conceives a world of Being as " God" in His own image. In order that truthfulness may be possible, the 52 whole sphere in which man moves must be very tidy, small, and respectable: the advantage in every respect must be with the truthful one. Lies, tricks, dissimulations, must cause astonishment.
544. " Dissimulation " increases in accordance with the rising order of rank among organic beings. In the inorganic world it seems to be entirely absent. There power opposes power quite roughly ruse begins in the organic world; plants are already masters of it. The greatest men, such as Caesar and Napoleon (see Stendhal s remark concerning him),* as also the higher races (the Italians), the Greeks (Odysseus); the most supreme cunning, belongs to the very essence of the elevation of man. . . . The problem of the actor. My Dionysian ideal. . . . The optics of all the organic functions, of all the strongest vital instincts: the power which will have error in all life; error as the very first principle of thought itself. Before " thought " is possible, " fancy " must first have done its work; the picturing of identical cases, of the seemingness of identity, is more primeval than the cognition of identity. * The reference to Stendhal here, seems to point to a passage in his Life of Napoleon (Preface, p. xv) of which Nietzsche had made a note in another place, and which reads: " Une croyance presque instinctive chez moi c est que tout homme puissant ment quand il parle et a plus forte vaison quand il ecrit." 53
 AGAINST CAUSALITY.
545. I believe in absolute space as the basis of force, and I believe the latter to be limited and formed. Time, eternal. But space and time as things in themselves do not exist. " Changes " are only appearances (or mere processes of our senses to us); if we set recurrence, however regular, between them, nothing is proved beyond the fact that it has always happened so. The feeling that post hoc is propter hoc is easily explained as the result of a misunderstanding; it is comprehensible. But appearances cannot be " causes "!
546. The interpretation of a phenomenon, either as an action or as the endurance of an action (that is to say, every action involves the suffering of it), amounts to this: every change, every differentiation, presupposes the existence of an agent and somebody acted upon, who is " altered."
547. Psychological history of the concept "subject" The body, the thing, the " whole," which is visualized by the eye, awakens the thought of distinguishing between an action and an agent; the idea that the agent is the cause of the action, after having been repeatedly refined, at length left the " subject " over. * 54
548. Our absurd habit of regarding a mere mnemonic sign or abbreviated formula as an independent being, and ultimately as a cause; as, for instance, when we say of lightning that " it flashes." Or even the little word " I." A sort of double-sight in seeing which makes sight a cause of seeing in itself: this was the feat in the invention of the " subject " of the " ego."
549. " Subject," " object," " attribute " these distinctions have been made, and are now used like schemes to cover all apparent facts. The false fundamental observation is this, that I believe it is I who does something, who suffers something, who " has " something, who " has " a quality,
550. In every judgment lies the whole faith in sub ject, attribute, or cause and effect (in the form of an assumption that every effect is the result of activity, and that all activity presupposes an agent); and even this last belief is only an isolated case of the first, so that faith remains as the most fundamental belief: there are such things as subjects, everything that happens is related attributively to a subject of some sort. I notice something, and try to discover the reason of it: originally this was, I look for an intention behind it, and, above all, I look for one who has an intention, for a subject, an agent: 55 every phenomenon is an action, formerly intentions were seen behind all phenomena, this is our oldest habit. Has the animal also this habit? As a living organism, is it not also compelled to interpret things through itself. The question " why? " is always a question concerning the causa finalis, and the general " purpose " of things. We have no sign of the " sense of the efficient cause "; in this respect Hume is quite right, habit (but not only that of the individual) allows us to expect that a certain process, frequently observed, will follow upon another, but nothing more! That which gives us such an extraordinarily firm faith in causality, is not the rough habit of observing the sequence of processes; but our inability to interpret a phenomenon otherwise than as the result of de sign. It is the belief in living and thinking things, as the only agents of causation; it is the belief in will, in design the belief that all phenomena are actions, and that all actions presuppose an agent; it is the belief in the " subject." Is not this belief in the concepts subject and object an arrant absurdity? Question: Is the design the cause of a phenomenon? Or is that also illusion? Is it not the phenomenon itself?
551. A criticism of the concept "cause" We have absolutely no experience concerning cause; viewed psychologically we derive the whole concept from the subjective conviction, that we ourselves are causes that is to say, that the arm moves. . . . But that is an error. We distinguish ourselves, the agents, from the action, and everywhere we make use of this scheme we try to discover an agent behind every phenomenon. What have we done? We have misunderstood a feeling of power, tension, j resistance, a muscular feeling, which is already the j beginning of the action, and posited it as a cause; or we have understood the will to do this or that, as a cause, because the action follows it. There is no such thing as " Cause," in those few cases in which it seemed to be given, and in which we projected it out of ourselves in order to understand a phenomenon it has been shown to be an illusion. Our understanding of a phenomenon consisted in our inventing a subject who was responsible for something happening, and for the manner in which it happened. In our concept " cause " we have em braced our feeling of will, our feeling of " freedom," our feeling of responsibility and our design to do an action: causa efficiens and causa finalis are fundamentally one. We believed that an effect was explained when we could point to a state in which it was inherent. As a matter of fact, we invent all causes according to the scheme of the effect: the latter is known to us. e . . On the other hand, we are not in a position to say of any particular thing how it will " act." The thing, the subject the will, the design all inherent in the conception " cause." We try to discover things in order to explain why something has changed. Even the " atom " is one of these fanciful inventions like the " thing " and the " primitive subject." . . . 57 At last we understand that things consequently , also atoms effect nothing: because they are non-existent and that the concept causality is quite useless. Out of a necessary sequence of states, the latter s causal relationship does not follow (that would be equivalent to extending their active principle from I to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5). Th$f& j$ no suck tiling as a cause or an effect. From the standpoint of language we do not know how to rid ourselves of them. But that does not matter. If I imagine muscle separated from its " effects," I have denied it. ... In short: a phenomenon is neither effected norcapable of effecting. Causa is a faculty to effect j something superadded fancifully to what hap- | pens. . . . The interpretation of causality is an illusion. . . . A " thing " is the sum of its effects, synthetically united by means of a concept, an image. As a matter of fact, science has robbed the concept causality of all meaning, and has reserved it merely as an allegorical formula, which has made it a matter of indifference whether cause or effect be put on this side or on that. It is asserted that in two complex states (centres of force) the quantities of energy remain constant. The calculability of a phenomenon does not lie in the fact that a rule is observed, or that a neces sity is obeyed, or that we have projected a law of causality into every phenomenon: it lies in the recurrence of " identical cases" There is no such thing as a sense of causality, as Kant would have us believe. We are aghast, 58 we feel insecure, we will have something familiar, which can be relied upon. ... As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified. The so-called instinct of causality is nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar y and the attempt at finding something in it which is already known. It is not a search [for causes, but for the familiar.
552. To combat determinism and teleology. From the fact that something happens regularly, and that its occurrence may be reckoned upon, it does not follow that it happens necessarily. If a quantity of force determines and conducts itself in a certain way in every particular case, it does not prove that it has " no free will." is not an established fact: it was we who first read it into the nature of all phenomena. We interpreted the possibility of formularising pheno mena as a result of the dominion of necessary law over all existence. But it does not follow, because I do a determined thing, that I am bound to do it. Compulsion cannot be demonstrated in things: all that the rule proves is this, that one and the same phenomenon is not another phenomenon. Owing to the very fact that we fancied the existence of subjects " agents " in things, the notion arose that all phenomena are the consequence of a compulsory force exercised over the subject exercised by whom? once more by an " agent." The concept " Cause and Effect " is a dangerous one, 59 so long as people believe in something that causes, and a something that is caused. (a) Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation. # When it is understood that the " subject " is nothing that acts, but only a thing of fancy, there is much that follows. Only with the subject as model we invented thingness and read it into the pell-mell of sensations. If we cease from believing in the acting subject, the belief in acting things, in reciprocal action, in cause and effect between phenomena which we call things, also falls to pieces. In this case the world of acting atoms also disappears: for this world is always assumed to exist on the pre-determined grounds that subjects are necessary. Ultimately, of course, " the thing-in-itself" also disappears: for at bottom it is the conception of a " subject-in-itself." But we have seen that the subject is an imaginary thing. The antithesis " thing-in-itself " and "appearance" is untenable; but in this way the concept " appearance " also disappears. (c) If we abandon the idea of the acting subject, i we also abandon the object acted upon. Duration, I equality to self, Being, are inherent neither in what is called subject, nor in what is called object: they are complex phenomena, and in regard to other phenomena are apparently durable they are 60 distinguishable, for instance, by the different tempo with which they happen (repose movement, fixed loose: all antitheses which do not exist in them selves and by means of which differences of degree only are expressed; from a certain limited point of view, though, they seem to be antitheses. There are no such things as antitheses; it is from logic that we derive our concept of contrasts and starting out from its standpoint we spread the error over all things). * (d) If we abandon the ideas " subject " and " object "; then we must also abandon the idea "substance" and therefore its various modifications too; for instance: " matter," " spirit," and other hypothetical things, " eternity and the immutability of matter," etc. We are then rid of materiality. * From a moral standpoint the world is false. But inasmuch as morality itself is a part of this world, morality also is false. The will to truth is a process of establishing things; it is a process of making things true and lasting, a total elimination of that false character, a Revaluation of it into being. Thus, " truth " is not something which is present and which has to be found and discovered; it is something which has to be created and which gives its name to a process or, better still, to the Will to overpower, which in itself has no purpose: to introduce truth is a processus in infinitum, an active determining it is not a process of be- 6 1 coming conscious of something, which in itself is fixed and determined. It is merely a word for " The Will to Power." Life is based on the hypothesis of a belief in stable and regularly recurring things; the mightier it is, the more vast must be the world of know ledge and the world called being. Logicizing, rationalizing, and systematizing are of assistance as means of existence. Man projects his instinct of truth, his " aim," to a certain extent beyond himself, in the form of a metaphysical world of Being, a " thing-in-itself," a world already to hand. His requirements as a creator make him invent the world in which he works in advance; he anticipates it: this anticipation (this faith in truth) is his mainstay. All phenomena, movement, Becoming, regarded as the establishment of relations of degree and of force, as a contest. . . . * As soon as we. fancy that some one is responsible for the fact that we are thus and thus, etc. (God, Nature), and that we ascribe our existence, our happiness, our misery, our destiny, to that some one, we corrupt the innocence of Becoming for ourselves. We then have some one who wishes to attain to something by means of us and with us. * The " welfare of the individual " is just as fanciful as the " welfare of the species ": the first is not sacrificed to the last; seen from afar, the species 62 is just as fluid as the individual. " The preservation of the species " is only a result of the growth of the species that is to say, of the overcoming of the species on the road to a stronger kind. Theses: The apparent conformity of means to end (" the conformity of means to end which far surpasses the art of man ") is merely the result of that " Will to Power " which manifests itself in all phenomena: To become stronger involves a process of ordering, which may well be mistaken for an attempted conformity of means to end: The ends which are apparent are not intended; but, as soon as a superior power prevails over an inferior power, and the latter proceeds to work as a function of the former, an order of rank is established, an organization which must give rise to the idea that there is an arrangement of means and ends. Against apparent " necessity ": This is only an expression for the fact that a certain power is not also something else. Against the apparent " conformity of means to ends ": The latter is only an expression for the order among the spheres of power and their interplay.
(z) THE THING-IN-ITSELF AND APPEARANCE.
553. The foul blemish on Kant s criticism has at last become visible even to the coarsest eyes: Kant had no right to his distinction " appearance " and " thing-in-itself" in his own writings he had deprived himself of the right of differentiating any longer in this old and hackneyed manner, seeing that he had condemned the practice of drawing any conclusions concerning the cause of an appearance from the appearance itself, as unallowable in accordance with his conception of the idea of causality and its purely intraphenomenal validity: and this conception, on the other hand, already anticipates that differentiation, as if the " thing-in- itself " were not only inferred but actually given.
554. It is obvious that neither things-in-themselves nor appearances can be related to each other in the form of cause and effect: and from this it follows that the concept " cause and effect " is not applicable in a philosophy which believes in things- in-themselves and in appearances. Kant s mistake . . As a matter of fact, from a psycho logical standpoint, the concept " cause and effect " is derived from an attitude of mind which believes it sees the action of will upon will everywhere, which believes only in living things, and at bottom only in souls (not in things). Within the mechanical view of the world (which is logic and its application to space and time) that concept is reduced to the mathematical formula with which and this is a fact which cannot be sufficiently emphasized nothing is ever understood, but rather defined deformed.
555. The greatest of all fables is the one relating to knowledge. People would like to know how things-in-themselves are constituted: but behold, there are no things-in-themselves! But even supposing there were an " in-itself," an unconditional thing, it could on that very account not be known Something unconditioned cannot be known: otherwise it would not be unconditioned! Knowing, however, is always a process of " coming into relation with something "; the knowledge- seeker, on this principle, wants the thing, which he would know, to be nothing to him, and to be nothing to anybody at all: and from this there results a contradiction, in the first place, between this will to know, and this desire that the thing to be known should be nothing to him (wherefore know at all then?); and secondly, because something which is nothing to anybody, does not even exist, and therefore cannot be known. Knowing means: " to place one s self in relation with something," to feel one s self conditioned by something and one s self conditioning it under all circumstances, then, it is a process of making stable or fixed, of defining, of making conditions conscious (not a process of sounding things, creatures, or objects "in-them- selves ").
556. A " thing-in-itself " is just as absurd as a " sense- in-itself," a " meaning-in-itself." There is no such 65 thing as a " fact-in-itself," for a meaning must always be given to it before it can become a fact. The answer to the question, " What is that? " is a process of fixing a meaning from a different standpoint. The " essence" the " essential factor" is something which is only seen as a whole in perspective, and which presupposes a basis which is multifarious. Fundamentally the question is " What is that for me? " (for us, for everything that lives, etc. etc.). A thing would be defined when all creatures had asked and answered this question, " What is that? " concerning it. Supposing that one single creature, with its own relations and standpoint in regard to all things, were lacking, that thing would still remain undefined. In short: the essence of a thing is really only an opinion concerning that " thing." Or, better still; " it is worth " is actually what is meant by * it is," or by " that is." One may not ask: " Who interprets, then? " for the act of interpreting itself, as a form of the Will to Power, manifests itself (not as " Being," but as a. process, as Becoming) as a passion. The origin of " things " is wholly the work of the idealising, thinking, willing, and feeling subject. The concept " thing " as well as all its attributes. Even " the subject " is a creation of this order, a " thing" like all others: a simplification, aiming at a definition of the power that fixes, invents, and thinks, as such, as distinct from all isolated fixing, inventing, and thinking. Thus a capacity defined or distinct from all other individual capacities; at bottom action conceived collectively in regard to all the action which has yet to come (action and the probability of similar action).
557. The qualities of a thing are its effects upon other " things." If one imagines other " things " to be non existent, a thing has no qualities. That is to say: there is nothing without other things. That is to say: there is no " thing-in-itself."
558. The thing-in-itself is nonsense. If I think all the " relations," all the " qualities," all the " activities " of a thing, away, the thing itself does not remain: for " thingness " was only invented fanci fully by us to meet certain logical needs that is to say, for the purposes of definition and comprehension (in order to correlate that multitude of relations, qualities, and activities).
559. " Things which have a nature in themselves " a dogmatic idea, which must be absolutely abandoned.
560. That things should have a nature in themselves, quite apart from interpretation and subjectivity, is a perfectly idle hypothesis: it would presuppose that interpretation and the act of being subjective are not essential, that a thing divorced from all its relations can still be a thing. Or, the other way round: the apparent objective character of things; might it not be merely the result of a difference of degree within the subject perceiving? could not that which changes slowly strike us as being " objective lasting, Being, " in- itself"? could not the objective view be only a false way of conceiving things and a contrast within the perceiving subject?
561. If all unity were only unity as organization. But the " thing " in which we believe was invented only as a substratum to the various attributes. If the thing " acts," it means: we regard all the other qualities which are to hand, and which are momentarily latent, as the cause accounting for the fact that one individual quality steps forward that is to say, we take the sum of its qualities x as the cause of the quality x which is obviously quite absurd and imbecile! All unity is only so in the form of organization and collective action: in the same way as a human community is a unity that is to say, the reverse of atomic anarchy; thus it is a body politic, which stands for one, yet is not one.
562. " At some time in the development of thought, a point must have been reached when man became conscious of the fact that what he called the qualities of a thing were merely the sensations of the feeling subject: and thus the qualities ceased from belonging to the thing." The " thing- in-itself" remained over. The distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing-for-us, is based upon that older and artless observation which would fain grant energy to things: but analysis revealed that even force was only ascribed to them by our fancy, as was also substance. " The thing affects a subject? " Thus the root of the idea of substance is in language, not in things outside our selves! The thing-in-itself is not a problem at all! Being will have to be conceived as a sensation which is no longer based upon anything quite devoid of sensation. In movement no new meaning is given to feeling. That which is, cannot be the substance of movement: it is therefore a form of Being. N.B. The explanation of life may be sought, in the first place, through mental images of phenomena which precede it (purposes); Secondly, through mental images of phenomena which follow behind it (the mathematico-physical explanation). The two should not be confounded. Thus: the physical explanation, which is the symbolization of the world by means of feeling and thought, cannot in itself make feeling and thinking originate again and show its derivation: physics must rather construct the world of feeling, consistently without feeling or purpose right up to the highest man. And teleology is only a history of purposes , and is never physical.
563. Our method of acquiring " knowledge " is limited to a process of establishing quantities; but we can by no means help feeling the differences of quantity as differences of quality. Quality is merely a relative truth for us; it is not a " thing-in-itself." Our senses have a certain definite quantum as a mean, within the limits of which they perform their functions that is to say, we become conscious of bigness and smallness in accordance with the conditions of our existence. If we sharpened or blunted our senses tenfold, we should perish that is to say, we feel even proportions as qualities in regard to our possibilities of existence.
564. But could not all quantities be merely tokens of qualities * Another consciousness and scale of desires must correspond to greater power in fact, another point of view; growth in itself is the expression of a desire to become more; the desire for a greater quantum springs from a certain quale; in a purely quantitative world, everything would be dead, stiff, and motionless. The reduction of all qualities to quantities is nonsense: it is discovered that they can only stand together, an analogy
565. Qualities are our insurmountable barriers; we cannot possibly help feeling mere differences of quantity as something fundamentally different from quantity that is to say, as qualities, which we can no longer reduce to terms of quantity. But everything in regard to which the word " know ledge " has any sense at all, belongs to the realm of reckoning, weighing, and measuring, to quantity: whereas, conversely, all our valuations (that is to say, our sensations) belong precisely to the realm of qualities, i.e. to those truths which belong to us alone and to our point of view, and which absolutely cannot be " known." It is obvious that every one of us, different creatures, must feel different qualities, and must therefore live in a different world from the rest. Qualities are an idiosyncrasy proper to human nature; the demand that these our human interpretations and values, should be general and perhaps real values, belongs to the hereditary madnesses of human pride.
566. The " real world," in whatever form it has been conceived hitherto was always the world of appearance over again.
567. The world of appearance, i.e. a world regarded in the light of values; ordered, selected according to values that is to say, in this case, according to the standpoint of utility in regard to the preservation and the increase of power of a certain species of animals. It is the point of view, then, which accounts for the character of" appearance." As if a world could remain over, when the point of view is cancelled! By such means relativity would also be cancelled! Every centre of energy has its point of view of the whole of the remainder of the world that is to say, its perfectly definite valuation, its mode of action, its mode of resistance. The " world of appearance " is thus reduced to a specific kind of action on the world proceeding from a centre. But there is no other kind of action: and the " world " is only a word for the collective play of these actions. Reality consists precisely in this particular action and reaction of every isolated factor against the whole. There no longer remains a shadow of a right to speak here of " appearance." . . . The specific way of reacting is the only way of reacting; we do not know how many kinds and what sort of kinds there are. But there is no " other" no " real," no essential being, for thus a world without action and re action would be expressed. . . . The antithesis: world of appearance and real world, is thus reduced to the antitheses "world" and "nonentity."
568. A criticism of the concept "real and apparent world." Of these two the first is a mere fiction, formed out of a host of imaginary things. " Appearance " itself belongs to reality: it is a form of its being; i.e. in a world where there is no such thing as being, a certain calculable world of identical cases must first be created through appearance; a tempo in which observation and comparison is possible, etc. " Appearance " is an adjusted and simplified world, in which our practical instincts have worked: for us it is perfectly true: for we live in it, we can live in it: this is the proof of its truth as far as we are concerned. . . . The world, apart from the fact that we have to live in it the world, which we have not adjusted to our being, our logic, and our psychological prejudices does not exist as a world " in-itself "; it is essentially a world of relations: under certain circumstances it has a different aspect from every different point at which it is seen: it presses against every point, and every point resists it and these collective relations are in every case incongruent. The measure of power determines what being possesses the other measure of power: under what form, force, or constraint, it acts or resists. Our particular case is interesting enough: we have created a conception in order to be able to live in a world, in order to perceive just enough to enable us to endure life in that world.
569. The nature of our psychological vision is deter mined by the fact (i) That communication is necessary, and that for communication to be possible something must be stable, simplified, and capable of being stated pre cisely (above all, in the so-called identical cs. In order that it may be communicable, it must be felt as something adjusted, as " recognisable" The material of the senses, arranged by the understanding, re- 73 duced to coarse leading features, made similar to other things, and classified with its like. Thus: the indefiniteness and the chaos of sense-impres sions are, as it were, made logical. (2) The phenomenal world is the adjusted world which we believe to be real. Its "reality" lies in the constant return of similar, familiar, and related things, in their rationalised character, and in the be lief that we are here able to reckon and determine. (3) The opposite of this phenomenal world is not " the real world," but the amorphous and un- adjustable world consisting of the chaos of sensa tions that is to say, another kind of phenomenal world, a world which to us is " unknowable." (4) The question how "things-in-themselves" are constituted, quite apart from our sense-receptivity and from the activity of our understanding, must be answered by the further question: how were we able to know that things existed"} " Thingness " is one of our own inventions. The question is whether there are not a good many more ways of creating such a world of appearance and whether this creating, rationalising, adjusting, and falsifying be not the best-guaranteed reality itself: in short, whether that which " fixes the meaning of things " is not the only reality: and whether the " effect of environment upon us " be not merely the result of such will-exercising subjects. . . . The other " creatures " act upon us; our adjusted world of appearance is an arrangement and an overpowering of its activities: a sort of defensive measure. The subject alone is demonstrable; the hypothesis might be advanced that subjects are all that exist, that 74 " object " is only a form of action of subject upon subject ... a modus of the subject.
(k) THE METAPHYSICAL NEED.
570. If one resembles all the philosophers that have gone before, one can have no eyes for what has existed and what will exist one sees only what is. But as there is no such thing as Being; all that the philosophers had to deal with was a host of fancies y this was their " world."
571. To assert the existence as a whole of things concerning which we know nothing, simply because there is an advantage in not being able to know anything of them, was a piece of artlessness on Kant s part, and the result of the recoil-stroke of certain needs especially in the realm of morals and metaphysics.
572. An artist cannot endure reality; he turns away or back from it: his earnest opinion is that the worth of a thing consists in that nebulous residue of it which one derives from color, form, sound, and thought; he believes that the more subtle, at tenuated, and volatile, a thing or a man becomes, the more valuable he becomes: the less real, the greater the worth. This is Platonism: but Plato was guilty of yet further audacity in the matter of turning tables he measured the degree of reality according to the degree of value, and said: The more there is of " idee. " the more there is of Being. He twisted the concept " reality " round and said: " What ye regard as real is an error, and the nearer we get to the idea the nearer we are to truth. " Is this understood? It was the greatest of all re- christenings: and because Christianity adopted it, we are blind to its astounding features. At bottom, Plato, like the artist he was, placed appearance before Being! and therefore lies and fiction before truth! unreality before actuality! He was, however, so* convinced of the value of appearance, that he granted it the attributes of " Being," " causality | " goodness," and " truth," and, in short, all those things which are associated with value. The concept value itself regarded as a cause: first standpoint. The ideal granted all attributes, conferring honor: second standpoint.
573. The idea of the " true world " or of " God " as absolutely spiritual, intellectual, and good, is an emergency measure to the extent to which the antagonistic instincts are all-powerful. . . . Moderation and existing humanity is reflected exactly in the humanisation of the gods. The Greeks of the strongest period, who entertained no fear whatever of themselves, but on the contrary were pleased with themselves, brought down their gods to all their emotions? The spiritualisation of the idea of God is thus very far from being a sign of progress: one is heartily conscious of this when one reads Goethe in his works the vaporisation of God into virtue and spirit is felt as being upon a lower plane.
574. The nonsense of all metaphysics shown to reside in the derivation of the conditioned out of the unconditioned. It belongs to the nature of thinking that it adds the unconditioned to the conditioned, that it invents it just as it thought of and invented the "ego" to cover the multifariousness of its processes: it measures the world according to a host of self-devised measurements according to its fundamental fictions "the unconditioned," "end and means," "things," "substances," and according to logical laws, figures, and forms. There would be nothing which could be called knowledge, if thought did not first so re-create the world into "things" which are in its own image. It is only through thought that there is untruth. The origin of thought, like that of feelings, cannot be traced: but that is no proof of its primordiality or absoluteness! It simply shows that we cannot get behind it, because we have nothing else save thought and feeling.
575. To know is to point to past experience: in its nature it is a regressus in infinitum. That which halts (in the face of a so-called causa prima or the unconditioned, etc.) is laziness, weariness.
576. Concerning the psychology of metaphysics the influence of fear. That which has been most feared, the cause of the greatest suffering (lust of power, voluptuousness, etc.), has been treated with the greatest amount of hostility by men, and eliminated from the " real " world. Thus the passions have been step by step struck out, God posited as the opposite of evil that is to say, reality is conceived to be the negation of the passions and the emotions (i.e. nonentity]. Irrationality, impulsive action, accidental action, is, moreover, hated by them (as the cause of incal culable suffering). Consequently they denied this ele ment in the absolute, and interpreted it as absolute " rationality " and " conformity of means to ends." Change and perishability were also feared; and by this fear an oppressed soul is revealed, full of distrust and painful experiences (the case with Spinoza: a man differently constituted would have regarded this change as a charm). A nature overflowing and playing with energy, would call precisely h.z passions, irrationality and change, good in a eudemonistic sense, together with their consequences: danger, contrast, ruin, etc.
577. Against the value of that which always remains the same (remember Spinoza s artlessness and Descartes likewise), the value of the shortest and of the most perishable, the seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita
578. Moral values in epistemology itself-. The faith in reason why not mistrust? The " real world " is the good world why? Appearance, change, contradiction, struggle, regarded as immoral: the desire for a world which knows nothing of these things. The transcendental world discovered, so that a place may be kept for " moral freedom " (as in Kant). Dialectics as the road to virtue (in Plato and Socrates: probably because sophistry was held to be the road to immorality). Time and space are ideal: consequently there is unity in the essence of things; consequently no " sin," no evil, no imperfection, a justification of God. Epicurus denied the possibility of knowledge, in order to keep the moral (particularly the hedonistic) values as the highest. Augustine does the same, and later Pascal (" corrupted reason"), in favour of Christian values. Descartes contempt for everything variable; likewise Spinoza s.
579. Concerning the psychology of metaphysics. This world is only apparent: therefore there must be a real world; this world is conditioned: conse quently there must be an unconditioned world; this world is contradictory: consequently there is a world free from contradiction; this world is evolving: conseqtiently there is somewhere a static World: a host of false conclusions (blind faith in reason: if A exists, then its opposite B must also exist). Pain inspires these conclusions: at bottom they are wishes that such a world might exist; the hatred of a world which leads to suffering is like wise revealed by the fact that another and better world is imagined: the resentment of the meta physician against reality is creative here. The second series of questions: wherefore suffer? . . . and from this a conclusion is derived concerning the relation of the real world to our apparent, changing, suffering, and contradictory world: (i) Suffering as the consequence of error: how is error possible? (2) Suffering as the consequence of guilt: how is guilt possible? (A host of experiences drawn from the sphere of nature or society, universalised and made absolute.) But if the conditioned world be causally determined by the unconditioned, then the freedom to err, to be sinful, must also be derived from the same quarter: and once more the question arises, to what purpose? . . . The world of appearance, of Becoming, of contradiction, of suffering, is therefore willed; to what purpose? The error of these conclusions: two contradictory concepts are formed because one of them corre sponds to a reality, the other " must " also corre spond to a reality. " Whence " would one otherwise 80 derive its contradictory concept? Reason is thus a source of revelation concerning the absolute. But the origin of the above contradictions need not necessarily be a supernatural source of reason: it is sufficient to oppose +.he real genesis of the concepts: this springs from practical spheres, from utilitarian spheres, hence the strong faith it com mands (one is threatened with ruin if one s con clusions are not in conformity with this reason; but this fact is no "proof" of what the latter asserts). The preoccupation of metaphysicians with pain, is quite artless. " Eternal blessedness ": psycho logical nonsense. Brave_ a.nd creative men never make pleasure and pain ultimate questions they are incidental conditions: both of them must be desired when one will attain to something. It is a sign of fatigue and illness in these meta physicians and religious men, that they should press questions of pleasure and pain into the foreground. Even morality in their eyes derives its great importance only from the fact that it is regarded as an essential condition for abolishing pain. The same holds good of the preoccupation with appearance and error: the cause of pain. A superstition that happiness and truth are related (confusion: happiness in " certainty," in " faith ").
580. To what extent are the various epistemological positions (materialism, sensualism, idealism) conse quences of valuations? The source of the highest 8 1 feelings of pleasure (" feelings of value") may also judge concerning the problem of reality The measure of positive knowledge is quite a matter of indifference and beside the point: as witness the development of India. The Buddhistic negation of reality in general (appearance = pain) is perfectly consistent: un- demonstrability, inaccessibility, lack of categories, not only for an " absolute world," but a recogni tion of the erroneous procedures by means of which the whole concept has been reached. " Absolute reality," " Being in itself," a contradiction. In a world of Becoming, reality is merely a simplification for the purpose of practical ends, or a deception t resulting from the coarseness of certain organs, orf a variation in the tempo of Becoming. The logical denial of the world and Nihilism is a consequence of the fact that we must oppose nonentity with Being, and that " Becoming " is denied. (" Something" becomes.)
581. Being and Becoming. " Reason " developed upon a sensualistic basis upon the prejudices of the senses that is to say, with the belief in the truth of the judgment of the senses. " Being," as the generalization of the concept " Life " (breath), " to be animate," " to will," " to act upon," " become." The opposite is: " to be inanimate," " not to become," " not to will." Thus: " Being " is not opposed to " not-Being," to " appearance," nor is I. F 82 it opposed to death (for only that can be dead which can also live). The " soul," the " ego," posited as primeval facts; and introduced wherever there is Becoming.
582. Being we have no other idea of it than that which we derive from " living How then can everything " be " dead?
583. A. I see with astonishment that science resigns itself today to the fate of being reduced to the world of appearance: we certainly have no organ of knowledge for the real world be it what it may. At this point we may well ask: With what organ of knowledge is this contradiction estab lished? . . . The fact that a world which is accessible to our organs is also understood to be dependent upon these organs, and the fact that we should understand a world as subjectively conditioned, are no proofs of the actual possibility of an objective world. Who urges us to believe that subjectivity is real or essential? The absolute is even an absurd concept: an " absolute mode of existence " is nonsense, the concept " being," " thing," is always relative to us. 83 The trouble is that, owing to the old antithesis "apparent" and " real," the correlative valuations "of little value" and "absolutely valuable " have been spread abroad. The world of appearance does not strike us as a " valuable " world; appearance is on a lower plane than the highest value. Only a " real " world can be absolutely "valuable." . . . Prejudice of prejudices! It is perfectly possible in itself that the real nature of things would be so unfriendly, so opposed to the first conditions of life, that appearance is necessary in order to make life possible. . . . This is certainly the case in a large number of situations for instance, mar riage. Our empirical world would thus be conditioned, even in its limits to knowledge, by the instinct of self-preservation: we regard that as good, valu able, and true, which favours the preservation of the species. . . . (a) We have no categories which allow us to distinguish between a real and an apparent world. (At the most, there could exist a world of appear ance, but not our world of appearance.) (U) Taking the real world for granted, it might still be the less valuable to us: for the quantum of illusion might be of the highest order, owing to its value to us as a preservative measure. (Unless appearance in itself were sufficient to condemn anything?) (c] That there exists a correlation between the degrees of value and the degrees of reality (so that the highest values also possessed the greatest 84 degree of reality), is a metaphysical postulate which starts out with the hypothesis that we know the order of rank among values; and that this order is a moral one. ... It is only on this hypothesis that truth is necessary as a definition of all that is of a superior value. B. It is of cardinal importance that the real world should be suppressed. It is the most formidable inspirer of doubts, and depredator of values, concerning the world which we are it was our most dangerous attempt heretofore on the life of Life. War against all the hypotheses upon which a real world has been imagined. The notion that moral values are the highest values, belongs to this hypothesis. The superiority of the moral valuation would be refuted, if it could be shown to be the result of an immoral valuation a specific case of real immorality: it would thus reduce itself to an appearance, and as an appearance it would cease from having any right to condemn appearance. C. Then the " Will to Truth " would have to be examined psychologically: it is not a moral power, but a form of the Will to Power. This would have to be proved by the fact that it avails itself of every immoral means there is; above all, of the metaphysicians. 85 At the present moment we are face to face with the necessity ot testing the assumption that moral values are the highest values. MetJiod in research is attained only when all moral prejudices have been overcome: it represents a conquest over morality. , .;
584. The aberrations of philosophy are the outcome of the fact that, instead of recognising in logic and the categories of reason merely a means to the adjustment of the world for utilitarian ends (that is to say, " especially," a useful falsification}, they were taken to be the criterion of truth particularly of reality. The " criterion of truth " was, as a matter of fact, merely the biological utility of a systematic falsification of this sort, on principle: and, since a species of animals knows nothing more important than its own preservation, it was indeed allowable here to speak of " truth." Where the artlessness came in, however, was in taking this anthropocentric idiosyncrasy as the measure of things, as the canon for recognising the " real " and the " unreal ": in short, in making a relative thing absolute. And behold, all at once, the world fell into the two halves, " real " and " apparent ": and precisely that world which man s reason had arranged for him to live and to settle in, was discredited. Instead of using the forms as mere instruments for making the world manageable and calculable, the mad fancy of philosophers intervened, and saw that in these categories the concept of that world is given which 86 does not correspond to the concept of the world in which man lives. . . . The means were mis understood as measures of value, and even used as a condemnation of their original purpose. . . . The purpose was, to deceive one s self in a use ful way: the means thereto was the invention of forms and signs, with the help of which the confusing multifariousness of life could be reduced to a useful and wieldy scheme. But woe! a moral category was now brought into the game: no creature would deceive itself, no creature may deceive itself consequently there is only a will to truth. What is " truth "? The principle of contradiction provided the scheme: the real world to which the way is being sought cannot be in contradiction with itself, cannot change, cannot evolve, has no beginning and no end. That is the greatest error which has ever been committed, the really fatal error of the world: it was believed that in the forms of reason a criterion of reality had been found whereas their only purpose was to master reality, by misunderstanding it intelligently. . . . And behold, the world became false precisely owing to the qualities which constitute its reality , namely, change, evolution, multifariousness, con trast, contradiction, war. And thenceforward the whole fatality was there. 1. How does one get rid of the false and merely apparent world? (it was the real and only one). 2. How does one become one s self as remote 87 as possible from the world of appearance? (the concept of the perfect being as a contrast to the real being; or, more correctly still, as the contra diction of life. . . .). The whole direction of values was towards the slander of life; people deliberately confounded ideal dogmatism with knowledge in general: so that the opposing parties also began to reject; science with horror. Thus the road to science was doubly barred: first, by the belief in the real world; and secondly, by the opponents of this belief. Natural science and psychology were (i) condemned in their objects, (2) deprived of their artlessness. . . . Everything is so absolutely bound and related to everything else in the real world, that to condemn, or to think azvay anything, means to condemn and think away the whole. The words " this should not be," " this ought not to be," are a farce. ... If one imagines the consequences, one would ruin the very source of Life by sup pressing everything which is in any sense what ever dangerous or destructive. Physiology proves this much better We see how morality (a) poisons the whole concept of the world, (b) cuts off the way to science, (c) dissipates and undermines all real in stincts (by teaching that their root is immoral]. We thus perceive a terrible tool of decadence at work, which succeeds in remaining immune, thanks to the holy names and holy attitudes it assumes. 88
585. The awful recovery of our consciousness: not of the individual, but of the human species. Let us reflect; let us think backwards; let us follow the narrow and broad highway. A. Man seeks " the truth ": a world that does not contradict itself, that does not deceive, that does not change, a real world a world in which there is no suffering: contradiction, deception, varia bility the causes of suffering! He does not doubt that there is such a thing as a world as it ought to be; he would fain find a road to it. (Indian criticism: even the ego is apparent and not real.) Whence does man derive the concept of reality? Why does he make variability, deception, con tradiction, the origin of suffering; why not rather of his happiness? . . . The contempt and hatred of all that perishes, changes, and varies: whence comes this valuation of stability? Obviously, the will to truth is merely the longing for a stable world. The senses deceive; reason corrects the errors: therefore it was concluded, reason is the road to a static state; the most spiritual ideas must be nearest to the " real world." It is from the senses that the greatest number of misfortunes come they are cheats, deluders, and destroyers. Happiness can be promised only by Being: change and happiness exclude each other. The loftiest desire is thus to be one with Being. That is the formula for the way to happiness. In summa: The world as it ought to be exists; this world in which we live is an error this our world should not exist. The belief in Being shows itself only as a result: the real primum mobile is the disbelief in Becom ing, the mistrust of Becoming, the scorn of all Becoming. . . , What kind of a man reflects in this way? An unfruitful, suffering kind, a world - weary kind. If we try and fancy what the opposite kind of man would be like, we have a picture of a creature who would not require the belief in Being; he would rather despise it as dead, tedious, and in different. . . . The belief that the world which ought to be, is, really exists, is a belief proper to the unfruitful, who do not wish to create a world as it should be. They take it for granted, they seek for means and ways of attaining to it. " The will to truth " is the impotence of the will to create. To recognise that something Antagonism in is thus or thus: I the degrees of To act so that something will j energy in be thus or thus: j various natures. The fiction of a world which corresponds to our desires; psychological artifices and interpretations calculated to associate all that we honor and regard as pleasant, with this real world. " The will to truth " at this stage is essentially the art of interpretation: to which also belongs that interpretation which still possesses strength. The same species of men, grown one degree poorer, no longer possessed of the power to inter pret and to create fictions, produces the Nihilists. A Nihilist is the man who says of the world as it is, that it ought not to exist, and of the world as it ought to be, that it does not exist. According to this, existence (action, suffering, willing, and feeling) has no sense: the pathos of the " in vain " is the Nihilist s pathos and as pathos it is more over an inconsistency on the part of the Nihilist. He who is not able to introduce his will into things, the man without either will or energy, at least invests them with some meaning, i.e. he believes that a will is already in them. The degree of a man s will-power may be measured from the extent to which he can dis pense with the meaning in things, from the extent to which he is able to endure a world without meaning: because he himself arranges a small portion of it. The philosophical objective view of things may thus be a sign of poverty both of will and of energy. For energy organises what is closest and next; the " scientists," whose only desire is to ascertain what exists, are such as cannot arrange things as they ought to be. The artists an intermediary species: they at least set up a symbol of what should exist, they are productive inasmuch as they actually alter and transform; not like the scientists, who leave everything as it is. The connection between philosophers and the pessimistic religions; the same species of man - 91 (they attribute the highest degree of reality to the things which are valued highest). The connection between philosophers and moral men and their evaluations (the moral interpreta tion of the world as the sense of the world: after the collapse of the religious sense). The overcoming of philosophers by the annihila tion of the world of being: intermediary period of Nihilism; before there is sufficient strength present to revalue values, and to make the world of becoming, and of appearance, the only world to be deified and called good. A Nihilism as a normal phenomenon may be a symptom of increasing strength or of increasing weakness: Partly owing to the fact that the strength to create and to will ha? grown to such an extent, that it no longer requires this collective interpreta tion and introduction of a sense (" present duties," state, etc.); Partly owing to the fact that even the creative power necessary to invent sense, declines, and disappointment becomes the ruling condition. The inability to believe in a sense becomes " unbelief." What is the meaning of science in regard to both possibilities? (1) It is a sign of strength and self-control; it shows an ability to dispense with healing, consoling worlds of illusion. (2) It is also able to undermine, to dissect, to disappoint, and to weaken. 92 c. The belief in truth, the need of holding to some thing which is believed to be true: psychological reduction apart from the valuations that have existed hitherto. Fear and laziness. At the same time unbelief-. Reduction. In what way does it acquire a new value, if a real world does not exist at all (by this means the capacity of valuing, which hitherto has been lavished upora the world of being, becomes free once more),
586. The real and the "apparent" world. A. The erroneous concepts which proceed from this concept are of three kinds: (a) An unknown world: we are adventurers, we are inquisitive, that which is known to us makes us weary (the danger of the concept lies in the fact it suggests that " this " world is known to us. . . .); (b) Another world, where things are different: something in us draws comparisons, and thereby our calm submission and our silence lose their value perhaps all will be for the best, we have not hoped in vain. . . . The world where things are different who knows? where we ourselves will be different. . . . (c) A real world: that is the most singular 93 blow and attack which we have ever received; so many things have become encrusted in the word " true," that we involuntarily give these to the " real world ": the real world must also be a truth ful world, such a one as would not deceive us or make fools of us: to believe in it in this way is to be almost forced to believe (from convention, as is the case among people worthy of confidence). * The concept, " the unknown world," suggests that this world is known to us (is tedious); True concept, "the other world," suggests that this world might be different, it suppresses necessity and fate (it is useless to submit and to adapt one s self}; The concept, the true world, suggests that this world is untruthful, deceitful, dishonest, not genuine, and not essential, and consequently not a world calculated to be useful to us (it is un- advisable to become adapted to it; better resist it). * Thus we escape from " this " world in three different ways: (a) With our curiosity as though the interest ing part was somewhere else; (b) With our submission as though it was not necessary to submit, as though this world was not an ultimate necessity; (c) With our sympathy and respect as though this world did not deserve them, as though it was mean and dishonest towards us. ... In summa: we have become revolutionaries in 94 three different ways; we have made x our criticism of the " known world." B. The first step to reason; to understand to what extent we have been seduced, for it might be precisely the reverse: (a) The unknown world could be so constituted as to give us a liking for " this " world it may be a more stupid and meaner form of existence. (b) The other world, very far from taking account of our desires which were never realized here, might be part of the mass of things which this world makes possible for us; to learn to know this world would be a means of satisfying us. (c) The true world: but who actually says that the apparent world must be of less value than the true world? Do not our instincts contradict this * judgment? Is not man eternally occupied in I creating an imaginative world, because he will 1 have a better world than reality? In the first place, how do we know that our world is not the true world? ... for it might be that the other world is the world of " appearance " (as a matter of fact, the Greeks, for instance, actually imagined a region of shadows, a life of appearance, beside real existence). And finally, what right have we to establish degrees of reality, as it were? That is something different from an unknown world that is already the will to know something of the un known. The " other," the " unknown " world- good! but to speak of the " true world is as 95 good as " knowing something about it," that is the contrary of the assumption of an r-world. . . . In short, the world x might be in every way a more tedious, a more inhuman, and a less dignified world than this one. It would be quite another matter if it were assumed that there were several .r-worlds that is to say, every possible kind of world besides our; own. But this has never been assumed. . C. Problem: why has the image of the other world always been to the disadvantage of " this " one that is to say, always stood as a criticism of it; what does this point to? A people that are proud of themselves, and who are on the ascending path of Life, always picture another existence as lower and less valu able than theirs; they regard the strange unknown world as their enemy, as their opposite; they feel no curiosity, but rather repugnance in regard to what is strange to them. . . . Such a body of men would never admit that another people were the;< true people." . . . The very fact that such a distinction is possible, that this world should be called the world of appearance, and that the other should be called the " true " world, is symptomatic. The places of origin of the idea of " another world ": The philosopher who invents a rational world where reason and logical functions are 96" adequate: this is the root of the " true " world. The religious man who invents a " divine world ": this is the root of the " de naturalised " and the " anti-natural " world. The moral man who invents a " free world ": this is the root }f the good, the perfect, the just, and the holy world. The common factor in the three places of origin: psychological error, physiological confusion. With what attributes is the " other world," as it actually appears in history, characterised? With the stigmata of philosophical, religious, and moral prejudices. The " other world " as it appears in the light of these facts, is synonymous with not-Being with not-living, with the will not to live. . . . General aspect: it was the instinct of the fatigue of living and not that of life, which created the " other world." Result: philosophy, religion, and morality are symptoms of decadence.
(f) THE BIOLOGICAL VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE.
587. It might seem as though I had evaded the question concerning " certainty." The reverse is true: but while raising the question of the criterion of certainty, I wished to discover the weights and measures with which men had weighed heretofore and to show that the question con- 97 cerning certainty is already in itself a dependent question, a question of the second rank.
588. The question of values is more fundamental than the question of certainty: the latter only becomes serious once the question of values has been answered. Being and appearance, regarded psychologically, yield no " Being-in-itself," no criterion for " reality," but only degrees of appearance, measured accord ing to the strength of the sympathy which we feel for appearance. There is no struggle for existence between ideas and observations, but only a struggle for supremacy the vanquished idea is not anni hilated, but only driven to the background or subordinated. There is no such thing as annihilation in intellectual spheres.
589. As interpretations (not ~ , , as established facts) End and means Cause and effect" c , . were they perhaps 41 Subject and object Action and sufferincj u ~, . .. ir tions? (as "preserva- " Thing - in - itself and tive measures ) all appearance ind in what respect necessary interpreta- in the sense of a Will to Power. I. G 98
590. Our values are interpreted into the heart of things. Is there, then, any sense in the absolute? Is not sense necessarily retative-sensQ and per spective? All sense is Will to Power (all relative senses may be identified with it).
591. The desire for " established facts " Epistemology: how much pessimism there is in it!
592. The antagonism between the " true world," as pessimism depicts it, and a world in which it were possible to live for this the rights of truth must be tested. It is necessary to measure all these " ideal forces " according to the standard of life, in order to understand the nature of that antagonism: the struggle of sickly, desperate life, cleaving to a beyond, against healthier, more foolish, more false, richer, and fresher life. Thus it is not " truth " struggling with Life, but one kind of Life with another kind. But the former would fain be the higher kind! Here we must prove that some order of rank is necessary, that the first problem is the order of rank among kinds of Life.
593. The belief, " It is thus and thus" must be altered into the will, " Thus and thus shall it be" 99
(m) SCIENCE.
594. Science hitherto has been a means of dis- posing of the confusion of things by hypotheses; which " explain everything " that is to say, it has been the result of the intellect s repugnance? to chaos. This same repugnance takes hold off me when I contemplate myself I should like to form some kind of representation of my inner world for myself by means of a scheme, and thus overcome intellectual confusion. Morality was a simplification of this sort: it taught man as recognized, as known. Now we have annihilated morality we have once more grown completely obscure to ourselves! I know that I know nothing about myself. Physics shows itself to be a boon for the mind: science (as the road to knowledge) acquires a new charm after morality has been laid aside and owing to the fact that we find consist ency here alone, we must order our lives in accordance with it so that it may help us to preserve it. This results in a sort of practical meditation concerning the conditions of our exist ence as investigators.
595. Our first principles: no God: no purpose: limited energy. We will take good care to avoid thinking out and prescribing the necessary lines of thought for the lower orders.
596. No " moral education " of humanity: but the disciplinary school of scientific errors is necessary, because truth disgusts and creates a dislike of life, provided a man is not already irrevocably launched upon his way, and bears the con sequences of his honest standpoint with tragic pride.
597. The first principle of scientific work: faith in the union and continuance of scientific work, so that the individual may undertake to work at any point, however small, and feel sure that his efforts will not be in vain. There is a great paralysing force: to work in vain, to struggle in vain. * The periods of hoarding, when energy and power are stored, to be utilised later by sub sequent periods: Science as a half-way house, at which the mediocre, more multifarious, and more complicated beings find their most natural gratification and means of expression: all those who do well to avoid action.
598. A philosopher recuperates his strength in a way quite his own, and with other means: he does it, for instance, with Nihilism. The belief that there is no such thing as truth, the Nihilistic V belief, is a tremendous relaxation for one who, as IOI a warrior of knowledge, is unremittingly struggling with a host of hateful truths. For truth is ugly.
599. The " purposelessness of all phenomena ": the belief in this is the result of the view that all interpretations hitherto have been false, it is a generalization on the part of discouragement and weakness it is not a necessary belief. The arrogance of man: when he sees no purpose, he denies that there can be one!
600. The unlimited ways of interpreting the world: every interpretation is a symptom of growth or decline. Unity (monism) is a need of inertia; Plurality in interpretation is a sign of strength. One should not desire to deprive the world of its disquiet ing and enigmatical nature I
601. Against the desire for reconciliation and peaceableness. To this also belongs every attempt on the part of monism.
602. This relative world, this world for the eye, the touch, and the ear, is very false, even when adjusted to a much more sensitive sensual apparatus. But its comprehensibility, its clearness, its practicability, its beauty, will begin to near their end if we refine our senses, just as beauty ceases to exist when the processes of its history are reflected upon: the arrangement of the end is in itself an illusion. Let it suffice, that the more coarsely and more superficially it is under stood, the more valuable the more definite, the more beautiful and important the world then seems. The more deeply one looks into it, the further our valuation retreats from our view, senselessness approaches. We have created the world that has any value! Knowing this, we also per ceive that the veneration of truth is already the result of illusion and that it is much more necessary to esteem the formative, simplifying, moulding, and romancing power. "All is false everything is allowed!" Only as the result of a certain bluntness of vision and the desire for simplicity does the beautiful and the "valuable" make its appearance: in itself it is purely fanciful.
603. We know that the destruction of an illusion does not necessarily produce a truth, but only one more piece of ignorance; it is the extension of our " empty space," an increase in our " waste."
604. Of what alone can knowledge consist? " Interpretation," the introduction of a sense into 103 things, not " explanation " (in the majority of cases a new interpretation of an old interpretation which has grown incomprehensible and little more than a mere sign). There is no such thing as an I established fact, everything fluctuates, everything! is intangible, yielding; after all, the most lasting of all things are our opinions.
605. The ascertaining of " truth " and " untruth," the ascertaining of facts in general, is fundamentally different from the creative placing, forming, mould ing, subduing, and willing which lies at the root of philosophy. To give a sense to things this duty always remains over, provided no sense already lies in them. The same holds good of sounds, and also of the fate of nations: they are suscept ible of the most varied interpretations and turns, for different purposes. A higher duty is to fix a goal and to mould facts according to it: that is, the interpretation of action, and not merely a Revaluation of con cepts.
606. Man ultimately finds nothing more in things than he himself has laid in them this process of finding again is science, the actual process of laying a meaning in things, is art, religion, love, pride. In both, even if they are child s play, one should show good courage and one should plough ahead; on the one hand, to find again, on the other, we are the other, to lay a sense in things 104 ,
607. Science: its two sides: In regard to the individual; In regard to the complex of culture (" levels of culture ") antagonistic valuation in regard to this and that side.
608. The development of science tends ever more to transform the known into the unknown: its aim, however, is to do the reverse, and it starts out with the instinct of tracing the unknown to the known. In short, science is laying the road to sovereign ignorance, to a feeling that " knowledge " does not exist at all, that it was merely a form of haughti ness to dream of such a thing; further, that we have not preserved the smallest notion which would allow us to class knowledge even as a possibility that " knowledge " is a contradictory idea. We transfer a primeval myth and piece of human vanity into the land of hard facts: we can allow a " thing-in-itself " as a concept, just as little as we can allow " knowledge-in-itself." The misleading influence of " numbers and logic," the misleading influence of " laws." Wisdom is an attempt to overcome the per spective valuations (i.e. the " will to power "): it is a principle which is both unfriendly to Life, and also decadent; a symptom in the case of the Indians, etc.; weakness of the power of appropriation. 105
609. It does not suffice for you to see in what ignor ance man and beast now live; you must also have and learn the desire for ignorance. It is necessary that you should know that without this form of ignorance life itself would be impossible, that it is merely?, vital condition under which, alone, a living organism can preserve itself and prosper: a great solid belt of ignorance must stand about you.
610. Science the transformation of Nature into con cepts for the purpose of governing Nature that is part of the rubric" means " But the purpose and will of mankind must grow in the same way, the intention in regard to the whole.
611. Thought is the strongest and most persistently exercised function in all stages of life and also in every act of perception or apparent experience! Obviously it soon becomes the mightiest and most exacting of all functions, and in time tyrannises over other powers. Ultimately it becomes " passion in itself."
612. The right to great passion must be reclaimed for the investigator, after self-effacement and the cult of " objectivity " have created a false order of rank in this sphere. Error reached its zenith 106 when Schopenhauer taught: in the release from passion and in will alone lay the road to " truth," to knowledge; the intellect freed from will could not help seeing the true and actual essence of things. The same error in art: as if everything became beautiful the moment it was regarded without will.
613. The contest for supremacy among the passions, and the dominion of one of the passions over the intellect.
614. To "humanise" the world means to feel our selves ever more and more masters upon earth.
615. Knowledge, among a higher class of beings, will also take new forms which are not yet necessary.
616. That the worth of the world lies in our inter pretations (that perhaps yet other interpretations are possible somewhere, besides mankind s); that the interpretations made hitherto were perspective valuations, by means of which we were able to survive in life, i.e. in the Will to Power and in the growth of power; that every elevation of man involves the overcoming of narrower interpretations; that every higher degree of strength or power attained, brings new views in its train, and teaches a belief in new horizons these doctrines lie IO7 scattered through all my works. The world that concerns us at all is false that is to say, is not a fact; but a romance, a piece of human sculpture, made from a meagre sum of observation; it is " in flux"; it is something that evolves, a great revolving lie continually moving onwards and never getting any nearer to truth for there is no such thing as " truth."
617. Recapitulation: To stamp Becoming with the character of Being this is the highest Will to Power. Tlte twofold falsification, by the senses on the one hand, by the intellect on the other, with the view of maintaining a world of being, of rest, of equivalent cases, etc. That everything- recurs, is the very nearest approach of a world of Becoming- to a world of Being", the height of contemplation. It is out of the values which have been at tributed to Being, that the condemnation of, and dissatisfaction with, Becoming, have sprung: once such a world of Being had been invented. The metamorphoses of Being (body, God, ideas, natural laws, formulae, etc.). " Being " as appearance the twisting round of values: appearance was that which conferred the values. Knowledge in itself in a world of Becoming is impossible; how can knowledge be possible at all, then? Only as a mistaking of one s self, as will to power, as will to deception. Becoming is inventing, willing, self-denying, self-overcoming: no subject but an action, it places things, it is creative, no " causes and effects." Art is the will to overcome Becoming, it is a process of" eternalising "; but shortsighted, always according to the perspective; repeating, as it were in a small way, the tendency of the whole. That which all life shows, is to be regarded as . a reduced formula for the collective tendency: hence the new definition of the concept Life " as will to power." Instead of " cause and effect," the struggle of evolving factors with one another, frequently with the result that the opponent is absorbed; no constant number for Becoming. The uselessness of old ideals for the interpreta tion of all that takes place, once their bestial origin and utility have been recognized; they are, moreover, all hostile to life. The uselessness of the mechanical theory it gives the impression that there can be no purpose. All the idealism of mankind, hitherto, is on the point of turning into Nihilism may be shown to be a belief in absolute wordlessness, i.e. purpose- lessness. The annihilation of ideals, the new desert waste; the new arts which will help us to endure it amphibia that we are!; First principles: bravery, patience, no "stepping- Iback," not too much ardour to get to the fore. i(7V.Z?. Zarathustra constantly maintaining an attitude of parody towards all former values, as the result of his overflowing energy.)
II. THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE
i. THE MECHANICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE WORLD.
618. OF all the interpretations of the world attempted heretofore, the mechanical one seems today to stand most prominently in the front. Apparently it has a clean conscience on its side; for no science believes inwardly in progress and success unless it be with the help of mechanical procedures. Every one knows these procedures: " reason " and " purpose " are allowed to remain out of considera tion as far as possible; it is shown that, provided a sufficient amount of time be allowed to elapse, everything can evolve out of everything else, and no one attempts to suppress his malicious satisfac tion, when the " apparent design in the fate " of a plant or of theyolk of an egg, may be traced to stress and thrust in short, people are heartily glad to pay respect to this principle of profoundest stupidity, if I may be allowed to pass a playful remark concerning these serious matters. Meanwhile, among the most select intellects to be found in this move- 109 IIO ment, some presentiment of evil, some anxiety is noticeable, as if the theory had a rent in it, which sooner or later might be its last: I mean the sort of rent which denotes the end of all balloons inflated with such theories. Stress and thrust themselves cannot be " ex plained," one cannot get rid of the actio in distans. The belief even in the ability to explain is now lost, and people peevishly admit that one can only describe, not explain that the dynamic interpreta tion of the world, with its denial of " empty space " and its little agglomerations of atoms, will soon get the better of physicists: although in this way Dynamis is certainly granted an inner quality.
619. The triumphant concept "energy" with which our physicists created God and the world, needs yet to be completed: it must be given an inner will which I characterise as the " Will to Power" that is to say, as an insatiable desire to manifest power; or the application and exercise of power as a creative instinct, etc. Physicists cannot get rid of the " actio in distans " in their principles; any more than they can a repelling force (or an attracting one). There is no help for it, all movements, all " appearances," all " laws " must be understood as symptoms of an inner phenomenon, and the analogy of man must be used for this purpose. It is possible to trace all the instincts of an animal to the will to power; as also all the functions of organic life to this one source.
620. Has anybody ever been able to testify to a force? No, but to effects, translated into a com pletely strange language. Regularity in sequence has so spoilt us, that we no longer wonder at the wonderful process.
621. A force of which we cannot form any idea, is an empty word, and ought to have no civic rights in the city of science: and the same applies to the purely mechanical powers of attracting and repel ling by means of which we can form an image of the world no more!
622. Squeezes and kicks are something incalculably recent, evolved and not primeval. They pre suppose something which holds together and can press and strike! But how could it hold together?
623. There is nothing unalterable in chemistry: this is only appearance, a mere school prejudice. We it was who introduced the unalterable, taking it from metaphysics as usual, Mr. Chemist. It is a mere superficial judgment to declare that the diamond, graphite, and carbon are identical. Why? Simply because no loss of substance can be traced in the scales! Well then, at least they have something in common; but the work of the molecules in the process of changing from one form to the other, an action we can neither see nor weigh, is just exactly what makes one material something different with specifically different qualities.
624. Against the physical atom. In order to under stand the world, we must be able to reckon it up; in order to be able to reckon it up, we must be aware of constant causes; but since we find no such constant causes in reality, we invent them for ourselves and call them atoms. This is the origin of the atomic theory. The possibility of calculating the world, the possibility of expressing all phenomena by means of formulas is that really " understanding "? What would be understood of a piece of music, if all that were calculable in it and capable of being expressed in formulae, were reckoned up? Thus " constant causes," things, substanr.es, something "unconditioned," were therefore invented; what has been attained thereby?
625. The mechanical concept of " movement " is already a translation of the original process into the language of symbols of the eye and the touch. The concept atom the distinction between the " seat of a motive force and the force itself," is a language of symbols derived from our logical and cpsyhical world. It does not lie within our power to alter our 113 means of expression: it is possible to understand to what extend they are but symptomatic. To demand an adequate means of expression is non sense: it lies at the heart of a language, of a medium of communication, to express relation only. . . . The concept " truth " is opposed to good sense. The whole province of " truth falseness " only applies to the relations between beings, not to an " abso lute." There is no such thing as a " being in itself " (relations in the first place constitute being), any more than there can be " knowledge in itself."
626. "The feeling of force cannot proceed from movement: feeling in general cannot proceed from movement." "Even in support of this, an apparent experience is the only evidence: in a substance (brain) feeling is generated through transmitted motion (stimuli). But generated? Would this show that the feeling did not yet exist there at all"? So that its appearance would have to be regarded as the creative act of the intermediary--motion? The eelingless condition of this substance is only an hypotesis! Not an experience! Feeling, therefore is the quality of the substance: there actually are substances that feel." "Do we learn from certain substances that they have no feeling? No, all we learn is, that they haven't any. It is impossible to seek the origin of feeling in non-sensitive substance." Oh what hastiness!
627. "To attract" and "to repel," in a purely mechanical sense, is pure fiction: a word. We cannot imagine an attraction without a purpose. Either the will to possess one s self of a thing, or the } will to defend one s self from a thing or to repel it that we ""understand ": that would be an interpreta tion which we could use. In short, the psychological necessity of believ ing in causality lies in the impossibility of imagining a process without a purpose: but of course this says nothing concerning truth or untruth (the justifica tion of such a belief)! The belief in causes col lapses with the belief in TeXrj (against Spinoza and his causationism).
628. It is an illusion to suppose that something is known, when all we have is a mathematical formula of what has happened: it is only characterised, described , no more!
629. If I bring a regularly recurring phenomenon into a formula, I have facilitated and shortened my task of characterising the whole phenomenon, etc. But I have not thereby ascertained a " law," I have only replied to the question: How is it that some thing recurs here? It is a supposition that the formula corresponds to a complex of really unknown forces and the discharge of forces: it is 1 15 pure mythology to suppose that forces here obey a law, so that, as the result of their obedience, we have the same phenomenon every time.
630. I take good care not to speak of chemical "laws": to do so savors of morality. It is much more a question of establishing certain relations of power: the stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot maintain its degree of independence, here there is no pity, no quarter, and, still less, any observance of " law."
631. The unalterable sequence of certain phenomena does not prove any " law," but a relation of power between two or more forces. To say, " But it is precisely this relation that remains the same! " is no better than saying, " One and the same force cannot be another force." It is not a matter of sequence but a matter of interdependence, a process in which the procession of moments do not determine each other after the manner of cause and effect. . . . The separation of the " action " from the "agent "; of the phenomenon from the worker of that phenomenon; of the process from one that is not process, but lasting, substance thing, body, soul, etc.; the I attempt to understand a life as a sort of shifting of things and a changing of places; of a sort of " being " or stable entity: this ancient mythology established the belief in " cause and effect," once it had found a lasting form in the functions of speech and grammar.
632. The " regularity " of a sequence is only a metaphorical expression, not a fact, just as if & rule were followed here! And the same holds good of " conformity to law." We find a formula in order to express an ever-recurring kind of succession of phenomena: but that does not show that we have discovered a law; much less a force which is the cause of a recurrence of effects. The fact that something always happens thus or thus, is inter preted here as if a creature always acted thus or thus as the result of obedience to a law or to a law giver: whereas apart from the " law " it would be free to act differently. But precisely that in ability to act otherwise might originate in the creature itself, it might be that it did not act thus or thus in response to a law, but simply because it was so constituted. It would mean simply: that something cannot also be something else; that it cannot be first this, and then something quite different; that it is neither free nor the reverse, but merely thus or thus. The fault lies in thinking a subject into things.
633. To speak of two consecutive states, the first as "cause," and the second as "effect," is false. The first state cannot bring about anything, the second has nothing effected in it. 117 It is a question of a struggle between two elements unequal in power: a new adjustment is arrived at, according to the measure of power each possesses. The second state is something funda mentally different from the first (it is not its effect): the essential thing Is, that the factors which engage in the struggle leave it with different quanta of power.
634. A criticism of Materialism. Let us dismiss the two popular concepts, " Necessity " and " Law," from this idea: the first introduces a false con straint, the second a false liberty into the world. " Things " do not act regularly, they follow no rule: there are no things (that is our fiction); neither do they act in accordance with any necessity. There is no obedience here: for, the fact that something is as it is, strong or weak, is not the result of obedience or of a rule or of a constraint. . . . The degree of resistance and the degree of superior power this is the question around which all phenomena turn: if we, for our own purposes and calculations, know how to express this in formulae and " laws," all the better for us! But that does not mean that we have introduced any " morality " into the world, just because we have fancied it as obedient. There are no laws: every power draws its last consequence at every moment. Things are calcul able precisely owing to the fact that there is no possibility of their being otherwise than they are. A quantum of power is characterised by the Il8 effect it produces and the influence it resists. The adiaphoric state which would be thinkable in itself, is entirely lacking. It is essentially a will to vio lence and a will to defend one s self against violence. It is not self-preservation: every atom exercises its influence over the whole of existence it is thought out of existence if one thinks this radia tion of will-power away. That is why I call it a quantum of " Will to Power "; with this formula one can express the character which cannot be ab stracted in thought from mechanical order, without suppressing the latter itself in thought. The translation of the world of effect into a visible world a world for the eye is the concept " movement." Here it is always understood that something- has been moved, whether it be the fiction of an atomic globule or even of the abstrac tion of the latter, the dynamic atom, something is always imagined that has an effect that is to say, we have not yet rid ourselves of the habit into which our senses and speech inveigled us. Subject and object, an agent to the action, the action and that which does it separated: we must not forget that all this signifies no more than semeiotics and nothing real. Mechanics as a teaching of movement is already a translation of phenomena into man s language of the senses.
635. We are in need of " unities " in order to be able to reckon: but this is no reason for supposing that " unities " actually exist. We borrowed the lip concept " unity" from our concept " ego," our very oldest article of faith. If we did not believe our selves to be unities. we should never have formed the concept " thing." Now that is to say, some what late in the day, we are overwhelmingly convinced that our conception of the concept " ego " is no security whatever for a real entity. In order to maintain the mechanical interpretation of the world theoretically, we must always make the reserve that it is with fictions that we do so: the concept of movement (derived from the language of our senses) and the concept of the atom ( = entity, derived from our psychical experience) are based S upon a sense-prejudice and z. psychological prejudice. V Mechanics formulates consecutive phenomena, and it does so semeiologically, in the terms of the senses and of the mind (that all influence is move ment; that where there is movement something is at work moving): it does not touch the question of the causal force. The mechanical world is imagined as the eye and the sense of touch alone could imagine a world (as " moved "), in such a way as to be calculable, as to simulate causal entities " things " (atoms) whose effect is constant (the transfer of the false concept of subject to the concept atom). The mixing together of the concept of numbers, of the concept of thing (the idea of subject), of the concept of activity (the separation of that which is the cause, and the effect), of the concept of movement: all these things are phenomenal; our eye and our psychology are still in it all. If we eliminate these adjuncts, nothing remains 120 , over but dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta: the essence of which resides in their relation to all other quanta, in their | " influence " upon the latter. The will to power, not Being, not Becoming, but a pathos is the I elementary fact, from these first results a Becoming, [ an influencing. . . .
636. The physicists believe in a " true world " after their own kind; a fixed systematizing of atoms to perform necessary movements, and holding good equally of all creatures, so that, according to them, the " world of appearance " reduces itself to the side of general and generally-needed Being, which is accessible to every one according to his kind (accessible and also adjusted, made " sub jective "). But here they are in error. The atom which they postulate is arrived at by the logic of that perspective of consciousness; it is in itself therefore a subjective fiction. This picture of the world which they project is in no way essentially different from the subjective picture: the only difference is, that it is composed simply with more extended senses, but certainly with our senses. . . . And in the end, without knowing it, they left something out of the constellation: precisely the necessary perspective factor, by means of which every centre of power and not man alone con structs the rest of the world from its point of view that is to say, measures it, feels it, and moulds it according to its degree of strength. . . . They forgot to reckon with this perspective-- power, 121 in " true being," or, in school-terms, subject- being. They suppose that this was " evolved " and added; but even the chemical investigator needs it: it is indeed specific Being, which de termines action and reaction according to circum stances. Perspectivity is only a complex form of specific- ness. My idea is that every specific body strives to become master of all space, and to extend its r (its will to power), and to thrust back everything that resists it. But inasmuch as it is continually meeting the same endeavours on the part of other bodies, it concludes by coming to terms with those (by " combining " with those) which are sufficiently related to it and thus they conspire together for power. And the process continues.
637. Even in the inorganic world all that concerns an atom of energy is its immediate neighbourhood: distant forces balance each other. Here is the root of perspectivity, and it explains why a living organism is " egoistic " to the core.
638. Granting that the world disposed of a quantum of force, it is obvious that any transposition of force to any place would affect the whole system thus, besides the causality of sequence, there would also be a dependence, contiguity, and coincidence.
639. The only possible way of upholding the sense of the concept " God " would be: to make Him not the motive force, but the condition of maximum power, an epoch; a point in the further develop ment of the Will to Power by means of which subsequent evolution just as much as former evolution up to Him could be explained. Viewed mechanically, the energy of collective Becoming remains constant; regarded from the economical standpoint, it ascends to its zenith and then recedes therefrom in order to remain eternally rotatory. This " Will to Power " expresses itself in the interpretation, in the manner in which the strength is used. The conversion of energy into life; " life in its highest power " thenceforward appears as the goal. The same amount of energy, at different stages of development, means different things. That which determines growth in Life is the economy which becomes ever more sparing and methodical, which achieves ever more and more with a steadily decreasing amount of energy. . . . The ideal is the principle of the least possible expense. . . . The only thing that is proved is that the world is not striving towards a state of stability. Con sequently its zenith must not be conceived as a state of absolute equilibrium. . . . The dire necessity of the same things happening in the course of the world, as in all other things, is not an eternal determinism reigning over all phenomena, but merely the expression of the fact that the impossible is not possible; that a given force cannot be different from that given force; that a given quantity of resisting force does not manifest itself otherwise than in conformity with its degree of strength; to speak of events as being necessary is tautological.
2. AS LIFE.
(a) The Organic Process.
640. Man imagines that he was present at the generation of the organic world: what was there to be observed, with the eyes and the touch, in regard to these processes? How much of it can be put into round numbers? What rules are noticeable in the movements? Thus, man would fain arrange all phenomena as if they were for the eye and for the touch, as if they were forms of motion: he will discover formula wherewith to simplify the unwieldy mass of these experiences. The reduction of all phenomena to the level of men with senses and with mathematics. It is a matter of making an inventory of human experiences: granting that man, or rather the human eye and the ability to form concepts , have been the eternal witnesses of all things.
641. A plurality of forces bound by a common nutritive process we call "Life." To this nutritive process all so-called feeling, thinking, and imagining belong as means that is to say, (1) in the form of opposing other forces; (2) in the form of an adjustment of other forces according to mould and rhythm; (3) in the form of a valuation relative to assimilation and excretion.
642. The bond between the inorganic and the organic world must lie in the repelling power exercised by every atom of energy. " Life " might be defined as a lasting form of force-estab lishing processes, in which the various contending forces, on their part, grow unequally. To what extent does counter-strife exist even in obedience? Individual power is by no means surrendered through it. In the same way, there exists in the act of commanding, an acknowledgment of the fact that the absolute power of the adversary has not been overcome, absorbed, or dissipated. " Obedience," and " command," are forms of the game of war.
643. The Will to Power interprets (an organ in the process of formation has to be interpreted): it defines, it determines gradations, differences of power. Mere differences of power could not be aware of each other as such: something must be there which will grow, and which interprets all other things that would do the same, according to the value of the latter. In sooth, all interpreta- IN NA f . fjf tion Is but a means in itself to become v something. (Continual interpretation is S principle of the organic process.) dicum does
644. Greater complexity, sharp differentiation, tne contiguity of the developed organs and functions, with the disappearance of intermediate members if that is perfection, then there is a Will to Power apparent in the organic process by means of whose dominating, shaping, and commanding forces it is continually increasing the sphere of its power, and persistently simplifying things within that sphere: it grows imperatively. " Spirit " is only a means and an instrument in the service of higher life, in the service of the elevation of life.
645. " Heredity" as something quite incomprehens ible, cannot be used as an explanation, but only as a designation for the identification of a problem. And the same holds good of "adaptability" As a matter of fact, the account of morphology, even supposing it were perfect, explains nothing; it merely describes an enormous fact. How a given organ gets to be used for any particular purpose is not explained. There is just as little explained in regard to these things by the assumption of causes finales as by the assumption of causes effici- entes. The concept " causa " is only a means of expression, no more a means of designating a thing.
646. *24 are analogies; for instance, our memory process all sggest another kind of memory which makes h iong as felt in heredity, development, and forms. *xpn* inventive and experimentative powers suggest another kind of inventiveness in the application of instruments to new ends, etc. That which we call our " consciousness? is quite guiltless of any of the essential processes of our preservation and growth; and no human brain could be so subtle as to construct anything more than a machine to which every organic process is infinitely superior.
647. Against Darwinism. The use of an organ does not explain its origin, on the contrary! During the greater part of the time occupied in the forma tion of a certain quality, this quality does not help to preserve the individual; it is of no use to him, and particularly not in his struggle with external circumstances and foes. What is ultimately " useful "? It is necessary to ask, " Useful for what? " For instance, that which promotes the lasting powers of the individual might be unfavourable to v his strength or his beauty; that which preserves him might at the same time fix him and keep him stable throughout development. On the other hand, a deficiency, a state of degeneration, may be of the greatest possible use, inasmuch as it acts as a stimulus to other organs. In the same way, a state of need may be a condition of existence, in asmuch as it reduces an individual to that modicum of means which, though it keeps him together, does not allow him to squander his strength. The in dividual himself is the struggle of parts (for nourishment, space, etc.): his development involves the triumph the predominance , of isolated parts; the wasting away, or the " development into organs," of other parts, iThe influence of " environment " is nonsensically overrated in Darwin: the essential factor in the process of life is precisely the tremendous inner power to shape and to create forms, which merely uses, exploits " environment." The new forms built up by this inner power are not produced with a view to any end; but, in the struggle between the parts, a new form does not exist long without becoming related to some kind of semi-utility, and, according to its use, develops itself ever more and more perfectly.
648. " Utility " in respect of the acceleration of the speed of evolution, is a different kind of " utility " from that which is understood to mean the greatest possible stability and staying power of the evolved creature.
649. " Useful " in the sense of Darwinian biology means: that which favours a thing in its struggle with others. But in my opinion the feeling of 128 being surcharged, the feeling accompanying an increase in strength, quite apart from the utility of the struggle, is the actual progress: from these feelings the will to war is first derived.
650. Physiologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength: | " self-preservation " is only one of the results 1 thereof. Let us beware of superfluous teleological principles! one of which is the whole concept of " self-preservation." *
651. The most-fundamental and. most primeval activ ity of a protoplasm cannot be ascribed to a will to self-preservation, for it absjorbs an amount of material which is absurdly out of proportion with the needs of its preservation: and what is more, it does not "preserve itself" in the process, but actually falls to pieces. . . . The instinct which rules here, must account for this total absence in the organism of a desire to preserve itself: " hunger " is already an interpretation based upon the observation of a more or less complex organ ism (hunger is a specialised and later form of the instinct; it is an expression of the system of divided labour, in the service of a higher instinct which rules the whole). * See Beyond Good and Evil, in this edition, Aph. 13. 1 29
652. It is just as impossible to regard hunger as the primum mobile, as it is to take self-preservation to be so. Hunger, considered as the result of in sufficient nourishment, means hunger as the result of a will to power which can no longer dominate. It is not a question of replacing a loss, it is only later on, as the result of the division of labour, when the Will to Power has discovered other and quite different ways of gratifying itself, that the appropriating lust of the organism is reduced to hunger to the need of replacing what has been lost.
653. We can but laugh at the false " Altruism " of biologists: propagation among the amcebae ap pears as a process of jetsam, as an advantage to them. It is an excretion of useless matter.
654. The division of a protoplasm into two takes place when its power is no longer sufficient to subjugate the matter it has appropriated: pro creation is the result of impotence. In the cases in which the males seek the females and become one with them, procreation is the re sult of hunger.
655. The weaker vessel is driven to the stronger from a need of nourishment; it desires to get under it, I. I 130 if possible to become one with it. The stronger, on the contrary, defends itself from others; it refuses to perish in this way; it prefers rather to split itself into two or more parts in the process of growing. One may conclude that the greater the urgency seems to become one with something else, the more weakness in some form is present. The greater the tendency to variety, difference, inner decay, the more strength is actually to hand. The instinct to cleave to something, and the instinct to repel something, are in the inorganic as in the organic world, the uniting bond. The whole distinction is a piece of hasty judgment. The will to power in every combination of forces, defending itself against the stronger and coming down unmercifully upon the iveaker, is more correct. N.B. All processes may be regarded as " beings"
656. The will to power can manifest itself only against obstacles; it therefore goes in search of what resists it this is the primitive tendency of the protoplasm when it extends its pseudopodia and feels about it. The act of appropriation and assimilation is, above all, the result of a desire to overpower, a process of forming, of additional building and rebuilding, until at last the subjected creature has become completely a part of the superior creature s sphere of power, and has in creased the latter. If this process of incorporation does not succeed, then the whole organism falls to pieces; and the separation occurs as the result of the will to power: in order to prevent the escape of that 131 which has been subjected, the will to power falls into two wills (under some circumstances without even abandoning completely its relation to the two). " Hunger " is only a more narrow adaptation, once the fundamental instinct of power has won power of a more abstract kind.
657. What is " passive "? What is " active "Nutrition" . Procreation " To be hindered in the outward movement of grasping: it is thus an act of resistance and reaction. To stretch out for power. Is only a derived pheno menon; the primitive form of it was the will to stuff everything in side one s own skin. Only derived; originally, in those cases in which one will was unable to organise the collective mass it had appropri ated, an opposing will came into power, which undertook to effect the separation and estab lish a new centre of organization, after a struggle with the ori ginal will. 132 " Pleasure " , . . Is a feeling of power (presupposing the ex istence of pain).
658. (1) The organic functions shown to be but forms of the fundamental will, the will to power, and buds thereof. (2) The will to power specialises itself as will to nutrition, to property, to tools to servants (obedi ence), and to rulers: the body as an example. The stronger will directs the weaker. There is no other form of causality than that of will to will. It is not to be explained mechanically. (3) Thinking, feeling, willing, in all living organ isms. What is a desire if it be not: a provoca tion of the feeling of power by an obstacle (or, better still, by rhythmical obstacles and resisting forces) so that it surges through it? Thus in all plea sure pain is understood. If the pleasure is to be very great, the pains preceding it must have been very long, and the whole bow of life must have been strained to the utmost. (4) Intellectual functions. The will to shaping, forming, and making like, etc. (U) Man.
659. With the body as clue. Granting that the " soul " was only an attractive and mysterious thought, from which philosophers rightly, but reluctantly, separated themselves that which they have since learnt to put in its place is perhaps even more attractive and even more mysterious. The human body in which the whole of the most distant and most recent past of all organic life once more becomes living and corporal, seems to flow through this past and right over it like a huge and inaudible torrent: the body is a more wonderful thought than the old " soul." In all ages the body, as our actual property, as our most certain being, in short, as our ego, has been more earnestly believed in than the spirit (or the " soul," or the subject, as the school jargon now calls it). It has never occurred to any one to regard his stomach as a strange or a divine stomach; but that there is a tendency and a predilection in man to regard all his thoughts as " inspired," all his values as " imparted to him by a God," all his instincts as dawning activities this is proved by the evidence of every age in man s history. Even now, especially among artists, there may very often be noticed a sort of wonder, and a deferential hesitation to decide, when the question occurs to them, by what means they achieved their happiest work, and from which world the creative thought came down to them: when they question in this way, they are possessed by a feeling of guilelessness and childish shyness. They dare not say: " That came from me; it was my hand which threw that die." Conversely, even those philosophers and theolo gians, who in their logic and piety found the most imperative reasons for regarding their body as a deception (and even as a deception overcome and disposed of), could not help recognising the foolish fact that the body still remained: and the most unexpected proofs of this are to be found partly in Pauline and partly in Vedantic philosophy. But what does strength of faith ultimately mean? Nothing! A strong faith might also be a foolish faith! There is food for reflection. And supposing the faith in the body were ulti mately but the result of a conclusion; supposing it were a false conclusion, as idealists declare it is, would it not then involve some doubt concerning the trustworthiness of the spirit itself which thus causes us to draw wrong conclusions? Supposing the plurality of things, and space, and time, and motion (and whatever the other first principles of a belief in the body may be) were errors what suspicions would not then be roused against the spirit which led us to form such first principles? Let it suffice that the belief in the body is, at any rate for the present, a much stronger belief than the belief in the spirit, and he who would fain undermine it assails the authority of the spirit most thoroughly in so doing!
660. The Body as an Empire. The aristocracy in the body, the majority of the rulers (the fight between the cells and the tissues). Slavery and the division of labour: the higher type alone possible through the subjection of the lower to a function. 135 Pleasure and pain, not contraries. The feeling of power. " Nutrition " only a result of the insatiable lust of appropriation in the Will to Power. " Procreation ": this is the decay which super venes when the ruling cells are too weak to organ ise appropriated material. It is the moulding force which will have a con tinual supply of new material (more " force "). The masterly construction of an organism out of an egg. " The mechanical interpretation ": recognises only quantities: but the real energy is in the quality. Mechanics can therefore only describe processes; it cannot explain them. " Purpose." We should start out from theiN "sagacity" of plants. The concept of " meliorism ": not only greater complexity, but greater power (it need not be only greater masses). Conclusion concerning the evolution of man: j the road to perfection lies in the bringing forth of the most powerful individuals, for whose use the great masses would be converted into mere tools i (that is to say, into the most intelligent and flex ible tools possible).
661. Why is all activity, even that of a sense, associated with pleasure? Because, before the activity was possible, an obstacle or a burden was done away with. Or, rather, because all action is a process of overcoming, of becoming master of, and of increasing the feeling of power? The pleasure 136 of thought Ultimately it is not only the feeling of power, but also the pleasure of creating and of contemplating the creation: for all activity enters our consciousness in the form of " works."
662. Creating is an act of selecting and of finishing the thing selected. (In every act of the will, this is the essential element.)
663. All phenomena which are the result of intentions may be reduced to the intention of increasing power.
664. When we do anything, we are conscious of a feeling of strength; we often have this sensation before the act that is to say, while imagining the thing to do (as, for instance, at the sight of an enemy, of an obstacle, which we feel equal to): it is always an accompanying sensation. Instinc tively we think that this feeling of strength is the cause of the action, that it is the " motive force." Our belief in causation is the belief in force and its effect; it is a transcript of our experience: in which we identify force and the feeling of force. Force, however, never moves things; the strength which is conscious " does not set the muscles mov ing." " Of such a process we have no experience, no idea." "We experience as little concerning force as a motive power, as concerning the necessity of a movement." Force is said to be the constraining element! " All we know is that one thing follows another; we know nothing of either compulsion or arbitrariness in regard to the one following the other." Causality is first in vented by thinking compulsion into the sequence of processes. A certain "understanding" of the thing is the result that is to say, we humanise the process a little, we make it more " familiar "; the familiar is the known habitual fact of human compulsion associated with the feeling of force.
665. I have the intention of extending my arm; taking it for granted that I know as little of the physiology of the human body and of the mechani cal laws of its movements as the man in the street, what could there be more vague, more bloodless, more uncertain than this intention compared with what follows it? And supposing I were the astutest of mechanics, and especially conversant with the formulae which are applicable in this case, I should not be able to extend my arm one whit the better. Our " knowledge " and our " action " .in this case lie coldly apart: as though in two 1 different regions. Again: Napoleon carries out a plan of campaign what does that mean? In this case, everything concerning the consummation of the campaign is known, because everything must be done through words of command: but even here subordinates are taken for granted, who apply 138 and adapt the general plan to the particular emer gency, to the degree of strength, etc.
666. For ages we have always ascribed the value of an action, of a character, of an existence, to the intention, to the purpose for which it was done, acted, or lived: this primeval idiosyncrasy of taste ultimately takes a dangerous turn provided the lack of intention and purpose in all phenomena comes ever more to the front in consciousness. With it a general depreciation of all values seems to be preparing: " All is without sense." This melancholy phrase means: " All sense lies in the intention, and if the intention is absolutely lacking, then sense must be lacking too." In conformity with this valuation, people were forced to place the value of life in a " life after death," or in the pro gressive development of ideas, or of mankind, or of the people, or of man to superman; but in this way the progressus in infinitum of purpose had been reached: it was ultimately necessary to find one s self a place in the process of the world (perhaps with the disdasmonistic outlook, it was a process which led to nonentity). In regard to this point, "purpose " needs a some what more severe criticism: it ought to be recog nised that an action is never caused by a purpose; that an object and the means thereto are inter pretations, by means of which certain points in a phenomena are selected and accentuated, at the cost of other, more numerous, points; that every time something is done for a purpose, something fundamentally different, and yet other things happen; that in regard to the action done with a purpose, the case is the same as with the so-called purposefulness of the heat which is radiated from the sun: the greater part of the total sum is squan dered; a portion of it, which is scarcely worth reckoning, has a " purpose," has " sense "; that an " end " with its " means " is an absurdly in definite description, which indeed may be able to command as a precept, as " will," but presupposes a system of obedient and trained instruments, which, in the place of the indefinite, puts forward a host of determined entities (i.e. we imagine a system of clever but narrow intellects who postu late end and means, in order to be able to grant our only known " end," the r61e of the " cause of an action," a proceeding to which we have no right: it is tantamount to solving a problem by placing its solution in an inaccessible world which we cannot observe). Finally, why could not an " end " be merely an accompanying feature in the series of changes among the active forces which bring about the action a pale stenographic symbol stretched in consciousness beforehand, and which serves as a guide to what happens, even as a symbol of what happens, not as its cause? But in this way we criticize will itself: is it not an illusion to regard that which enters consciousness as will-power, as a cause? Are not all conscious phenomena only final phenomena the lost links in a chain, but apparently conditioning one another in their sequence within the plane of consciousness? This might be an illusion.
667. Science does not inquire what impels us to will: on the contrary, it denies that willing takes place at all, and supposes that something quite different has happened in short, that the belief in " will " and " end " is an illusion. It does not in quire into the motives of an action, as if these had been present in consciousness previous to the action: but it first divides the action up into a group of phenomena, and then seeks the previous history of this mechanical movement but not in the terms of feeling, perception, and thought; from this quarter it can never accept the explanation: perception is precisely the matter of science, which has to be explained. The problem of science is precisely to explain the world, without taking perceptions as the cause: for that would mean regarding perceptions themselves as the cause of perceptions. The task of science is by no means accomplished. Thus: either there is no such thing as will, the hypothesis of science, or the will is free. The latter assumption represents the prevailing feeling, of which we cannot rid ourselves, even if the hypothesis of science were proved. The popular belief in cause and effect is founded on the principle that free will is the cause of every effect: thereby alone do we arrive at the feeling of causation. And thereto belongs also the feeling that every cause is not an effect, but always only a cause if will is the cause, " Our acts of will are not necessary " this lies in the very concept of " will" The effect necessarily comes after the cause that is what we feel. It is merely a hypothesis that even our willing is compulsory in every case.
668. " To will " is not " to desire," to strive, to aspire to; it distinguishes itself from that through the passion of commanding. There is no such thing as " willing," but only the willing of something , the aim must not be severed from the state as the epistemologists sever it. i " Willing," as they understand it, is no more pos sible than " thinking ": it is a pure invention. It is essential to willing that something should; be commanded (but that does not mean that the will is carried into effect). The general state of tension by virtue of which a force seeks to discharge itself, is not " willing."
669. " Pain " and " pleasure " are the most absurd means of expressing judgments, which of course does not mean that the judgments which are enunciated in this way must necessarily be absurd. The elimination of all substantiation and logic, a yes or no in the reduction to a passionate desire to have or to reject, an imperative abbreviation, the utility of which is irrefutable: that is pain and pleasure. Its origin is in the central sphere of the intellect; its pre-requisite is an infinitely accelerated process of perceiving, ordering, co ordinating, calculating, concluding: pleasure and pain are always final phenomena, they are never " causes." As to deciding what provokes pain and pleasure, that is a question which depends upon the degree of power-, the same thing, when confronted with a small quantity of power, may seem a danger and may suggest the need of speedy defence, and when confronted with the consciousness of greater power, may be a voluptuous stimulus and may be followed by a feeling of pleasure. All feelings of pleasure and pain presuppose a measuring of collective utility and collective harmfulness: consequently a sphere where there is the willing of an object (of a condition) and the selec tion of the means thereto. Pleasure and pain are never " original facts." The feelings of pleasure and pain are reactions of the will (emotions) in which the intellectual centre fixes the value of certain supervening changes as a collective value, and also as an in troduction of contrary actions.
670. The belief in " emotions? Emotions are a fabrication of the intellect, an invention of causes which do not exist. All general bodily sensations which we do not understand are interpreted intel lectually that is to say, a reason is sought why we feel thus or thus among certain people or in certain experiences. Thus something disadvantageous dangerous, and strange is taken for granted, as if it were the cause of our being indisposed; as a matter of fact, it gets added to the indisposition, so as to make our condition thinkable. Mighty rushes of blood to the brain, accompanied by a feeling of suffocation, are interpreted as " anger ": the people and things which provoke our anger are a means of relieving our physiological con dition. Subsequently, after long habituation, certain processes and general feelings are so regularly correlated that the sight of certain pro cesses provokes that condition of general feeling, and induces vascular engorgements, the ejection of seminal fluid, etc.: we then say that the " emotion is provoked by propinquity." Judgments already inhere in pleasure and pain: stimuli become differentiated, according as to whether they increase or reduce the feeling of power. The belief in willing. To believe that a thought may be the cause of a mechanical movement is to believe in miracles. The consistency of science demands that once we have made the world think able for ourselves by means of pictures, we should also make the emotions, the desires, the will, etc., thinkable that is to say, we should deny them and treat them as errors of the intellect.
671. Free will or no free will? There is no such thing as " Will": that is only a simplified conception on the part of the understanding, like - matter." All actions must first be prepared and made possible mechanically before they can be willed. Or, in most cases the " object " of an action enters the brain only after everything is prepared for its accomplishment. The object is an inner " stimulus " nothing more.
672. The most proximate prelude to an action relates to that action: but further back still there lies a preparatory history which covers a far wider field: the individual action is only a factor in a much more extensive and subsequent fact. The shorter and the longer processes are not reported.
673. The theory of chance: the soul is a selecting and self-nourishing being, which is persistently extremely clever and creative (this creative power is commonly overlocked! it is taken to be merely passive). I recognized the active and creative power with in the accidental. Accident is in itself nothing more than the clashing of creative impulses.
674. Among the enormous multiplicity of phenomena to be observed in an organic being, that part which becomes conscious is a mere means: and the particle of " virtue," " self-abnegation," and other fanciful inventions, are denied in a most thoroughgoing manner by the whole of the remaining phenomena. We would do well to study our organism in all its immorality. . . . The animal functions are, as a matter of fact, a million times more important than all beautiful states of the soul and heights of consciousness: the latter are an overflow, in so far as they are not needed as instruments in the service of the animal functions. The whole of conscious life: the spirit together with the soul, the heart, goodness, and virtue; in whose service does it work? In the greatest possible perfection of the means (for acquiring nourishment and advancement) serving the fundamental animal functions: above all, the ascent of the line of Life. That which is called " flesh " and " body " is of such incalculably greater importance, that the rest is nothing more than a small appurtenance. To continue the chain of life so tfiai it becomes ever more powerful that is the task. But now observe how the heart, the soul, virtue, and spirit together conspire formally to thwart this purpose: as if they were the object of every endeavour! . . . The degeneration of life is es sentially determined by the extraordinary falli bility of consciousness , which is held at bay least of all by the instincts, and thus commits the gravest and profoundest errors. Now could any more insane extravagance of vanity be imagined than to measure the value of existence according to hzpleasant or unpleasant feelings of this consciousness? It is obviously only a means: and pleasant or unpleasant feelings are also no more than means. According to what standard is the objective value measured? According to the quantity of increased and more organised power alone.
675. The value of all valuing. My desire would be to see the agent once more identified with the action, after action has been deprived of all meaning by having been separated in thought from the agent; I should like to see the notion of doing something, the idea of a " purpose," of an " intention," of an object, reintroduced into the action, after action has been made insignificant by having been artificially separated from these things. All " objects," " purposes," " meanings," are only manners of expression and metamorphoses of the one will inherent in all phenomena: of the will to power. To have an object, a purpose, or an intention, in fact to will generally, is equivalent to the desire for greater strength, for fuller growth, and for the means thereto in addition. The most general and fundamental instinct in all action and willing is precisely on that account the one which is least known and is most concealed; for in practice we always follow its bid ding, for the simple reason that we are in ourselves its bidding. . . . All valuations are only the results of, and the narrow points of view in serving, this one will: valuing in itself is nothing save this, will to power. To criticize existence from the standpoint of any one of these values is utter nonsense and error. Even supposing that a process of annihilation follows from such a value, even so this process is in the service of this will. The valuation of existence itself! But existence is this valuing itself! and even when we say " no," we still do what we are. We ought now to perceive the absurdity of this pretence at judging existence; and we ought to try and discover what actually takes place there. It is symptomatic.
676. Concerning the Origin of our Valuations. We are able to analyse our body, and by doing so we get the same idea of it as of the stellar system, and the differences between organic and inorganic lapses. Formerly the movements of the stars were explained as the effects of beings con sciously pursuing a purpose: this is no longer required, and even in regard to the movements of the body and its changes, the belief has long since been abandoned that they can be explained by an appeal to a consciousness which has a deter mined purpose. By far the greater number of movements have nothing to do with consciousness at all: neither have they anything to do with sensa tion. Sensations and thoughts are extremely rare and insignificant things compared with the in numerable phenomena occurring every second. On the other hand, we believe that a certain conformity of means to ends rules over the very smallest phenomenon, which it is quite beyond our deepest science to understand: a sort of cautious ness, selectiveness, co-ordination, and repairing process, etc. In short, we are in the presence of an activity to which it would be necessary to ascribe an incalculably higher and more extensive intellect than the one we are acquainted with. We learn to think less of all that is conscious: we unlearn the habit of making ourselves responsible for ourselves, because, as conscious beings fixing purposes, we are but the smallest part of ourselves. Of the numerous influences taking effect every second, for instance, air, electricity, we feel scarcely anything at all. There might be a number of forces, which, though they never make themselves felt by us, yet influence us continually. Pleasure and pain are very rare and scanty phen omena, compared with the countless stimuli with which a cell or an organ operates upon another cell or organ. It is the phase of the modesty of consciousness. Finally, we can grasp the conscious ego itself, merely as an instrument in the service of that higher and more extensive intellect: and then we may ask whether all conscious willing, all con scious purposes, all valuations, are not perhaps only means by virtue of which something essentially different is attained, from that which consciousness supposes. We mean: it is a question of our pleasure and pain but pleasure and pain might be the means whereby we had something to do which lies outside our consciousness. This is to show how very superficial all conscious phenomena really are; how an action and the image of it differ; how little we know about what precedes an action; how fantastic our feelings, " freewill," and " cause and effect " are; how thoughts and images, just like words, are only signs of thoughts; the impossibility of finding the grounds of any action; the superficiality of all praise and blame; how essentially our conscious life is composed of fancies and illusion; how all our words merely stand for fancies (our emotions too), and how the union of mankind depends upon the transmission and con tinuation of these fancies: whereas, at bottom, the real union of mankind by means of procreation pursues its unknown way. Does this belief in the common fancies of men really alter mankind? Or is the whole body of ideas and valuations only an expression in itself of unknown changes? Are there really such things as will, purposes, thoughts, values? Is the whole of conscious life perhaps no more than miragel Even when values seem to determine the actions of a man, they are, as a matter of fact, doing something quite different! In short, granting that a certain conformity of means to end might be demonstrated in the action of nature, without the assumption of a ruling ego: could not our notion of purposes, and our will, etc., be only a symbolic language standing for something quite different that is to say, something not- willing and unconscious? only the thinnest sem blance of that natural conformity of means to end in the organic world, but not in any way different therefrom? Briefly, perhaps the whole of mental develop ment is a matter of the body: it is the consciously recorded history of the fact that a higher body is forming. The organic ascends to higher regions. Our longing to know Nature is a means by virtue of which the body would reach perfection. Or, better still, hundreds of thousands of experi ments are made to alter the nourishment and the mode of living of the body: the body s conscious ness and valuations, its kinds of pleasure and pain, are signs of these changes and experiments. In the end, it is not a question concerning man for he must be surpassed.
677. To what Extent are all Interpretations of the World Symptoms of a Ruling Instinct. The artistic contemplation of the world: to sit before the world and to survey it. But here the analysis of aesthetical contemplation, its reduction to cruelty, its feeling of security, its judicial and detached attitude, etc., are lacking. The artist himself must be taken, together with his psycho logy (the criticism of the instinct of play, as a discharge of energy, the love of change, the love of bringing one s soul in touch with strange things, the absolute egoism of the artist, etc.). What in stincts does he sublimate? The scientific contemplation of the world: a criticism of the psychological longing for science, the desire to make everything comprehensible; the desire to make everything practical, useful, capable of being exploited to what extent this is anti-aesthetic. Only that value counts, which may be reckoned in figures. How it happens that a mediocre type of man preponderates under the influence of science. It would be terrible if even history were to be taken possession of in this way the realm of the superior, of the judicial. What instincts are here sublimated! The religious contemplation of the world: a criticism of the religious man. It is not necessary to take the moral man as the type, but the man who has extreme feelings of exaltation and of deep depression, and who interprets the former with thankfulnsss or suspicion without, however, seeking their origin in himself (nor the latter either). The man who essentially feels anything but free, who sublimates his conditions and states of submission. The moral contemplation of the world. The feelings peculiar to certain social ranks are pro jected into the universe: stability, law, the making of things orderly, and the making of things alike, are sought in the highest spheres, because they are valued most highly, above everything or behind everything. What is common to all: the ruling instincts wish to be regarded as the highest values in general, even as the creative and ruling powers. It is understood that these instincts either oppose or overcome each other (join up synthetically, or alternate in power). Their profound antagonism is, however, so great, that in those cases in which they all insist upon being gratified, a man of very thorough mediocrity is the outcome.
678. It is a question whether the origin of our apparent " knowledge " is not also a mere offshoot of our older valuations, which are so completely assimilated that they belong to the very basis of our nature. In this way only the more recent needs engage in battle with results of the oldest needs. The world is seen, felt, and interpreted thus and thus, in order that organic life may be preserved with this particular manner of interpretation. Man is not only an individual, but the continuation of collective organic life in one definite line. The fact that man survives, proves that a certain species of interpretations (even though it still be added to) has also survived; that, as a system, this method of interpreting has not Changed. " Adaptation." Our " dissatisfaction," our " ideal," etc., may possibly be the result of this incorporated piece of interpretation, of our particular point of view: the organic world may ultimately perish owing to it just as the division of labour in organisms may be the means of bringing about the ruin of the whole, if one part happen to wither or weaken. The destruction of organic life, and even of the highest form thereof, must follow the same prin ciples as the destruction of the individual.
679. Judged from the standpoint of the theory of descent, individuation shows the continuous breaking up of one into two, and the equally continuous annihilation of individuals for the sake of a few individuals, which evolution bears onwards; the greater mass always perishes (" the body "). The fundamental phenomena: innumerable in dividuals are sacrificed for the sake of a few, in order to make the few possible. One must not allow one s self to be deceived; the case is the same with peoples and races: they produce the " body " for the generation of isolated and valuable individuals who continue the great process
680. I am opposed to the theory that the individual studies the interests of the species , or of posterity, at the cost of his own advantage: all this is only apparent. The excessive importance which he attaches to the sexual instinct is not the result of the latter s importance to the species; for procreation is the actual performance of the individual, it is his greatest interest, and therefore it is his highest expression of power (not judged from the stand point of consciousness, but from the very centre of the individual).
681. The fundamental errors of the biologists who have lived hitherto: it is not a matter of the species, but of rearing stronger individuals (the many are only a means). Life is not the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations, but will to power, which, proceeding from inside, subjugates and incorporates an ever - increasing quantity of " external " phenomena. These biologists continue the moral valuations (" the absolutely higher worth of Altruism," the antagonism towards the lust of dominion, towards war, towards all that which is not useful, and towards all order of rank and of class).
682. In natural science, the moral depreciation of the ego still goes hand in hand with the overestimation of the species. But the species is quite as illusory as the ego: a false distinction has been made. The ego is a hundred times more than a mere unit in a chain of creatures; it is the chain itself, in every possible respect; and the species is merely an abstraction suggested by the multiplicity and partial similarity of these chains. That the individual is sacrificed to the species, as peopfe often say he is, is not a fact at all: it is rather only an example of false interpretation.
683. The formula of the "progress" -superstition according to a famous physiologist of the cerebral regions: " L! animal ne fait jamais de progrh comme espece. L homme seul fait de progres comme espece" No. 155.
684. Anti-Darwin. The domestication of man: what definite value can it have, or has domestication in "V itself a definite value? There are reasons for denying the latter proposition. Darwin s school of thought certainly goes to great pains to convince us of the reverse: it would fain prove that the influence of domestication may be profound and fundamental. For the time being, we stand firmly as we did before; up to the present no results save very superficial modification or degeneration have been shown to follow upon domestication. And everything that escapes from the hand and discipline of man, returns almost immediately to its original natural condition. The type remains constant, man can- not " ddnaturer la nature? Biologists reckon upon the struggle for existence, the death of the weaker creature and the survival of the most robust, most gifted combatant; on that account they imagine a continuous increase in the -perfection of all creatures. We, on the con trary, have convinced ourselves of the fact, that in the struggle for existence, accident serves the V cause of the weak quite as much as that of the strong; that craftiness often supplements strength with advantage; that the prolificness of a species is related in a remarkable manner to that species chances of destruction. . . . Natural Selection is also credited with the power of slowly effecting unlimited metamor phoses: it is believed that every advantage is transmitted by heredity, and strengthened in the course of generations (when heredity is known to be so capricious that . . .); the happy adaptations of certain creatures to very special conditions of life, are regarded as the result of surrounding influences. Nowhere, however, are examples of unconscious selection to be found (absolutely nowhere). The most different individuals associate one with the other; the extremes become lost in the mass. Each vies with the other to maintain his kind; those creatures whose appearance shields them from certain dangers, do not alter this appearance when they are in an environment quite devoid of danger. ... If they live in places where their coats or their hides do not conceal them, they do not adapt themselves to their surroundings in any way. The selection of the most beautiful has been so exaggerated, that it greatly exceeds the instincts for beauty in our own race! As a matter of fact, the most beautiful creature often couples with the most debased, and the largest with the smallest. We almost always see males and females taking advantage of their first chance meeting, and manifesting no taste or selectiveness at all. Modification through climate and nourishment but as a matter of fact unimportant. There are no intermediate forms. The growing evolution of creatures is assumed. All grounds for this assumption are entirely lacking. Every type has its limitations: beyond these evolution cannot carry it. * My general point of view. First proposition: Man as a species is not progressing. Higher specimens are indeed attained; but they do not survive. The general level of the species is not raised. Second proposition; Man as a species does not represent any sort of progress compared with any other animal. The whole of the animal and plant world does not develop from the lower to the higher. . . . but all simultaneously, haphazardly, confusedly, and at variance. The richest and most complex forms and the term " higher type " means no more than this perish more easily: only the lowest succeed in maintaining their apparent imperishableness. The former are seldom attained, and maintain their superior position with difficulty; the latter are compensated by great fruitfulness. In the human race, also, the superior specimens, the happy cases of evolution, are the first to perish amid the fluctuations of chances for and against them. They are exposed to every form of decadence: they are extreme, and, on that account alone, already decadents. . . . The short duration of beauty, of genius, of the Caesar, is sui generis: such things are not heredi tary. The type is inherited, there is nothing extreme or particularly " happy " about a type. . . . It is not a case of a particular fate, or of the " evil will " of Nature, but merely of the concept " superior type ": the higher type is an example of an incom- parably greater degree of complexity a greater sum of co-ordinated elements: but on this account disintegration becomes a thousand times more threatening. " Genius " is the sublimest machine in existence hence it is the most fragile. Third proposition: The domestication (culture) of man does not sink very deep. When it does sink far below the skin it immediately becomes degeneration (type: the Christian). The " wild " man (or, in moral terminology, the evil man) is a reversion to Nature and, in a certain sense, he represents a recovery, a cure from the effects of "culture." . . .
685. Anti-Darwin. What surprises me most on making a general survey of the great destinies of man, is that I invariably see the reverse of what today Darwin and his school sees or will persist in seeing: selection in favour of the stronger, the better-constituted, and the progress of the species. Precisely the reverse of this stares one in the face: the suppression of the lucky cases, the uselessness of the more highly constituted types, the inevitable mastery of the mediocre, and even of those who are below mediocrity. Unless we are shown some reason why man is an exception among living creatures, I incline to the belief that Darwin s school is everywhere at fault. That will to power, in which I perceive the ultimate reason and character of all change, explains why it is that selection is never in favour of the exceptions and of the lucky cases: the strongest and happiest natures are weak when they are confronted with a majority ruled by organised gregarious instincts and the fear which possesses the weak. My general view of the world of values shows that in the highest values which now sway the destiny of man, the happy cases among men, the select specimens do not prevail: but rather the decadent t specimens, perhaps there is nothing more in- *J teresting in the world than this unpleasant [ spectacle. . . . Strange as it may seem, the strong always have to be upheld against the weak; and the well- constituted against the ill-constituted, the healthy against the sick and physiologically botched. If we drew our morals from reality, they would read thus: the mediocre are more valuable than the , exceptional creatures, and the decadent than the t mediocre; the will to nonentity prevails over the will to life and the general aim now is, in Christian, Buddhistic, Schopenhauerian phrase ology: " It is better not to be than to be." I protest against this formulating of reality into a moral: and I loathe Christianity with a deadly loathing, because it created sublime words and at titudes in order to deck a revolting truth with all the tawdriness of justice, virtue, and godliness. . . . I see all philosophers and the whole of science on their knees before a reality which is the reverse of " the struggle for life," as Darwin and his school understood it that is to say, wherever I look, , I see those prevailing and surviving, who throw i doubt and suspicion upon life and the value of life. The error of the Darwinian school became a problem to me: how can one be so blind as to make this mistake? That species show an ascending tendency, is the most nonsensical assertion that has ever been made: until now they have only manifested a dead level. There is nothing whatever to prove that the higher organisms have developed from the lower. I see that the lower, owing to their numerical strength, their craft, and ruse, now preponderate, and I fail to see an instance in which an accidental change produces an advantage, at least not for a very long period: for it would be necessary to find some reason why an accidental change should become so very strong. I do indeed find the " cruelty of Nature " which is so often referred to; but in a different place: Nature is cruel, but against her lucky and well- constituted children; she protects and shelters and loves the lowly. In short, the increase of a species power, as the result of the preponderance of its particularly well-constituted and strong specimens, is perhaps less of a certainty than that it is the result of the preponderance of its mediocre and lower specimens ... in the case of the latter, we find great fruit- fulness and permanence: in the case of the former, the besetting dangers are greater, waste is more rapid, and decimation is more speedy.
686. Man as he has appeared up to the present is the embryo of the man of the future; all the formative powers which are to produce the latter, already lie in the former: and owing to the fact that they are enormous, the more promising for the future the modern individual happens to be, the more suffering falls to his lot. This is the pro- founclest concept of suffering. The formative powers clash. The isolation of the individual need not deceive one as a matter of fact, some uninterrupted current does actually flow through all individuals, and does thus unite them. The fact that they feel themselves isolated, is the most powerful spur in the process of setting themselves the loftiest of aims: their search for happiness is the means which keeps together and moderates the for mative powers, and keeps them from being mutually destructive.
687. Excessive intellectual strength sets itself new goals; it is not in the least satisfied by the com mand and the leadership of the inferior world, or by the preservation of the organism, of the " in dividual." We are more than the individual: we are the whole chain itself, with the tasks of all the possible futures of that chain in us.
3. THEORY OF AND OF VALUATIONS.
688. The unitary view of psychology. We are accustomed to regard the development of a vast number of forms as compatible with one single origin. My theory would be: that the will to power is the primitive motive force out of which all other motives have been derived; That it is exceedingly illuminating to sub stitute power for individual " happiness " (after which every living organism is said to strive): " It strives after power, after more power "; happiness is only a symptom of the feeling of power attained, a consciousness of difference (it does not strive after happiness: but happiness steps in when the object is attained, after which the organism has striven: happiness is an accompanying, not an actuating factor); That all motive force is the will to power; that there is no other force, either physical, dynamic, or psychic. In our science, where the concept cause and effect is reduced to a relationship of complete equilibrium, and in which it seems desirable for the same quantum of force to be found on either side, all idea of a motive power is absent: we only apprehend results, and we call these equal from the point of view of their content of force. . . . It is a matter of mere experience that change never ceases: at bottom we have not the smallest grounds for assuming that any one particular change must follow upon any other. On the con trary, any state which has been attained would seem almost forced to maintain itself intact if it had not within itself a capacity for not desiring to maintain itself. . . . Spinoza s proposition concern ing " self-preservation " ought as a matter of fact to put a stop to change. But the proposition is false; the contrary is true. In all living organisms it can be clearly shown that they do everything not to remain as they are, but to become greater. ...
689. " Will to power" and causality. From a psycho logical point of view the idea of " cause " is our feel ing of power in the act which is called willing our concept "effect" is the superstition that this feeling of power is itself the force which moves things. . . . A state which accompanies an event and is already an effect of that event is deemed " suffi cient cause " of the latter; the tense relationship of our feeling of power (pleasure as the feeling of power) and of an obstacle being overcome are these things illusions? If we translate the notion " cause " back into the only sphere which is known to us, and out of which we have taken it, we cannot imagine any change in which the will to power is not inherent. We do not know how to account for any change which is not a trespassing of one power on another. Mechanics only show us the results, and then I only in images (movement is a figure of speech); gravitation itself has no mechanical cause, because it is itself the first cause of mechanical results. The will to accumulate force is confined to the phenomenon of life, to nourishment, to procreation, to inheritance, to society, states, customs, authority. Should we not be allowed to assume that this will is the motive power also of chemistry? and of the cosmic order? Not only conservation of energy, but the mini mum amount of waste; so that the only reality is this: the will of every centre of power to become stronger not self-preservation, but the desire to appropriate, to become master, to become more, to become stronger. Is the fact that science is possible a proof of the principle of causation " From like causes, like effects " " A permanent law of things " " In variable order "? Because something is calculable, is it therefore on that account necessary? If something happens thus, and thus only, it is not the manifestation of a " principle," of a " law," of " order." What happens is that certain quanta of power begin to operate, and their essence is to exercise their power over all other quanta of power. Can we assume the existence of a striving after power without a feeling of pleasure and pain, i.e. without the sensation of an increase or a de crease of power? Is mechanism only a language of signs for the concealed fact of a world of fight ing and conquering quanta of will-power? All mechanical first-principles, matter, atoms, weight, pressure, and repulsion, are not facts in themselves, but interpretations arrived at with the help of psychical fictions. Life, which is our best known form of being, is altogether " will to the accumulation of strength " all the processes of life hinge on this: everything aims, not at preservation, but at accretion and accumulation. Life as an individual case (a hypothesis which may be applied to existence in general) strives after the maximum feeling of power; life is essentially a striving after more power; striving itself is only a straining after more power; the most fundamental and innermost thing of all is this will. (Mechanism is merely the semeiotics of the results.)
690. The thing which is the cause of the existence of development cannot in the course of investiga tion be found above development; it should neither be regarded as " evolving " nor as evolved . . . the " will to power " cannot have been evolved.
691. What is the relation of the whole of the organic process towards the rest of nature? Here the fundamental will reveals itself.
692. Is the " will to power " a kind of will, or is it identical with the concept will? Is it equivalent to desiring or commanding; is it the will which Schopenhauer says is the essence of things? My proposition is that the will of psychologists hitherto has been an unjustifiable generalization, and that there is no such thing as this sort of will, that instead of the development of one will into several forms being taken as a fact, the character of will has been cancelled owing to the fact that its content, its " whither," was subtracted from it: in Schopenhauer this is so in the highest degree; what he calls " will " is merely an empty word. There is even less plausibility in the will to live: for life is simply one of the manifestations of the will to power; it is quite arbitrary and ridiculous to suggest that everything is striving to enter into this particular form of the will to power.
693. If the innermost essence of existence is the will to power; if happiness is every increase of power, and unhappiness the feeling of not being able to resist, of not being able to become master: may we not then postulate happiness and pain as cardinal facts? Is will possible without these two oscillations of yea and nay? But who feels happiness? . . . Who will have power? . . . Nonsensical question! If the essence of all things is itself will to power, and consequently the ability to feel pleasure and pain! Albeit: contrasts and obstacles are necessary, therefore also, relatively, units which trespass on one another.
694. According to the obstacles which a force seeks with a view of overcoming them, the measure of the failure and the fatality thus provoked must increase: and in so far as every force can only manifest itself against some thing that opposes it, an element of unhappiness is necessarily inherent in every action. But this pain acts as a greater incitement to life, and increases the will to power.
695. If pleasure and pain are related to the feeling ol power, life would have to represent such an increase in power that the difference, the " plus," would have to enter consciousness. ... A dead level of power, if maintained, would have to measure its happiness in relation to depreciations of that level, i.e. in relation to states of unhappiness and not of happiness. . . . The will to an increase lies in the essence of happiness: that power is enhanced, and that this difference becomes conscious. In a state of decadence after a certain time the opposite difference becomes conscious, that is decrease: the memory of former strong moments depresses the present feelings of happiness in this state comparison reduces happiness.
696. It is not the satisfaction of the will which is the cause of happiness (to this superficial theory I am more particularly opposed this absurd psychological forgery in regard to the most simple things), but it is that the will is always striving to overcome that which stands in its way. The feel ing of happiness lies precisely in the discontented- ness of the will, in the fact that without opponents and obstacles it is never satisfied. " The happy man ": a gregarious ideal.
697. The normal discontent of our instincts for instance, of the instinct of hunger, of sex, of movement contains nothing which is in itself depressing; it rather provokes the feeling of life, and, whatever the pessimists may say to us, like all the rhythms of small and irritating stimuli, it strengthens. Instead of this discontent making us sick of life, it is rather the great stimulus to life. (Pleasure might even perhaps be characterised as the rhythm of small and painful stimuli.)
698. Kant says: " These lines of Count Verri s (SuW indole del piacere e del dolore; 1781) I confirm with absolute certainty: II solo principle motore dell uomo e il dolore. II dolore precede ogni piacere. II piacere non e un essere positive. [On the Nature of Pleasure and Pain. " The only motive force of man is pain. Pain precedes every pleasure. Pleasure is not a positive thing."]
699. Pain is something different from pleasure I mean it is not the latter s opposite. If the essence of pleasure has been aptly characterized as the feeling of increased power (that is to say, as a feeling of difference which presupposes comparison), that does not define the nature of pain. The false contrasts which the people, and consequently the language, believes in, are always dangerous fetters which impede the march of truth. There are even cases where a kind of pleasure is conditioned by a certain rhythmic sequence of small, painful stimuli: in this way a very rapid growth of the feeling of power and of the feeling of pleasure is attained. This is the case, for instance, in tickling, also in the sexual tickling which accompanies the coitus: here we see pain acting as the ingredient of happiness. It seems to be a small hindrance which is overcome, followed immediately by another small hindrance which once again is overcome this play of resistance and resistance overcome is the greatest excitant of that complete feeling of overflowing and surplus power which constitutes the essence of happiness. The converse, which would be an increase in the feeling of pain through small intercalated pleasurable stimuli, does not exist: pleasure and pain are not opposites. Pain is undoubtedly an intellectual process in which a judgment is inherent the judgment "harmful," in which long experience is epitomized. There is no such thing as pain in itself. It is not the wound that hurts, it is the experience of the harmful results a wound may have for the whole organism, which here speaks in this deeply moving way, and is called pain. (In the case of deleterious influences which were unknown to ancient man, as, for instance, those residing in the new combination of poisonous chemicals, the hint from pain is lacking, and we are lost.) That which is quite peculiar in pain is the pro longed disturbance, the quivering subsequent to a terrible shock in the ganglia of the nervous system. As a matter of fact, nobody suffers from the cause of pain (from any sort of injury, for instance), but from the protracted disturbance of his equilibrium which follows upon the shock. Pain is a disease of the cerebral centers pleasure is no disease at all. The fact that pain may be the cause of reflex actions has appearances and even philosophical prejudice in its favor. But in very sudden accidents, if we observe closely, we find that the reflex action occurs appreciably earlier than the feeling of pain. I should be in a bad way when I stumbled if I had to wait until the fact had struck the bell of my consciousness, and until a hint of what I had to do had been telegraphed back to me. On the contrary, what I notice as clearly as possible is, that first, in order to avoid a fall, reflex action on the part of my foot takes place, and then, after a certain measurable space of time, there follows quite suddenly a kind of painful wave in my forehead. Nobody, then, reacts to pain. Pain is subsequently projected into the wounded quarter but the essence of this local pain is nevertheless not the expression of a kind of local wound: it is merely a local sign, the strength and nature of which is in keeping with the severity of the wound, and of which the nerve centers have taken note. The fact that as the result of this shock the muscular power of the organism is materially reduced, does not prove in any way that the essence of pain is to be sought in the lowering of the feeling of power. Once more let me repeat: nobody reacts to pain: pain is no " cause " of action. Pain itself is a reaction; the reflex movement is another and earlier process both originate at different points. . .
700. The message of pain: in itself pain does not announce that which has been momentarily damaged, but the significance of this damage for the individual as a whole. Are we to suppose that there are any pains which "the species" feel, and which the individual does not?
701. " The sum of unhappiness outweighs the sum of happiness: consequently it were better that the world did not exist " " The world is something which from a rational standpoint it were better did not exist, because it occasions more pain than pleasure to the feeling subject " this futile gossip now calls itself pessimism! Pleasure and pain are accompanying factors, not causes; they are second-rate valuations derived from a dominating value, they are one with the feeling " useful 5 " harmful," and therefore they are absolutely fugitive and relative. For in regard to all utility and harmfulness there are a hundred different ways of asking " what for? " I despise this pessimism of sensitiveness: it is in itself a sign of profoundly impoverished life.
702. Man does not seek happiness and does not avoid unhappiness. Everybody knows the famous pre judices I here contradict. Pleasure and pain are mere results, mere accompanying phenomena that which every man, which every tiny particle of a living organism will have, is an increase of power. In striving after this, pleasure and pain are en countered; it is owing to that will that the organism seeks opposition and requires that which stands in its way. . . . Pain as the hindrance of its will to power is therefore a normal feature, a natural in gredient of every organic phenomenon; man does not avoid it, on the contrary, he is constantly in need of it: every triumph, every feeling of pleasure, every event presupposes an obstacle overcome. Let us take the simplest case, that of primitive nourishment; the protoplasm extends its pseudo- podia in order to seek for that which resists it, it does not do so out of hunger, but owing to its will to power. Then it makes the attempt to over come, to appropriate, and to incorporate that with which it comes into contact what people call " nourishment " is merely a derivative, a utilitarian application, of the primordial will to become stronger. Pain is so far from acting as a diminution of our feeling of power, that it actually forms in the majority of cases a spur to this feeling, the obstacle is the stimulus of the will to power.
703. Pain has been confounded with one of its subdivisions, which is exhaustion: the latter does indeed represent a profound reduction and lowering of the will to power, a material loss of strength that is to say, there is (a) pain as the stimulus to an increase or power, and pain following upon an expenditure of power; in the first case it is a spur, in the second it is the outcome of ex cessive spurring. . . . The inability to resist is proper to the latter form of pain: the provocation of that which resists is proper to the former. ... The only happiness which is to be felt in the state of exhaustion is that of going to sleep; in the other case, happiness means triumph. . . . The great confusion of psychologists consisted in the fact that they did not keep these two kinds of happiness that of falling asleep, and that of triumph sufficiently apart. Exhausted people will have repose, slackened limbs, peace and quiet and these things constitute the bliss of Nihilistic religions and philosophies; the wealthy in vital strength, the active, want triumph, defeated opponents, and the extension of their feeling of power over ever wider regions. Every healthy function of the organism has this need, and the whole organism constitutes an intricate complexity of systems struggling for the increase of the feeling of power. . . .
704. How is it that the fundamental article of faith in all psychologies is a piece of most outrageous con tortion and fabrication? " Man strives after happi ness," for instance how much of this is true? In order to understand what life is, and what kind of striving and tenseness life contains, the formula should hold good not only of trees and plants, but of animals also. " What does the plant strive after? " But here we have already invented a false entity which does not exist, concealing and denying the fact of an infinitely variegated growth, with individual and semi-individual starting-points, if we give it the clumsy title " plant " as if it were a unit. It is very obvious that the ultimate and smallest " individuals " cannot be understood in the sense of metaphysical individuals or atoms; their sphere of power is continually shifting its ground: but with all these changes, can it be said that any of them strives after happiness? All this expand ing, this incorporation and growth, is a search for resistance; movement is essentially related to states of pain: the driving power here must represent some other desire if it leads to such continual willing and seeking of pain. To what end do the trees of a virgin forest contend with each other? " For happiness "? For power! . . . Man is now master of the forces of nature, and master too of his own wild and unbridled feelings (the passions have followed suit, and have learned to become useful) in comparison with primeval man, the man of today represents an enormous quantum of power, but not an increase in happi ness! How can one maintain, then, that he has striven after happiness? . .
705. But while I say this I see above me, and below the stars, the glittering rat s-tail of errors which hitherto has represented the greatest inspiration of man: " All happiness is the result of virtue all virtue is the result of free will "! Let us revalue the values: all capacity is the outcome of a happy organization, all freedom is the outcome of capacity (freedom understood here as facility in self-direction. Every artist will under stand me).
706. " The value of life." Every life stands by itself; all existence must be justified, and not only life, the justifying principle must be one through which life itself speaks. Life is only a means to something: it is the expression of the forms of growth in power.
707. The " conscious world " cannot be a starting- point for valuing: an " objective " valuation is necessary. In comparison with the enormous and compli cated antagonistic processes which the collective life of every organism represents, its conscious world of feelings, intentions, and valuations, is only a small slice. We have absolutely no right to postulate this particle of consciousness as the object, the wherefore, of the collective phenomena of life: the attainment of consciousness is obviously only an additional means to the unfolding of life and to the extension of its power. That is why it is a piece of childish simplicity to set up happiness, or intellectuality, or morality, or any other individual sphere of consciousness, as the highest value: and maybe to justify " the world " with it. This is my fundamental objection to all philosophical and moral cosmologies and theologies, to all wherefores and highest values that have appeared in philosophies and philosophic religions hitherto. A kind of means is misunderstood as the object itself: conversely life and its growth of power were debased to a means. If we wished to postulate an adequate object of life it would not necessarily be related in any way with the category of conscious life; it would require rather to explain conscious life as a mere means to itself. . . . The " denial of life " regarded as the object of life, the object of evolution! Existence a piece of tremendous stupidity! Any such mad interpreta tion is only the outcome of life s being measured by the factors of consciousness (pleasure and pain, good and evil). Here the means are made to stand against the end the " unholy," absurd, and, above all, disagreeable means: how can the end be any use when it requires such means? But where the fault lies is here instead of looking for the end which would explain the necessity of such means, we posited an end from the start which actually excludes such means, i.e. we made a desideratum in regard to certain means (especially pleasurable, rational, and virtuous) into a rule, and then only did we decide what end would be desirable. . . . Where the fundamental fault lies is in the fact that, instead of regarding consciousness as an instrument and an isolated phenomenon of life in general, we made it a standard, the highest value in life: it is the faulty standpoint of a parte ad totum, and that is why all philosophers are instinctively seeking at the present day for a col lective consciousness, a thing that lives and wills consciously with all that happens, a " Spirit," a " God." But they must be told that it is precisely thus that life is converted into a monster; that a " God " and a general sensorium would necessarily be something on whose account the whole of existence would have to be condemned. . . . Our greatest relief came when we eliminated the general consciousness which postulates ends and means in this way we ceased from being neces sarily pessimists. . . . Our greatest indictment of life was the existence of God.
708. Concerning the value of " Becoming-" If the movement of the world really tended to reach a final state, that state would already have been reached. The only fundamental fact, however, is that it does not tend to reach a final state: and every philosophy and scientific hypothesis (eg. materialism) according to which such a final state is necessary, is refuted by this fundamental fact. I should like to have a concept of the world which does justice to this fact. Becoming ought to be explained without having recourse to such final designs. Becoming must appear justified at every instant (or it must defy all valuation: which has unity as its end); the present must not under any circumstances be justified by a future, nor must the past be justified for the sake of the present. " Necessity " must not be interpreted in the form of a prevailing and ruling collective force or as a prime motor; and still less as the necessary cause of some valuable result. But to this end it is necessary to deny a collective consciousness for Becoming, a " God," in order that life may not be veiled under the shadow of a being who feels and knows as we do and yet wills nothing: " God " is useless if he wants nothing; and if he do want something, this presupposes a general sum of suffering and irrationality which lowers the general value of Becoming. Fortunately any such general power is lacking (a suffering God overlooking everything, a general sensorium and ubiquitous Spirit, would be the greatest indict ment of existence). Strictly speaking nothing of the nature of Being must be allowed to remain, because in that case Becoming loses its value and gets to be sheer and superfluous nonsense. The next question, then, is: how did the illusion Being originate (why was it obliged to originate); Likewise: how was it that all valuations based upon the hypothesis that there was such a thing as Being came to be depreciated. But in this way we have recognized that this hypothesis concerning Being is the source of all the calumny that has been directed against the world (the " Better world," the " True world " the " World Beyond," the " Thing-in-itself "). (i) Becoming has no final state, it does not tend towards stability. A 179 (2) Becoming is not a state of appearance; the world of Being is probably only appearance. (3) Becoming is of precisely the same value at every instant; the sum of its value always remains equal: expressed other wise, it has no value; for that according to which it might be measured, and in regard to which the word value might have some sense, is entirely lacking. The collective value of the world defies valuation; for this reason philosophical pessimism belongs to the order of farces.
709. We should not make our little desiderata the judges of existence! Neither should we make culminating evolutionary forms (e.g. mind) the "absolute" which stands behind evolution!
710. Our knowledge has become scientific to the extent in which it has been able to make use of number and measure. It might be worth while to try and see whether a scientific order of values might not be constructed according to a scale of numbers and measures representing energy. . . . All other values are matters of prejudice, simplicity, and misunderstanding. They may all be reduced to that scale of numbers and measures representing energy. The ascent in this scale would represent an increase of value, the descent a diminution. But here appearance and prejudice are against one (moral values are only apparent values com pared with those which are physiological).
711. Why the standpoint of " value " lapses: Because in the " whole process of the universe " the work of mankind does not come under considera tion; because a general process (viewed in the light of a system) does not exist. Because there is no such thing as a whole; because no depreciation of human existence or human aims can be made in regard to something that does not exist. Because " necessity," " causality," " design," are merely useful semblances. Because the aim is not " the increase of the sphere of consciousness," but the increase of power; in which increase the utility of consciousness is also contained; and the same holds good of pleasure and pain. Because a mere means must not be elevated to the highest criterion of value (such as states of consciousness like pleasure and pain, if consciousness is in itself only a means). Because the world is not an organism at all, but a thing of chaos; because the development of " intellectuality " is only a means tending relatively to extend the duration of an organization. Because all " desirability " has no sense in regard to the general character of existence.
712. " God " is the culminating moment: life is an eternal process of deifying and undeifying. But withal there is no zenith of values but only a zenith of power. Absolute exclusion of mechanical and material istic interpretations: they are both only expres sions of inferior states, of emotions deprived of all spirit (of the " will to power "). The retrograde movement from the zenith of development (the intellectualisation of power on some slave-infected soil) may be shown to be the result of the highest degree of energy turning against itself, once it no longer has anything to organise, and utilising its power in order to disorganise. (a) The ever-increasing suppression of societies, and the latter s subjection by a smaller number of stronger individuals. (b) The ever-increasing suppression of the privileged and the strong, hence the rise of democracy, and ultimately of anarchy in the elements.
713. Value is the highest amount of power that a man can assimilate a man, not mankind! Man-j kind is much more of a means than an end. It is a question of type: mankind is merely the experimental material; it is the overflow of the ill-constituted a field of ruins.
714. Words relating to values are merely banners planted on those spots where a new blessedness was discovered a iew feeling.
715. The standpoint of " value " is the same as that of the conditions of preservation and enhancement, in regard to complex creatures of relative stability appearing in the course of evolution. There are no such things as lasting and ultimate entities, no atoms, no monads: here also " permanence " was first introduced by ourselves (from practical, utilitarian, and other motives). " The forms that rule "; the sphere of the sub jugated is continually extended; or it decreases or increases according to the conditions (nourish ment) being either favourable or unfavourable. " Value " is essentially the standpoint for the increase or decrease of these dominating centres (pluralities in any case; for " unity " cannot be observed anywhere in the nature of development). The means of expression afforded by language are useless for the purpose of conveying any facts concerning " development ": the need of positing a rougher world of stable existences and things forms part of our eternal desire for preservation. We may speak of atoms and monads in a relative sense: and this is certain, that the smallest world is the most stable world. . . . There is no such thing as will: there are only punctuations of will, which are constantly increasing and decreasing their power.
III. THE WILL TO POWER AS EXEMPLIFIED IN SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL.
i. SOCIETY AND THE STATE.
716. WE take it as a principle that only individuals feel any responsibility. Corporations are invented to do what the individual has not the courage to do. For this reason all communities are vastly more upright and instructive, as regards the nature of man, than the individual who is too cowardly to have the courage of his own desires. All altruism is the prudence of the private man: societies are not mutually altruistic. The com mandment, "Thou shalt love thy next-door neighbour," has never been extended to thy neighbour in general. Rather what Manu says is probably truer: " We must conceive of all the States on our own frontier, and their allies, as being hostile, and for the same reason we must consider all of their neighbours as being friendly to us." The study of society is invaluable, because man in society is far more childlike than man in- 183 1 84 dividually. Society has never regarded virtue as anything else than as a means to strength, power, and order. Manu s words again are simple and dignified: " Virtue could hardly rely on her own strength alone. Really it is only the fear of punishment that keeps men in their limits, and leaves every one in peaceful possession of his own."
717. The State, or unmorality organised, is from within the police, the penal code, status, com merce, and the family; and from without, the will to war, to power, to conquest and revenge. A multitude will do things an individual will not, because of the division of responsibility, of command and execution; because the virtues of obedience, duty, patriotism, and local sentiment are all introduced; because feelings of pride, severity, strength, hate, and revenge in short, all typical traits are upheld, and these are character istics utterly alien to the herd-man.
718. You haven t, any of you, the courage either to kill or to flog a man. But the huge machinery of the State quells the individual and makes him de cline to be answerable for his own deed (obedience, loyalty, etc.). Everything that a man does in the service of the State is against his own nature. Similarly, everything he learns in view of future service of the State. This result is obtained through division of labour (so that responsibility is subdivided too): The legislator and he who fufils the law. The teacher of discipline and those who have grown hard and severe under discipline.
719. A division of labour among the emotions exists inside society, making individuals and classes produce an imperfect, but more useful, kind of soul. Observe how every type in society has become atrophied with regard to certain emotions with the view of fostering and accentuating other emotions. Morality may be thus justified: Economically, as aiming at the greatest possible use of all individual power, with the view of pre venting the waste of exceptional natures. JEsthetically , as the formation of fixed types, and the pleasure in one s own. Politically, as the art of bearing with the severe divergencies of the degrees of power in society. Psychologically, as an imaginary preference for the bungled and the mediocre, in order to preserve the weak.
720. Man has one terrible and fundamental wish; he desires power, and this impulse, which is called freedom, must be the longest restrained. Hence 1 86 ethics has instinctively aimed at such an education as shall restrain the desire for power; thus our morality slanders the would-be tyrant, and glorifies charity, patriotism, and the ambition of the herd.
721. Impotence to power, how it disguises itself and plays the hypocrite, as obedience, subordina tion, the pride of duty and morality, submission, devotion, love (the idolisation and apotheosis of the commander is a kind of compensation, and indirect self-enhancement). It veils itself further under fatalism and resignation, objectivity, self- tyranny, stoicism, asceticism, self-abnegation, hallowing. Other disguises are: criticism, pessim ism, indignation, susceptibility, " beautiful soul," virtue, self- deification, philosophic detachment, freedom from contact with the world (the realisa tion of impotence disguises itself as disdain). There is a universal need to exercise some kind of power, or to create for one s self the appearance of some power, if only temporarily, in the form of intoxication. There are men who desire power simply for the sake of the happiness it will bring; these belong chiefly to political parties. Other men have the same yearning, even when power means visible disadvantages, the sacrifice of their happiness, and well-being; they are the ambitious. Other men, again, are only like dogs in a manger, and will have power only to prevent its falling into the hands of others on whom they would then be dependent. 187
722. If there be justice and equality before the law, what would thereby be abolished? Suspense, enmity, hatred. But it is a mistake to think that you thereby increase happiness; for the Corsicans rejoice in more happiness than the Continentals.
723. Reciprocity and the expectation of a reward is one of the most seductive forms of the devaluation of mankind. It involves that equality which de preciates any gulf as immoral.
724. Utility is entirely dependent upon the object to be attained, the wherefore? And this wherefore, this purpose, is again dependent upon the degree of power. Utilitarianism is not, therefore, a fundamental doctrine; it is only a story of sequels, and cannot be made obligatory for all.
725. Of old, the state was regarded theoretically as a utilitarian institution; it has now become so in a practical sense. The time of kings has gone by, because people are no longer worthy of them. They do not wish to see the symbol of their ideal in a king, but only a means to their own ends. That is the whole truth.
726. I am trying to grasp the absolute sense of the communal standard of judgment and valuation, naturally without any intention of deducing morals. The degree of psychological falsity and dense- ness required in order to sanctify the emotions essential to preservation and expansion of power, y and to create a good conscience for them. The degree of stupidity required in order that general rules and values may remain possible (including education, formation of culture, and training). The degree of inquisitiveness, suspicion, and in tolerance required in order to deal with exceptions, to suppress them as criminals, and thus to give them bad consciences, and to make them sick with their own singularity.
727 Morality is essentially a shield, a means of defence; and, in so far, it is a sign of the im perfectly developed man (he is still in armour; he is still stoical). The fully developed man is above all provided with weapons: he is a man who attacks. The weapons of war are converted into weapons of peace (out of scales and carapaces grow feathers and hair).
728.; The very notion, " living organism," implies that there must be growth, that there must be a striving after an extension of power, and therefore a process of absorption of other forces. Under the drowsiness brought on by moral narcotics, people speak of the right of the individual to defcnd&m&{ on the same principle one might speak of his right to attack: for both and the latter more than the former are necessities where all living organisms are concerned: aggressive and defensive egoism are not questions of choice or even of " free will," but they are fatalities of life itself. - In this respect it is immaterial whether one have an individual, a living body, or " an ad vancing society " in view. The right to punish (or society s means of defence) has been arrived at only through a misuse of the word " right ": a right is acquired only by contract, but self- defence and self-preservation do not stand upon the basis of a contract. A people ought at least, with quite as much justification, to be able to regard its lust of power, either in arms, commerce, trade, or colonisation, as a right the right of growth, perhaps. . . . When the instincts of a society ultimately make it give up war and renounce conquest, it is decadent: it is ripe for democracy and the rule of shopkeepers. In the majority of cases, it is true, assurances of peace are merely stupefying draughts.
729. The maintenance of the military State is the last means of adhering to the great tradition of the past; or, where it has been lost, to revive it. By means of it the superior or strong type of man is preserved, and all institutions and ideas which perpetuate enmity and order of rank in States, such as national feeling, protective tariffs, etc., may on that account seem justified.
730. In order that a thing may last longer than a person (that is to say, in order that a work may outlive the individual who has created it), all manner of limitations and prejudices must be imposed upon people. But how? By means of love, reverence, gratitude towards the person who created the work, or by means of the thought that our ancestors fought for it, or by virtue of the feeling that the safety of our descendants will be secured if we uphold the work for instance, the polls. Morality is essentially the means of making something survive the individual, because it makes him of necessity a slave. Obviously the aspect from above is different from the aspect from below, and will lead to quite different inter pretations. How is organised power maintained By the fact that countless generations sacrifice themselves to its cause.
731. Marriage, property, speech, tradition, race, family, people, and State, are each links in a chain separate parts which have a more or less high or low origin. Economically they are justified by the surplus derived from the advantages of uninterrupted work and multiple production, as weighed against the disadvantages of greater expense in barter and the difficulty of making things last. (The working parts are multiplied, and yet remain largely idle. Hence the cost of producing them is greater, and the cost of maintaining them by no means inconsiderable.) The advantage consists in avoiding interruption and incident loss. Nothing is more expensive than a start. " The higher the standard of living, the greater will be the expense of maintenance, nourishment, and propagation, as also the risk and the probability of an utter fall on reaching the summit."
732. In bourgeois marriages, naturally in the best sense of the word marriage, there is no question whatsoever of love any more than there is of money. For on love no institution can be founded. The whole matter consists in society giving leave to two persons to satisfy their sexual desires under conditions obviously designed to safeguard social order. Of course there must be a certain attraction between the parties and a vast amount of good nature, patience, compati bility, and charity in any such contract. But the word love should not be misused as regards such a union. For two lovers, in the real and strong meaning of the word, the satisfaction of sexual desire is unessential; it is a mere symbol. For the one side, as I have already said, it is a symbol c- of unqualified submission: for the other, a sign of condescension a sign of the appropriation of property. Marriage, as understood by the real old nobility, meant the breeding forth of the race (but are there any nobles nowadays? Quaeritur), that is to say, the maintenance of a fixed definite type of ruler, for which object husband and wife were sacrificed. Naturally the first consideration here had nothing to do with love; on the con trary! It did not even presuppose that mutual sympathy which is the sine qua non of the bour geois marriage. The prime consideration was the interest of the race, and in the second place came the interest of a particular class. But in the face of the coldness and rigor and calculating lucidity of such a noble concept of marriage as prevailed among every healthy aristocracy, like that of ancient Athens, and even of Europe during the eighteenth century, we warm-blooded animals, with our miserably oversensitive hearts, we " moderns," cannot restrain a slight shudder. That is why love as a passion, in the big meaning of this word, was invented for, and in, an aristo cratic community where convention and abstinence are most severe.
733. Concerning the future of marriage. A super tax on inherited property, a longer term of military service for bachelors of a certain mini mum age within the community. Privileges of all sorts for fathers who lavish boys upon the world, and perhaps plural votes as well. A medical certificate as a condition of any marriage, endorsed by the parochial authorities, in which a series of questions addressed to the parties and the medical officers must be answered (" family histories "). As a counter-agent to prostitution, or as its ennoblement, I would recommend leasehold marriages (to last for a term of years or months), with adequate provision for the children. Every marriage to be warranted and sanctioned by a certain number of good men and true, of the parish, as a parochial obligation.
734. Another commandment of philanthropy. There are cases where to have a child would be a crime for example, for chronic invalids and extreme neurasthenics. These people should be converted to chastity, and for this purpose the music of Parsifal might at all events be tried. For Parsifal himself, that born fool, had ample reasons for not desiring to propagate. Unfortunately, however, one of the regular symptoms of exhausted stock is the inability to exercise any self-restraint in the presence of stimuli, and the tendency to respond to the smallest sexual attraction. It would be quite a mistake, for instance, to think of Leopardi as a chaste man. In such cases the priest and moralist play a hopeless game: it would be far better to send for the apothecary. Lastly, society here has a positive duty to fulfil, and of all the demands that are made on it, there are few more urgent and necessary than this one. Society as the trustee of life, is responsible to life for every botched life that comes into existence, and as it has to atone for such lives, it ought consequently to make it impossible for them ever to see the light; of day: it should in many cases actually prevent the act of procreation, and may, without any regard for rank, descent, or intellect, hold in readiness the most rigorous forms of compulsion and restriction, and, under certain circumstances, have recourse to castration. The Mosaic law, " Thou shalt do no murder," is a piece of in genuous puerility compared with the earnestness of this forbidding of life to decadents, " Thou shalt not beget "!!! . . . For life itself recognises no solidarity or equality of rights between the healthy and unhealthy parts of an organism. The latter must at all cost be eliminated lest the whole fall! to pieces. Compassion for decadents, equal rights for the physiologically botched this would be the very pinnacle of immorality, it would be setting up Nature s most formidable opponent as morality itself!
735. There are some delicate and morbid natures, the so-called idealists, who can never under any circumstances rise above a coarse, immature crime: yet it is the great justification of their anaemic little existence, it is the small requital for their lives of cowardice and falsehood to have been for one instant at least strong. But they generally collapse after such an act.
736. In our civilised world we seldom hear of any but the bloodless, trembling criminal, overwhelmed by the curse and contempt of society, doubting even himself, and always belittling and belying his deeds a misbegotten sort of criminal; that is why we are opposed to the idea that all great men have been criminals (only in the grand style, and neither petty nor pitiful), that crime must be inherent in greatness (this at any rate is the unanimous verdict of all those students of human nature who have sounded the deepest waters of great souls). To feel one s self adrift from all questions of ancestry, conscience, and duty this is the danger with which every great man is confronted. Yet this is precisely what he desires: he desires the great goal, and consequently the means thereto.
737. In times when man is led by reward and punishment, the class of man which the legislator has in view is still of a low and primitive type: he is treated as one treats a child. In our latter- day culture, general degeneracy removes all sense from reward and punishment. This determina tion of action by the prospect of reward and punishment presupposes young, strong, and vigorous races. In effete races impulses are so irrepressible that a mere idea has no force what ever. Inability to offer any resistance to a stimulus, and the feeling that one must react to it: this [96 excessive susceptibility of decadents makes all such systems of punishment and reform altogether senseless. * The idea " amelioration " presupposes a normal and strong creature whose action must in some way be balanced or cancelled if he is not to be lost and turned into an enemy of the community.
738. The effect of prohibition. Every power which forbids and which knows how to excite fear in the person forbidden creates a guilty conscience. (That is to say, a person has a certain desire but is conscious of the danger of gratifying it, and is consequently forced to be secretive, underhand, and cautious.) Thus any prohibition deteriorates the character of those who do not willingly submit themselves to it, but are constrained thereto.
739. " Punishment and reward." These two things stand or fall together. Nowadays no one will accept a reward or acknowledge that any authority should have the power to punish. Warfare has been reformed. We have a desire: it meets with opposition: we then see that we shall most easily obtain it by coming to some agreement by draw ing up a contract. In modern society where every one has given his assent to a certain con- 197 tract, the criminal is a man who breaks that contract. This at least is a clear concept. But in that case, anarchists and enemies of social order could not be tolerated.
740. Crimes belong to the category of revolt against the social system. A rebel is not punished, he is simply suppressed. He may be an utterly contemptible and pitiful creature; but there is nothing intrinsically despicable about rebellion in fact, in our particular society revolt is far from being disgraceful. There are cases in which a rebel deserves honor precisely because he is conscious of certain elements in society which cry aloud for hostility; for such a man rouses us from our slumbers. When a criminal commits but one crime against a particular person, it does not alter the fact that all his instincts urge him to make a stand against the whole social system. His isolated act is merely a symptom. The idea of punishment ought to be reduced to the concept of the suppression of revolt, a weapon against the vanquished (by means of long or short terms of imprisonment). But punish ment should not be associated in any way with contempt. A criminal is at all events a man who has set his life, his honor, his freedom at stake; he is therefore a man of courage. Neither should punishment be regarded as penance or retribution, as though there were some recognized rate of exchange between crime and punishment. Punishment does not purify, simply because crime does not sully. A criminal should not be prevented from making his peace with society, provided he does not belong to the race of criminals. In the latter case, however, he should be opposed even before he has committed an act of hostility. (As soon as he gets into the clutches of society the first operation to be performed upon him should be that of castration.) A criminal s bad manners and his low degree of intelligence should not be reckoned against him. Nothing is more common than that he should misunderstand himself (more particularly when his rebellious instinct the ran cour of the unclassed has not reached conscious ness simply because he has not read enough). It is natural that he should deny and dishonor his deed while under the influence of fear at its failure. All this is quite distinct from those cases in which, psychologically speaking, the criminal yields to an incomprehensible impulse, and attributes a motive to his deed by associating it with a merely incidental and insignificant action (for example, robbing a man, when his real desire was to take his blood). The worth of a man should not be measured by any one isolated act. Napoleon warned us against this. Deeds which are only skin-deep are more particularly insignificant. If we have no crime let us say no murder on our conscience; why is it? It simply means that a few favourable circum stances have been wanting in our lives. And sup posing we were induced to commit such a crime would our worth be materially affected? As a matter of fact, we should only be despised, if we were not credited with possessing the power to kill a man under certain circumstances. In nearly every crime certain qualities come into play without which no one would be a true man. Dostoievsky was not far wrong when he said of the inmates of the penal colonies in Siberia, that they constituted the strongest and most valuable portion of the Russian people. The fact that in our society the criminal happens to be a badly nourished and stunted animal is simply a condemnation of our system. In the days of the Renaissance the criminal was a flourishing specimen of humanity, and acquired his own virtue for himself. Virtue in the sense of the Renaissance that is to say, virtu; free from moralic acid. It is only those whom we do not despise that we are able to elevate. Moral contempt is a far greater indignity and insult than any kind of crime.
741. Shame was first introduced into punishment when certain penalties were inflicted on persons held in contempt, such as slaves. It was a de spised class that was most frequently punished, and thus it came to pass that punishment and contempt were associated.
742. In the ancient idea of punishment a religious con cept was immanent, namely, the retributive power of chastisement. Penalties purified: in modern society, however, penalties degrade. Punishment is a form of paying off a debt: once it has been paid, one is freed from the deed for which one was so ready to suffer. Provided belief in the power of punishment exist, once the penalty is paid a feel ing of relief and lightheartedness results, which is not so very far removed from a state of conval escence and health. One has made one s peace with society, and one appears to one s self more dignified " pure." . . . Today, however, punish ment isolates even more than the crime; the fate behind the sin has become so formidable that it is almost hopeless. One rises from punishment still an enemy of society. Henceforward it reckons yet another enemy against it. The jus talionis may spring from the spirit of retribution (that is to say, from a sort of modification of the instinct of re venge); but in the Book of Manu, for instance, it is the need of having some equivalent in order to do penance, or to become free in a religious sense.
743. My pretty radical note of interrogation in the case of all more modern laws of punish ment is this: should not the punishment fit the crime? for in your heart of hearts thus would you have it. But then the susceptibility of the particular criminal to pain would have to be taken into account. In other words, there should be no such thing as a preconceived penalty for any crime no fixed penal code. But as it would be no easy matter to ascertain the degree of sensitiveness of each individual criminal, punishment would have to be abolished in practice? What a sacrifice! Is it not? Consequently . . .
744. Ah! and the philosophy of jurisprudence! That is a science which, like all moral sciences, has not even been wrapped in swaddling-clothes yet. Even among jurists who consider themselves liberal, the oldest and most valuable significance of punish ment is still misunderstood it is not even known. So long as jurisprudence does not build upon a new foundation on history and comparative an thropology it will never cease to quarrel over the fundamentally false abstractions which are fondly imagined to be the " philosophy of law," and which have nothing whatever to do with modern man. The man of today, however, is such a complicated woof even in regard to his legal valuation that he allows of the most varied interpretation.
745. An old Chinese sage once said he had heard that when mighty empires were doomed they began to have numberless laws.
746. Schopenhauer would have all rapscallions cast rated, and all geese shut up in convents. But from what point of view would this be desirable? The rascal has at least this advantage over other men that he is not mediocre; and the fool is superior to us inasmuch as he does not suffer at the sight of mediocrity. It would be better to widen the gulf that is to say, roguery and stupidity should be increased. In this way human nature would become broader . . . but, after all, this is Fate, and it will happen, whether we desire it or not. Idiocy and roguery are increasing: this is part of modern progress.
747. Society, today, is full of consideration, tact, and reticence, and of good-natured respect for other people s rights even for the exactions of strangers. To an even greater degree is there a certain charit able and instinctive depreciation of the worth of man as shown by all manner of trustful habits. Respect for men, and not only for the most virtuous, is perhaps the real parting of the ways between us and the Christian mythologists. We also have our good share of irony even when listening to moral sermons. He who preaches morality to us debases himself in our eyes and becomes almost comical. Liberal-mindedness regarding morality is one of the best signs of our age. In cases where it is most distinctly wanting, we regard it as a sign of a morbid condition (the case of Carlyle in England, of Ibsen in Norway, and Schopenhauer s pessimism throughout Europe). If there is anything which can reconcile us to our own age, it is precisely the amount of immorality which it allows itself without falling in its own estimation very much the re verse! In what, then, does the superiority of culture over the want of culture consist of the Renaissance, for instance, over the Middle Ages? In this alone: the greater quantity of acknowledged im morality. From this it necessarily follows that the very zenith of human development must be regarded by the moral fanatic as the non plus ultra of cor ruption (in this connection let us recall Savona rola s judgment of Florence, Plato s indictment of Athens under Pericles, Luther s condemnation of Rome, Rousseau s anathemas against the society of Voltaire, and Germany s hostility to Goethe).
748. A little more fresh air, for Heaven s sake! This ridiculous condition of Europe must not last any longer. Is there a single idea behind this bovine nationalism? What possible value can there be in encouraging this arrogant self-conceit when every thing today points to greater and more common interests? at a moment when the spiritual de pendence and denationalisation, which are obvious to all, are paving the way for the reciprocal rapprochements and fertilisations which make up the real value and sense of present-day culture! . . . And it is precisely now that " the new German Empire " has been founded upon the most thread bare and discredited of ideas universal suffrage and equal right for all. Think of all this struggling for advantage among conditions which are in every way degenerate: of ( this culture of big cities, of newspapers, of hurry and scurry, and of " aimlessness "! The economic unity i of Europe must necessarily come and with it, as a reaction, the pacivist movement. A pacivist party, free from all sentimentality, which forbids its children to wage war; which forbids recourse to courts of justice; which for swears all fighting, all contradiction, and all perse cution: for a while the party of the oppressed, and later the powerful party: this party would be op posed to everything in the shape of revenge and resentment. There will also be a war party, exercising the same thoroughness and severity towards itself, which will proceed in precisely the opposite direction.
749. The princes of Europe should really consider whether as a matter of fact they can dispense with our services with us, the im moralists. We are today the only power which can win a victory without allies: and we are therefore far and away the strongest of the strong. We can even do with out lying, and let me ask what other power can dispense with this weapon? A strong temptation rights for us; the strongest, perhaps, that exists the temptation of truth. . . . Truth? How do I come by this word? I must withdraw it: I must repudiate this proud word. But no. We do not even want it we shall be quite able to achieve our victory of power without its help. The real charm which fights for us, the eye of Venus which our opponents themselves deaden and blind this charm is the magic of the extreme. The fascina tion which everything extreme exercises: we immoralists we are in every way the extremists.
750. The corrupted ruling classes have brought ruling into evil odour. The State administration of justice is a piece of cowardice, because the great man who can serve as a standard is lacking. At last the feeling of insecurity becomes so great that men fall in the dust before any sort of will-power that commands.
751. " The will to power " is so loathed in democratic ages that the whole of the psychology of these ages seems directed towards its belittlement and slander. The types of men who sought the highest honors are said to have been Napoleon! Caesar! and Alexander! as if these had not been precisely the greatest scorners of honor. And Helvetius would fain show us that we strive after power in order to have those pleasures which are at the disposal of the mighty that is to say, according to him, this striving after power is the will to pleasure hedonism!
752. According as to whether a people feels: " the rights, the keenness of vision, and the gifts of lead ing, etc., are with the few " or " with the many " it constitutes an oligarchic or a democratic com munity. Monarchy represents the belief in a man who is completely superior a leader, a saviour, a demigod. Aristocracy represents the belief in a chosen few in a higher caste. Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is every body else s equal. " At bottom we are all herd and mob."
753. I am opposed to Socialism because it dreams ingenuously of " goodness, truth, beauty, and equal rights " (anarchy pursues the same ideal, but in a more brutal fashion). I am opposed to parliamentary government jand the power of the press, because they are the means whereby cattle become masters.
754. The arming of the people means in the end the arming of the mob.
755. Socialists are particularly ridiculous in my eyes, because of their absurd optimism concerning the "good man" who is supposed to be waiting in their cupboard, and who will come into being when the present order of society has been overturned and has made way for natural instincts. But the opposing party is quite as ludicrous, because it will not see the act of violence which lies beneath every law, the severity and egoism inherent in every kind of authority. "I and my kind will rule and prevail. Whoever degenerates will be either expelled or annihilated." This was the fundamental feeling of all ancient legislation. The idea of a higher order of man is hated much more profoundly than monarchs themselves. Hatred of aristocracy always uses hatred of monarchy as a mask.
756. How treacherous are all parties! They bring to light something concerning their leaders which the latter, perhaps, have hitherto kept hidden beneath a bushel with consummate art.
757. Modern socialism would fain create a profane counterpart to Jesuitism: everybody a perfect instrument. But as to the object of it all, the purpose of it--this has not yet been ascertained.
758. The slavery of today: a piece of barbarism! Where are the masters for whom these slaves work? One must not always expect the simultaneous appearance of the two complementary castes of society. Utility and pleasure are slave theories of life. "The blessing of work" is an ennobling phrase for slaves. Incapacity for leisure.
759. There is no such thing as a right to live, a right to work, or a right to be happy: in this respect man is not different from the meanest worm.
760. We must undoubtedly think of these things as uncompromisingly as nature does: they preserve the species.
761. We should look upon the needs of the masses with ironic compassion: they want something which we have got--Ah!
762. European democracy is only in a very slight degree the manifestation of unfettered powers. It represents, above all, the unfettering of laziness, fatigue, and weakness.
763. Concerning the future of the workman. Workmen should learn to regard their duties as soldiers do. They receive emoluments, incomes, but they do not get wages! There should be no relationship between work done and money received; the individual should, according to his kind, be so placed as to perform the highest that is compatible with his powers.
764. Workmen ought one day to live as the bourgeois do now but above them, distinguishing themselves as the superior caste by the simplicity of their wants--that is to say, they should live in a poorer and simpler way and yet be in possession of power. For lower orders of mankind the reverse valuations hold good: it is a matter of implanting "virtues" in them. Absolute commands, terrible compulsory methods, in order that they may rise above mere ease in life. The remainder may obey, but their vanity demands that they may feel themselves dependent, not upon great men, but upon principles.
765. " The Atonement of all Sin." People speak of the " profound injustice " of the social arrangement, as if the fact that one man is born in favourable circumstances and that another is born in unfavourable ones or that one should possess gifts the other has not, were on the face of it an injustice. Among the more honest of these opponents of society this is what is said: " We, with all the bad, morbid, criminal qualities which we acknowledge we possess, are only the inevitable result of the oppression for I. O 210 ages of the weak by the strong "; thus they insinu ate their evil natures into the consciences of the ruling classes. They threaten and storm and curse. They become virtuous from sheer indignation they don t want to have become bad men and canaille for nothing. The name for this attitude, which is an invention of the last century, is, if I am not mistaken, pessimism; and even that pessimism which is the outcome of indignation. It is in this attitude of mind that history is judged, that it is deprived of its inevitable fatality, and that responsibility and even guilt is discovered in it. For the great desideratum is to find guilty people in it. The botched and the bungled, the de cadents of all kinds, are revolted at themselves, and require sacrifices in order that they may not slake their thirst for destruction upon themselves (which might, indeed, be the most reasonable procedure). But for this purpose they at least require a semblance of justification, i.e. a theory according to which the fact of their existence, and of their character, may be expiated by a scapegoat. This scapegoat may be God, in Russia such resentful atheists are not wanting, or the order of society, or education and upbringing, or the Jews, or the nobles, or, finally, the well-constituted of every kind. "It is a sin for a man to have been born in decent circumstances, for by so doing he disinherits the others, he pushes them aside, he imposes upon them the curse of vice and of work. . . . How can I be made answerable for my misery; surely some one must be respons ible for it, or I could not bear to live." . . . In short, resentful pessimism discovers responsible parties in order to create a pleasurable sensation for itself revenge. ..." Sweeter than honey " thus does even old Homer speak of revenge. The fact that such a theory no longer meets with understanding or rather, let us say, contempt is accounted for by that particle of Christianity which still circulates in the blood of every one of us; it makes us tolerant towards things simply because we scent a Christian savor about them. . . . The Socialists appeal to the Christian instincts; this is their really refined piece of cleverness. . . . Thanks to Christianity, we have now grown accustomed to the superstitious concept of a soul of an immortal soul, of soul monads, which, as a matter of fact, hails from somewhere else, and which has only become inherent in certain cases that is to say, become incarnate in them by accident: but the nature of these cases is not altered, let alone determined by it. The circumstances of society, of relationship, and of history are only accidents for the soul, perhaps misadventures: in any case, the world is not their work. By means of the idea of soul the individual is made transcendental; thanks to it, a ridiculous amount of importance can be attributed to him. As a matter of fact, it was Christianity which first induced the individual to take up this position of judge of all things. It made megalomania almost his duty: it has made everything temporary and limited subordinate to eternal rights! What 212 is the State, what is society, what are historical laws, what is physiology to me? Thus speaks something from beyond Becoming, an immutable entity throughout history: thus speaks something immortal, something divine it is the soul! i Another Christian, but no less insane, concept i has percolated even deeper into the tissues of modern ideas: the concept of the equality of all souls before God. In this concept the prototype of all theories concerning equal rights is to be found. Man was first taught to stammer this proposition religiously: later, it was converted into a moral; no wonder he has ultimately begun to take it seriously, to take it practically that is to say, politically, socialistically, resen to- pessimistically. Wherever responsible circumstances or people have been looked for, it was the instinct of revenge that sought them. This instinct of revenge obtained such an ascendancy over man in the course of centuries that the whole of metaphysics, psychology, ideas of society, and, above all, morality, are tainted with it. Man has nourished this idea of responsibility to such an extent that he has introduced the bacillus of vengeance into everything. By means of it he has made God Himself ill, and killed innocence in the universe, by tracing every condition of things to acts of will, to intentions, to responsible agents. The whole teaching of will, this most fatal fraud that has ever existed in psychology hitherto, was invented essentially for the purpose of punishment. It was the social utility of punishment that lent this concept its dignity, its power, and its truth. The originator of that psychology, that we shall call volitional psychology, must be sought in those classes which had the right of punishment in their hands; above all, therefore, among the priests who stood on the very pinnacle of ancient social systems: these people wanted to create for themselves the right to wreak revenge they wanted to supply God with the privilege of vengeance. For this purpose; man was declared " free ": to this end every action had to be re garded as voluntary, and the origin of every deed had to be considered as lying in consciousness. But by such propositions as these ancient psychology is refuted. Today, when Europe seems to have taken the contrary direction; when we halcyonians would fain withdraw, dissipate, and banish the concept of guilt and punishment with all our might from the world; when our most serious endeavours are concentrated upon purifying psychology, morality, history, nature, social institutions and privileges, and even God Himself, from this filth; in whom must we recognise our most mortal enemies? Precisely in those apostles of revenge and resentment, in those who are par excellence pessimists from indignation, who make it their mission to sanctify their filth with the name of " righteous indignation." . . . We others, whose one desire is to reclaim innocence on behalf of Becoming, would fain be the missionaries of a purer thought, namely, that no one is responsible for man s qualities; neither God, nor society, nor his parents, nor his ancestors, nor himself in fact, that no one is to blame for him . . . The being who might be made responsible for a man s exist ence, for the fact that he is constituted in a particular way, or for his birth in certain circum stances and in a certain environment, is absolutely lacking. And it is a great blessing that such a being is non-existent. . . . We are not the result of an eternal design, of a will, of a desire: there is no attempt being made with us to attain to an " ideal of perfection," to an " ideal of happiness," to an " ideal of virtue," and we are just as little the result of a mistake on God s part in the presence of which He ought to feel uneasy (a thought which is known to be at the very root of the Old Testament). There is not a place nor a purpose nor a sense to which we can attribute our existence or our kind of existence. In the first place, no one is in a position to do this: it is quite impossible to judge, to measure, or to compare, or even to deny the whole universe! And why? For five reasons, all accessible to the man of average intelligence: for instance, because there is no existence outside the universe . . . and let us say it again, this is a great blessing, for therein lies the whole innocence of our lives.
2. THE INDIVIDUAL.
766. Fundamental errors: to regard the herd as an aim instead of the individual! The herd is only a means and nothing more. But nowadays people are trying to understand the herd as they would an individual, and to confer higher rights upon it than upon isolated personalities. Terrible mistake!! In addition to this, all that makes for gregariousness, e.g. sympathy, is regarded as the more valuable side of our natures.
767. The individual is something quite new, and capable of creating new things. He is something absolute, and all his actions are quite his own. The individual in the end has to seek the valua tion for his actions in himself: because he has to give an individual meaning even to traditional words and notions. His interpretation of a formula is at least personal, even if he does not create the formula itself: at least as an interpreter he is creative.
768. The " ego " oppresses and kills. It acts like an organic cell. It is predatory and violent. It would fain regenerate itself pregnancy. It would fain give birth to its God and see all mankind at its feet.
769. Every living organism gropes around as far as its power permits, and overcomes all that is weaker than itself: by this means it finds pleasure in its own existence. The increasing "humanity" of this tendency consists in the fact that we are beginning to feel ever more subtly how difficult it is really to absorb others: while we could show our power by injuring him, his will estranges him from us, and thus makes him less susceptible of being overcome.
770. The degree of resistance which has to be con tinually overcome in order to remain at the top y is the measure of freedom, whether for individuals or for societies: freedom being understood as positive power, as will to power. The highest form of individual freedom, of sovereignty, would, according to this, in all probability be found not five feet away from its opposite that is to say, where the danger of slavery hangs over life, like a hundred swords of Damocles. Let any one go through the whole of history from this point of view: the ages when the individual reaches perfect maturity, i.e. the free ages, when the classical type, sovereign man, is attained to these were certainly not humane times! There should be no choice: either one must be uppermost or nethermost like a worm, despised, annihilated, trodden upon. One must have tyrants against one in order to become a tyrant, i.e. in order to be free. It is no small advantage to have a hundred swords of Damocles suspended over one: it is only thus that one learns to dance, it is only thus that one attains to any freedom in one s movements.
771. Man more than any other animal was originally altruistic hence his slow growth (child) and lofty development. Hence, too, his extraordinary and latest kind of egoism. Beasts of prey are much more individualistic.
772. A criticism of selfishness. The involuntary ingenuousness of La Rochefoucauld, who believed that he was saying something bold, liberal, and paradoxical (in his days, of course, truth in psychological matters was something that astonished people) when he said: " Les grandes dmes ne sont pas celles qui ont moins de passions et plus de vertus que les dmes communes: , mats seule- ment celles qui ont de plus grands desseins." Certainly, John Stuart Mill (who calls Chamfort the noble and philosophical La Rochefoucauld of the eighteenth century) recognises in him merely an astute and keen-sighted observer of all that which is the result of habitual selfishness in the human breast, and he adds: " A noble spirit is unable to see the necessity of a constant observa tion of baseness and contemptibility , unless it were to show against what corrupting influences a lofty spirit and a noble character were able to triumph."
773. The Morphology of the Feelings of Self. First standpoint. To what extent are sympathy or communal feelings, the lower or preparatory states, at a time when personal self-esteem and initiative in valuation, on the part of individuals, are not yet possible? Second standpoint. To what extent is the zenith of collective self-esteem, the pride in the distinc tion of the clan, the feeling of inequality and a certain abhorrence of mediation, of equal rights and of reconciliation, the school for individual self- esteem? It may be this in so far as it compels the individual to represent the pride of the community he is obliged to speak and act with tremendous self-respect, because he stands for the community And the same holds good when the individual re gards himself as the instrument or speaking-tube of a godhead. Third standpoint. To what extent do these forms of impersonality invest the individual with enormous importance? In so far as higher powers are using him as an intermediary: religious shy ness towards one s self is the condition of prophets and poets. Fourth standpoint. To what extent does re sponsibility for a whole educate the individual in foresight, and give him a severe and terrible hand, a calculating and cold heart, majesty of bearing and of action things which he would not allow himself if he stood only for his own rights? In short, collective self-esteem is the great pre paratory school for personal sovereignty. The noble caste is that which creates the heritage of this faculty.
774. The disguised forms of will to power: (i) The desire for freedom, for independence for equilibrium, for peace, for co-ordination. Also that of the anchorite, the " Free-Spirit." In its lowest form, the will to live at all costs the instinct of self-preservation. (2) Subordination, with the view of satisfying the will to power of a whole community; submis- siveness, the making of one s self indispensable and useful to him who has the power; love, a secret path to the heart of the powerful, in order to be come his master. (3) The feeling of duty, conscience, the imagin ary comfort of belonging to a higher order than those who actually hold the reins of power; the acknowledgment of an order of rank which allows of judging even the more powerful; self-deprecia tion; the discovery of new codes of morality (of which the Jews are a classical example).
775. Praise and gratitude as forms of will to power. Praise and gratitude for harvests, for good weather, victories, marriages, and peace all festivals need a subject on which feeling can be outpoured. The desire is to make all good things that happen to one appear as though they had been done to one: people will have a donor. The same holds good of the work of art: people are not satisfied with it alone, they must praise the artist. What, then, is praise? It is a sort of compensation for benefits received, a sort of giving back, a manifestation of our power for the man who praises assents to, blesses, values, judges: he arrogates to himself the right to give his consent to a thing, to be able to confer honors. An increased feeling of happiness or of liveliness is also an increased feeling of power, and it is as a result of this feeling that a man praises (it is as the outcome of this feeling that he invents a donor, a " subject "). Gratitude is thus revenge of a lofty kind: it is most severely exercised and demanded where equality and pride both require to be upheld that is to say, where revenge is practiced to its fullest extent.
776. Concerning the Machiavellism of Power. The will to power appears: (a) Among the oppressed and slaves of all kinds, in the form of will to "freedom ": the mere fact of breaking loose from something seems to be an end in itself (in a religio-moral sense: " One is only answerable to one s own conscience "; " evangelical freedom," etc. etc.). (b) In the case of a stronger species, ascending to power, in the form of the will to overpower. If this fails, then it shrinks to the " will to justice "- that is to say, to the will to the same measure of rights as the ruling caste possesses. (c) In the case of the strongest, richest, most independent, and most courageous, in the form of " love of humanity," of " love of the people," of the " gospel," of " truth," of " God," of " pity," of " self- sacrifice," etc. etc.; in the form of overpowering, of deeds of capture, of imposing service on some one, of an instinctive reckoning of one s self as part of a great mass of power to which one attempts to give a direction: the hero, the prophet, the Caesar, the Saviour, the bell-wether. (The love of the sexes also belongs to this category; it will overpower something, possess it utterly, and it looks like self- abnegation. At bottom it is only the love of one s instrument, of one s " horse " the conviction that things belong to one because one is in a position to use them.) " Freedom? "Justice" " Love "!!!
777. Love. Behold this love and pity of women what could be more egoistic? . . . And when they do sacrifice themselves and their honor or reputa tion, to whom do they sacrifice themselves? To the man? Is it not rather to an unbridled desire? These desires are quite as selfish, even though they may be beneficial to others and provoke gratitude. . . . To what extent can such a hyperfcetation of one valuation sanctify everything else!!
778. " Senses! " Passions" When the fear of the senses and of the passions and of the desires be comes so great as to warn us against them, it is already a symptom of weakness: extreme measures always characterise abnormal conditions. That which is lacking here, or more precisely that which is decaying, is the power to resist an impulse: when one feels instinctively that one must yield, that is to say, that one must react, then it is an excellent thing to avoid opportunities (temptations). The stimulation of the senses is only a tempta tion in so far as those creatures are concerned whose systems are easily swayed and influenced: on the other hand, in the case of remarkable con stitutional obtuseness and hardness, strong stimuli are necessary in order to set the functions in motion. Dissipation can only be objected to in the case of one who has no right to it; and almost all passions have fallen into disrepute thanks to those who were not strong enough to convert them to their own advantage. One should understand that passions are open to the same objections as illnesses: yet we should not be justified in doing without illnesses, and still less without passions. We require the abnormal; we give life a tremendous shock by means of these great illnesses. In detailthe following should be distinguished: (1) The dominating passion, which may even bring the supremest form of health with it: in this case the co-ordination of the internal system and its functions to perform one task is best attained, but this is almost a definition of health. (2) The antagonism of the passions the double, treble, and multiple soul in one breast: * this is very unhealthy; it is a sign of inner ruin and of disintegration, betraying and promoting an internal dualism and anarchy unless, of course, one passion becomes master. Return to health. * This refers to Goethe s Faust. In Part I., Act I., Scene II., we find Faust exclaiming in despair: " Two souls, alas! within my bosom throne!" See Theodore Martin s Faust, trans lated into English verse. TR. (3) The juxtaposition of passions without their being either opposed or united with one another. Very often transitory, and then, as soon as order is established, this condition may be a healthy one. A most interesting class of men belong to this order, the chameleons; they are not necessarily at loggerheads with themselves, they are both happy and secure, but they cannot develop their moods lie side by side, even though they may seem to lie far apart. They change, but they become nothing.
779. The quantitative estimate of aims and its in fluence upon the valuing standpoint: the great and the small criminal. The greatness or small- ness of the aims will determine whether the doer feels respect for himself with it all, or whether he feels pusillanimous and miserable. The degree of intellectuality manifested in the means employed may likewise influence our valua tion. How differently the philosophical innovator, experimenter, and man of violence stands out against robbers, barbarians, adventurers! There is a semblance of disinterestedness in the former. Finally, noble manners, bearing, courage, self- confidence, how they alter the value of that which is attained by means of them! * Concerning the optics of valuation: The influence of the greatness or smallness of the aims. The influence of the intellectuality of the means. The influence of the behaviour in action. The influence of success or failure. The influence of opposing forces and their value. The influence of that which is permitted and that which is forbidden.
780. The tricks by means of which actions, measures, and passions are legitimised, which from an in dividual standpoint are no longer good form or even in good taste: Art, which allows us to enter such strange worlds, makes them tasteful to us. Historians prove its justification and reason; travels, exoticism, psychology, penal codes, the lunatic asylum, the criminal, sociology. Impersonality (so that as media of a collective whole we allow ourselves these passions and actions the Bar, juries, the bourgeois, the soldier, the minister, the prince, society, " critics ") makes us feel that we are sacrificing something.
781. Preoccupations concerning one s self and one s eternal salvation are not expressive either of a rich or of a self-confident nature, for the latter lets all questions of eternal bliss go to the devil, it is not interested in such matters of happiness; it is all power, deeds, desires; it imposes itself upon things; it even violates things. The Christian is a romantic hypochondriac who does not stand firmly on his legs. Whenever hedonistic views come to the front, one can always presuppose the existence of pain and a certain ill-constitutedness.
782. " The growing autonomy of the individual " Parisian philosophers like M. Fouillee talk of such things: they would do well to study the race moutonniere for a moment; for they belong to it. For Heaven s sake open your eyes, ye sociologists who deal with the future! The individual grew strong under quite opposite conditions: ye describe the extremest weakening and impoverishment of man; ye actually want this weakness and impover ishment, and ye apply the whole lying machinery of the old ideal in order to achieve your end. Ye are so constituted that ye actually regard your gregarious wants as an ideal! Here we are in the presence of an absolute lack of psychological honesty.
783. The two traits which characterise the modern European are apparently antagonistic individual ism and the demand for equal rights: this I am at last beginning to understand. The individual is an extremely vulnerable piece of vanity: this vanity, when it is conscious of its high degree of susceptibility to pain, demands that every one should be made equal; that the individual should only stand inter pares. But in this way a social race is depicted in which, as a matter of fact, gifts and powers are on the whole equally distributed. The pride which would have loneliness and but few appreciators is quite beyond comprehension: really " great " successes are only attained through the masses indeed, we scarcely understand yet that a mob success is in reality only a small success; because pulchrum est paucorum hominum. No morality" will countenance order of rank among men, and the jurists know nothing of a communal conscience. The principle of indi vidualism rejects really great men, and demands the most delicate vision for, and the speediest dis covery of, a talent among people who are almost equal; and inasmuch as every one has some modicum of talent in such late and civilised cul tures (and can, therefore, expect to receive his share of honor), there is a more general buttering-up of modest merits today than there has ever been. This gives the age the appearance of unlimited j justice. Its want of justice is to be found not in its unbounded hatred of tyrants and demagogues, even in the arts; but in its detestation of noble natures who scorn the praise of the many. The demand for equal rights (that is to say, the privi lege of sitting in judgment on everything and everybody) is anti-aristocratic. This age knows just as little concerning the absorption of the individual, of his mergence into a great type of men who do not want to be personalities. It was this that formerly constituted the distinction and the zeal of many lofty natures (the greatest poets among them); or of the desire to be a polls, as in Greece; or of Jesuitism, or of the Prussian Staff Corps, and bureaucracy; or of apprenticeship and a continuation of the tradition of great masters: to all of which things, non-social conditions and the absence of petty vanity are necessary.
784. Individualism is a modest and still unconscious form of will to power; with it a single human unit seems to think it sufficient to free himself from the preponderating power of society (or of the State or Church). He does not set himself up in opposi tion as a personality, but merely as a unit; he represents the rights of all other individuals as against the whole. That is to say, he instinc tively places himself on a level with every other unit: what he combats he does not combat as a person, but as a representative of units against a mass. Socialism is merely an agitatory measure of individualism: it recognises the fact that in order to attain to something, men must organise them selves into a general movement into a " power." But what the Socialist requires is not society as! the object of the individual, but society as a means of making many individuals possible: this is the instinct of Socialists, though they frequently de ceive themselves on this point (apart from this, however, in order to make their kind prevail, they are compelled to deceive others to an enormous , extent). Altruistic moral preaching thus enters into the service of individual egoism, one of the most common frauds of the nineteenth century. Anarchy is also merely an agitatory measure of Socialism; with it the Socialist inspires fear, with fear he begins to fascinate and to terrorise: but what he does above all is to draw all courageous and reckless people to his side, even in the most intellectual spheres. In spite of all this, individualism is the most modest stage of the will to power. When one has reached a certain degree of inde pendence, one always longs for more: separation in proportion to the degree of force; the individual is no longer content to regard himself as equal to everybody, he actually seeks for his peerhz makes himself stand out from others. Individual ism is followed by a development in groups and organs; correlative tendencies join up together and become powerfully active: now there arise between these centres of power, friction, war, a reconnoitring of the forces on either side, reciprocity, under standings, and the regulation of mutual services. Finally, there appears an order of rank. Recapitulation 4 i. The individuals emancipate themselves. 2. They make war, and ultimately agree concerning equal rights (justice is made an end in itself). 3. Once this is reached, the actual differences in degrees of power begin to make themselves felt, and to a greater extent than before (the reason being that on the whole peace is established, and innumerable small centres of power begin to crerte 229 differences which formerly were scarcely notice able). Now the individuals begin to form groups,; these strive after privileges and preponderance,: and war starts afresh in a milder form. People demand freedom only when they have no power. Once poweTTs obtained, a preponder ance thereof is the next thing to be coveted; if this is not achieved (owing to the fact that one is still too weak for it), then "justice" i.e. " equality of power " become the objects of desire.
785. The rectification of the concept " egoism" When one has discovered what an error the " individual " is, and that every single creature represents the whole process of evolution (not alone " inherited," but in "himself"), the individual then acquires an inordinately great importance. The voice of in stinct is quite right here. When this instinct tends to decline, i.e. when the individual begins to seek his worth in his services to others, one may be sure that exhaustion and degeneration have set in. An altruistic attitude of mind, when it is funda mental and free from all hypocrisy, is the instinct of creating a second value for one s self in the ser vice of other egoists. As a rule, however, it is only apparent a circuitous path to the preserva tion of one s own feelings of vitality and worth.
786. The History of Moralisation and Demoralisation. Proposition one. There are no such things as moral actions: they are purely imaginary. Not only is it impossible to demonstrate their exist ence (a fact which Kant and Christianity, for instance, both acknowledged) but they are not even possible. Owing to psychological misunder standing, a man invented an opposite to the instinc tive impulses of life, and believed that a new species of instinct was thereby discovered: aprimum mobile was postulated which does not exist at all. Ac cording to the valuation which gave rise to the antithesis "moral" and "immoral," one should say: There is nothing else on earth but immoral intentions and actions. Proposition two. The whole differentiation, " moral " and " immoral," arises from the assump tion that both moral and immoral actions are the result of a spontaneous will in short, that such a will exists; or in other words, that moral judg ments can only hold good with regard to intuitions and actions that are free. But this whole order of actions and intentions is purely imaginary: the only world to which the moral standard could be applied does not exist at all: there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral action. The psychological error out of which the anti thesis " moral " and " immoral " arose is: " selfless," " unselfish," " self-denying " all unreal and fan tastic. A false dogmatism also clustered around the concept " ego "; it was regarded as atomic, and falsely opposed to a non-ego; it was also liberated from Becoming, and declared to belong to the sphere of Being. The false materialisation of the ego: this (owing to the belief in individual im- v mortality) was made an article of faith under the pressure of religio-moral discipline. According to this artificial liberation of the ego and its trans ference to the realm of the absolute, people thought that they had arrived at an antithesis in values which seemed quite irrefutable the single ego and the vast non-ego. It seemed obvious that the value of the individual ego could only exist in conjunction with the vast non-ego, more particularly in the sense of being subject to it and existing only for its sake. Here, of course, the gregarious instinct determined the direction of thought: nothing is more opposed to this instinct than the sovereignty of the individual. Supposing, however, that the ego be absolute, then its value must lie in self-negation. Thus: (i) the false emancipation of the "in dividual " as an atom; (2) The gregarious self-conceit which abhors the desire to remain an atom, and regards it as hostile. (3) As a result: the overcoming of the individual by changing his aim. (4) At this point there appeared to be actions that were self-effacing: around these actions a whole sphere of antitheses was fancied. (5) It was asked, in what sort of actions does man most strongly assert himself? Around these (sexuality, covetousness, lust for power, cruelty, etc. etc.) hate, contempt, and anathemas were heaped: it was believed that there could be such things as selfless impulses. Everything selfish was condemned, everything unselfish was in demand. (6) And the result was: what had been done? A ban had been placed on the strongest, the most natural, yea, the only genuine impulses; hencefor ward, in order that an action might be praiseworthy, there must be no trace in it of any of those genuine impulses monstrous fraud in psychology. Every kind of " self-satisfaction " had to be remodelled and made possible by means of misunderstanding and adjusting one s self sub specie boni. Conversely: that species which founcTTts advantage in depriving mankind of its self-satisfaction, the representatives of the gregarious instincts, e.g. the priests and the philosophers, were sufficiently crafty and psycho logically astute to show how selfishness ruled every where. The Christian conclusion from this was: " Everything is sin, even our virtues. Man is utterly undesirable. Selfless actions are impos sible." Original sin. In short, once man had opposed his instincts to a purely imaginary world of the good, he concluded by despising himself as incapable of performing " good " actions. N.B. In this way Christianity represents a step forward in the sharpening of psychological insight: La Rochefoucauld and Pascal. It perceived the essential equality of human actions, and the equality of their values as a whole (all immoral). Now the first serious object was to rear men in whom self-seeking impulses were extinguished: priests, saints. And if people doubted that perfec tion was possible, they did not doubt what perfection was. The psychology of the saint and of the priest and of the "good" man, must naturally have seemed purely phantasmagoricaJ, The real motive of all action rlaci been declared bad: therefore, in order to make action still possible, deeds had to be prescribed which, though not possible, had to be declared possible and sanctified. They now honored and idealised things with as much falsity as they had previously slandered them. Inveighing against the instincts of life came to be regarded as holy and estimable. The priestly ideal was: absolute chastity, absolute obedience, absolute poverty! The lay ideal: alms, pity, self- sacrifice, renunciation of the beautiful, of reason, and of sensuality, and a dark frown for all the strong qualities that existed. * An advance is made: the slandered instincts attempt to re-establish their rights (e.g. Luther s Reformation, the coarsest form of moral falsehood under the cover of " Evangelical freedom "), they are rechristened with holy names. The calumniated instincts try to demonstrate that they are necessary in order that the virtuous instincts may be possible. faut vivre, afin de vivre pour autrui: egoism as a means to an end.* * Spencer s conclusion m the Data of Ethics. TR. But people go still further: they try to grant both the egoistic and altruistic impulses the right to exist equal rights for both from the utili tarian standpoint. People go further: they see greater utility in placing the egoistic rights before the altruistic greater utility in the sense of more happiness for the majority, or of the elevation of mankind, etc. etc. Thus the rights of egoism begin to preponderate, but under the cloak of an extremely altruistic standpoint the collective utility of humanity. An attempt is made to reconcile the altruistic mode of action with the natural order of things. Altruism is sought in the very roots of life. Altruism and egoism are both based upon the essence of life and nature. The disappearance of the opposition between them is dreamt of as a future possibility. Con tinued adaptation, it is hoped, will merge the two into one. At last it is seen that altruistic actions are merely a species of the egoistic and that the degree to which one loves and spends one s self is a proof of the extent of one s individual power and personality. In short, that the more evil man can be made, the better he is, and that one cannot be the one without the other. ... At this point the curtain rises which concealed the monstrous fraud of the psychology that has prevailed hitherto. Results. There are only immoral intentions and actions; the so-called moral actions must be shown to be immoral. All emotions are traced to a single will, the will to power, and are called essentially equal. The concept of life: in the apparent antithesis good and evil, degrees of power in the instincts alone are expressed. A temporary order of rank is established according to which certain instincts are either controlled or enlisted in our service. Morality is justified: economically, etc. Against proposition two. Determinism: the attempt to rescue the moral world by transferring it to the unknown. Determinism is only a manner of allowing our selves to conjure our valuations away, once they have lost their place in a world interpreted mechanistically. Determinism must therefore be attacked and undermined at all costs: just as our right to distinguish between an absolute and | phenomenal world should be disputed.
787. It is absolutely necessary to emancipate our selves from motives: otherwise we should not be allowed to attempt to sacrifice ourselves or to neglect ourselves! Only the innocence of becoming gives us the highest courage and the highest freedom.
788. A clean conscience must be restored to the evil man has this been my involuntary endeavor all the time? For I take as the evil man him who is strong (Dostoievsky s belief concerning the convicts in prison should be referred to here).
789. Our new " freedom." What a feeling of relief there is in the thought that we emancipated spirits do not feel ourselves harnessed to any system of teleological aims. Likewise that the concepts reward and punishment have no roots in the essence of existence! Likewise that good and evil actions are not good or evil in themselves, but only from the point of view of the self-pre servative tendencies of certain species of humanity! Likewise that our speculations concerning pleasure and pain are not of cosmic, far less then of meta physical, importance! (That form of pessimism associated with the name of Hartmann, which pledges itself to put even the pam and pleasure of existence into the balance, with its arbitrary con finement in the prison and within the bounds of pre-Copernican thought, would be something not only retrogressive, but degenerate, unless it be merely a bad joke on the part of a " Berliner." *)
790. If one is clear as to the " wherefore " of one s life, then the " how " of it can take care of itself. * " Berliner " The citizens of Berlin are renowned in Germany for their poor jokes. TR. It is already even a sign of disbelief in the where fore and in the purpose and sense of life in fact, it is a sign of a lack of will when the value of pleasure and pain step into the foreground, and hedonistic and pessimistic teaching becomes pre valent; and self-abnegation, resignation, virtue, " objectivity," may, at the very least, be signs that the most important factor is beginning to make its absence felt.
791. Hitherto there has been no German culture. It is no refutation of this assertion to say that there have been great anchorites in Germany (Goethe, for instance); for these had their own culture. But it was precisely around them, as though around mighty, defiant, and isolated rocks, that the remain ing spirit of Germany, as their antithesis, lay that is to say, as a soft, swampy, slippery soil, upon which every step and every footprint of the rest of Europe made an impression and created forms. German culture was a thing devoid of character and of almost unlimited yielding power.
792. Germany, though very rich in clever and well- informed scholars, has for some time been so ex cessively poor in great souls and in mighty minds, that it almost seems to have forgotten what a great soul or a mighty mind is; and today mediocre and even ill-constituted men place themselves in the market square without the suggestion of a con science-prick or a signof embarrassment, and declare themselves great men, reformers, etc. Take the case of Eugen Duhring, for instance, a really clever and well-informed scholar, but a man who betrays with almost every word he says that he has a miser ably small soul, and that he is horribly tormented by narrow envious feelings; moreover, that it is no mighty overflowing, benevolent, and spendthrift spirit that drives him on, but only the spirit of ambition! But to be ambitious in such an age as this is much more unworthy of a philosopher than ever it was: today, when it is the mob that rules, when it is the mob that dispenses the honors.
793. My " future ": a. severe polytechnic education. Conscription; so that as a rule every man of the higher classes should be an officer, whatever else he may be besides.
IV. THE WILL TO POWER IN ART
794. OUR religion, morality, and philosophy are decadent human institutions. The counter-agent: Art.
795. The Artist-philosopher. A higher concept of art. Can man stand at so great a distance from his fellows as to mould them? (Preliminary ex ercises thereto: 1. To become a self- former, an anchorite. 2. To do what artists have done hitherto, i.e. to reach a small degree of perfection in a certain medium.)
796. Art as it appears without the artist, i.e. as a body, an organization (the Prussian Officers Corps, the Order of the Jesuits). To what extent is the artist merely a preliminary stage? The world regarded as a self-generating work of art.
797. The phenomenon, " artist," is the easiest to see through: from it one can look down upon the fundamental instincts of power, of nature, etc.; even of religion and morality. " Play," uselessness as the ideal of him who is overflowing with power, as the ideal of the child. The childishness of God, Trals
798. Apollonian, Dionysian. There are two conditions in which art manifests itself in man even as a force of nature, and disposes of him whether he consent or not: it may be as a constraint to visionary states, or it may be an orgiastic impulse. Both conditions are to be seen in normal life, but they are then somewhat weaker: in dreams and in moments of elation or intoxication.* But the same contrast exists between the dream state and the state of intoxication: both of these states let loose all manner of artistic powers with in us, but each unfetters powers of a different kind. Dreamland gives us the power of vision, of association, of poetry: intoxication gives us the power of grand attitudes, of passion, of song, and of dance. * German: " Rausch." There is no word in English for the German expression " Rausch." When Nietzsche uses it, he means a sort of blend of our two words: intoxication and elation. TR.
799. Sexuality and voluptuousness belong to the Dionysiac intoxication: but neither of them is lacking in the Apollonian state. There is also a difference of tempo between the states. . . . The extreme peace of certain feelings of intoxication (or, more strictly, the slackening of the feeling of time, and the reduction of the feeling of space) is wont to reflect itself in the vision of the most restful attitudes and states of the soul. The classical style essentially represents repose, simplification, foreshortening, and concentration the highest feeling of power is concentrated in the classical type. To react with difficulty: great consciousness: no feeling of strife.
800. The feeling of intoxication is, as a matter of fact, equivalent to a sensation of surplus power: it is strongest in seasons of rut: new organs, new accomplishments, new colors, new forms. Embellishment is an outcome of increased power. Embellishment is merely an expression of a triumphant will, of an increased state of co ordination, of a harmony of all the strong desires, of an infallible and perpendicular equilibrium. Logical and geometrical simplification is the result of an increase of power: conversely, the mere aspect of such a simplification increases the sense of power in the beholder. . . . The zenith of development: the grand style. Ugliness signifies the decadence of a type: contradiction and faulty co-ordination among the in most desires this means a decline in the organising power, or, psychologically speaking, in the "will." The condition of pleasure which is called intoxication is really an exalted feeling of power. . . . Sensations of space and time are altered; inordinate distances are traversed by the eye, and only then become visible; the extension of the vision over greater masses and expanses; the refinement of the organ which apprehends the smallest and most elusive things; divination, the power of understanding at the slightest hint, at the smallest suggestion; intelligent sensitiveness; strength as a feeling of dominion in the muscles, as agility and love of movement, as dance, as levity and quick time; strength as the love of proving strength, as bravado, adventurousness, fearlessness, indifference in regard to life and death. . . . All these elated moments of life stimulate each other; the world of images and of imagination of the one suffices as a suggestion for the other: in this way states finally merge into each other, which might do better to keep apart, e.g. the feeling of religious intoxication and sexual irritability (two very profound feelings, always wonderfully co-ordinated. What is it that pleases almost all pious women, old or young? Answer: a saint with beautiful legs, still young, still in nocent). Cruelty in tragedy and pity (likewise! normally correlated). Spring-time, dancing, music,j all these things are but the display of one sex before the other, as also that " infinite yearning of the heart " peculiar to Faust. * Artists when they are worth anything at all are men of strong propensities (even physically), with surplus energy, powerful animals, sensual; without a certain overheating of the sexual system a man like Raphael is unthinkable. . . . To produce music is also in a sense to produce children; chastity is merely the economy of the artist, and in all creative artists productiveness certainly ceases with sexual potency. . . . Artists should not see things as they are; they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger: to this end, however, a kind of youthfulness, of vernality, a sort of per petual elation, must be peculiar to their lives.
801. The states in which we transfigure things and make them fuller, and rhapsodise about them, until they reflect our own fulness and love of life back upon us: sexuality, intoxication, post-prandial states, spring, triumph over our enemies", scorn, bravado, cruelty, the ecstasy of religious feeling. But three elements above all are active: sexuality, j intoxication, cruelty; all these belong to the oldest festal joys of mankind, they also preponderate in budding artists. Conversely: there are things with which we meet which already show us this transfiguration and fulness, and the animal world s response thereto is a state of excitement in the spheres M where these states of happiness originate. A blending of these very delicate shades of animal ( well-being and desires is the (Esthetic state. Thelatter only manifests itself in those natures which are capable of that spendthrift and overflowing fulness of bodily vigour; the latter is always the primum_ mQhil&* The sober-minded man, the tired man, the exhausted and dried-up man (e.g. the scholar), can have no feeling for artrecause he does not possess the primitive force of art, which is the tyranny of inner riches: he who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either. "Perfection" In these states (more particularly in the case of sexual love) there is an ingenuous betrayal of what the profoundest instinct regards as the highest, the most desirable, the most valuable, the ascending movement of its type; also of the condition towards which it is actually striving. Perfection: the extraordinary expansion of this instinct s feeling of power, its riches, its , necessary overflowing of all banks.
802. Art reminds us of states of physical vigour: it may be the overflow and bursting forth of bloom ing life in the world of pictures and desires; on the other hand, it may be an excitation of the physical functions by means of pictures and desires of exalted life an enhancement of the feeling of life, the latter s stimulant. To what extent can ugliness exercise this power? In so far as it may communicate some thing of the triumphant energy of the artist who has become master of the ugly and the repulsive; or in so far as it gently excites our lust -of cruelty (in some circumstances even the lust of doing harm to ourselves, self-violence, and therewith the feeling of power over ourselves).
803. " Beauty " therefore is, to the artist, something which is above all order of rank, because in beauty contrasts are overcome, the highest sign of power thus manifesting itself in the conquest of opposites; and achieved without a feeling of tension: violence being no longer necessary, everything submitting and obeying so easily, and doing so with good grace; this is what delights the powerful will of the artist.
804. The biological value of beauty and ugliness. That which we feel instinctively opposed to us aesthetically is, according to the longest experience of mankind, felt to be harmful, dangerous, and worthy of suspicion: the sudden utterance of the; aesthetic instinct, e.g. in the case of loathing, im plies an act of judgment. To this extent beauty lies within the general category of the biological values, useful, beneficent, and life - promoting: , thus, a host of stimuli which for ages have been associated with, and remind us of, useful things and conditions, give us the feeling of beauty, i.e. the increase of the feeling of power (not only things, therefore, but the sensations which are associated with such things or their symbols). In this way beauty and ugliness are recognized as determined by our most fundamental self- preservative values. Apart from this, it is nonsense to postulate anything as beautiful or ugly. Ab solute beauty exists just as little as absolute good ness and truth. In a particular case it is a matter of the self-preservative conditions of a certain type of man: thus the gregarious man wilFMvef quite a different feeling for beauty from the exceptional or super-man. It is the optics of things in the foreground which only consider immediate consequences, from which the value beauty (also goodness and truth) arises. All instinctive judgments are short-sighted in regard to the concatenation of consequences: they merely advise what must be done forthwith. Reason is essentially an obstructing apparatus preventing the immediate response to instinctive judgments: it halts, it calculates, it traces the chain of consequences further. Judgments concerning beauty and ugliness are short-sighted (reason is always opposed to them): but they are convincing in the highest degree; they appeal to our instincts in that quarter where the latter decide most quickly and say yes or no with least hesitation, even before reason can interpose. The most common affirmations of beauty stimulate each other reciprocally; where the aesthetic impulse once begins to work, a whole host of other and foreign perfections crystallise around the " particular form of beauty." It is impossible to remain objective, it is certainly impossible to dispense with the interpreting, bestowing, transfiguring, and poetising power (the latter is a stringing together of affirmations concerning beauty itself). The sight of a beautiful woman. . . . Thus (i) judgment concerning beauty is short sighted; it sees only the immediate consequences. (2) It smothers the object which gives rise to it with a charm that is determined by the associa tion of various judgments concerning beauty, which, however, are quite alien to the essence of the particular object. To regard a thing as beauti ful is necessarily to regard it falsely (that is why incidentally love marriages are from the social point of view the most unreasonable form of matrimony).
805. Concerning the genesis of Art. That making perfect and seeing perfect, which is peculiar to the cerebral system overladen with sexual energy (a lover alone with his sweetheart at eventide trans figures the smallest details: life is a chain of sublime things, " the misfortune of an unhappy love affair is more valuable than anything else "); on the other hand, everything perfect and beautiful operates like an unconscious recollection of that amorous condition and of the point of view peculiar to it all perfection, and the whole of the beauty of things, through contiguity, revives aphrodisiac bliss. (Physiologically it is the creative instinct of the artist and the distribution 248 of his semen in his blood.) The desire for art and beauty is an indirect longing for the ecstasy of sexual desire, which gets communicated to the brain. The world become perfect through " love." i VrX
806. Sensuality in its various disguises. ( I ) As idealism (Plato), common to youth, constructing a kind of concave-mirror in which the image of the beloved is an incrustation, an exaggeration, a transfiguration, an attribution of infinity to every thing. (2) In the religion of love, " a fine young man," " a beautiful woman," in some way divine; a bridegroom, a bride of the soul. (3) In art, as a decorating force, e.g. just as the man sees the woman and makes her a present of everything that can enhance her personal charm, so the sensuality of the artist adorns an object with everything else that he honors and esteems, and by this means perfects it (or idealises it). Woman, knowing what man feels in regard to her, tries to meet his idealising endeavours half way by decorating herself, by walking and dancing well, by expressing delicate thoughts: in addition, she may practise modesty, shyness, reserve- prompted by her instinctive feeling that the ideal ising power of man increases with all this. (In the extraordinary finesse of woman s instincts, modesty must not by any means be considered as conscious hypocrisy: she guesses that it is pre cisely artlessness and real shame which seduces man most and urges him to an exaggerated 249 esteem of her. On this account, woman is in genuous, owing to the subtlety of her instincts which reveal to her the utility of a state of innocence. A wilful closing of one s eyes to one s self. . . . Wherever dissembling has a stronger influence by being unconscious it actually becomes unconscious.)
807. What a host of things can be accomplished by the state of intoxication which is called by the name of love, and which is something else besides love! And yet everybody has his own experience of this matter. The muscular strength of a girl suddenly increases as soon as a man comes into her presence: there are instruments with which this can be measured. In the case of a still closer relationship of the sexes, as, for instance, in dancing and in other amusements which society gatherings entail, this power increases to such an extent as to make real feats of strength possible: at last one no longer trusts either one s eyes, or one s watch! Here at all events we must reckon with the fact that dancing itself, like every form of rapid movement, involves a kind of intoxication of the whole nervous, muscular, and visceral system. We must therefore reckon in this case with the collective effects of a double intoxication. And how clever it is to be a little off your head i at times! There are some realities which we - cannot admit even to ourselves: especially when we are women and have all sorts of feminine 7 250 " pudeurs" . . . Those young creatures dancing over there are obviously beyond all reality: they are dancing only with a host of tangible ideals: what is more, they even see ideals sitting around them, their mothers! . . . An opportunity for quoting Faust. They look incomparably fairer, do ttese pretty creatures, when they have lost their head a little; and how well they know it too, they are even more delightful because they know it! Lastly, it is their finery which inspires them: their finery is their third little intoxication. They believe in their dressmaker as in their God: and who would destroy this faith in them? Blessed is this faith! And self-admiration is healthy! Self-admiration can protect one even from cold! Has a beautiful woman, who knew she was well- dressed, ever caught cold? Never yet on this earth! I even suppose a case in which she has scarcely a rag on her.
808. If one should require the most astonishing proof of how far the power of transfiguring, which I comes of intoxication, goes, this proof is at hand V in the phenonTeTTon of love; or what is called love in all the languages and silences of the world. Intoxication works to such a degree upon reality in this passion that in the consciousness of the lover the cause of his love is quite suppressed, and something else seems to take its place, a vibra tion and a glitter of all the charm-mirrors of Circe. ... In this respect to be man or an 251 animal makes no difference: and still less does spirit, goodness, or honesty. If one is astute, one is befooled astutely; if one is thick-headed, one is befooled in a thick-headed way. But love, even the love of God, saintly love, " the love that saves the soul," are at bottom all one; they are nothing but a fever which has reasons to trans figure itself a state of intoxication which does well to lie about i self. . . . And, at any rate, when a man loves, he is a good liar about himself and to himself: he seems to himself transfigured, stronger, richer, more perfect; he is more per fect. . . . -4rJiere acts as an organic function: we find it present in the most angelic instinct " love "; we find it as the greatest stimulus of life thus art is sublimely utilitarian, even in the fact that it lies. . . . But we should be wrong In hall at its power to lie: it does more than merely imagine; it actually transposes values. J, And it not only transposes the feeling for values: the lover actually has a greater value; he is stronger. In animals this condition gives rise to new weapons, colors, pigments, and forms, and above all to new movements, new rhythms, new love-calls and seductions. In man it is just the same. His whole economy is richer, mightier, and more complete when he is in love than when he is not. The lover becomes a spendthrift; he is rich enough for it. He now dares; he becomes an adventurer, and even a donkey in magnanimity and innocence; his belief in God and in virtue revives, because he believes in love. Moreover, such idiots of happiness acquire wings and new 252 capacities, and even the door to art is opened to them. If we cancel the suggestion of this intestinal fever from the lyric of tones and words, what is left to poetry and music? . . . L art pour I art perhaps; the professional cant of frogs shivering outside in the cold, and dying of despair in their swamp. . . . Everything else was created by love.
809. All art works like a suggestion on the muscles and the senses which were originally active in the ingenuous artistic man; its voice is only heard by artists it speaks to this kind of man, whose constitution is attuned to such subtlety in sensi tiveness. The concept " layman " is a misnomer. The deaf man is not a subdivision of the class whose ears are sound. All art works as a tonic it increases strength, it kindles desire (i.e. the feeling of strength), it excites all the more subtle recollections of intoxication; there is actually a special kind of memory which underlies such states a distant flitful world of sensations here returns to being. Ugliness is the contradiction of art. It is that which art excludes, the negation of art: wherever decline, impoverishment of life, impotence, de composition, dissolution, are felt, however remotely, the aesthetic man reacts with his No. Ugliness depresses: it is the sign of depression. It robs strength, it impoverishes, it weighs down, . . . Ugliness suggests repulsive things. From one s 253 states of health one can test how an indisposition may increase one s power of fancying ugly things. One s selection of things, interests, and questions becomes different. Logic provides a state which is next of kin to ugliness: heaviness, bluntness. In the presence of ugliness equilibrium is lacking in a mechanical sense: ugliness limps and stumbles the direct opposite of the godly agility of the dancer. The aesthetic state represents an overflow of means of communication as well as a condition of extreme sensibility to stimuli and signs. It is the zenith of communion and transmission between living creatures; it is the source of languages. In it, languages, whether of signs, sounds, or glances, have their birthplace. The richer phenomenon is always the beginning: our abilities are subtilised forms of richer abilities. But even today we still listen with our muscles, we even read with our muscles. Every mature art possesses a host of conventions as a basis: in so far as it is a language. Con vention is a condition of great art, not an obstacle to it. ... Every elevation of life likewise elevates the power of communication, as also the under standing of man. The power of living in other people s souls originally had nothing to do with morality, but with a physiological irritability of suggestion: " sympathy," or what is called "altruism," is merely a product of that psycho- motor relationship which is reckoned as spirituality (psycho-motor induction, says Charles Fere). People never communicate a thought to one 254 another: they communicate a movement, an imitative sign which is then interpreted as a thought.
810. Compared with music, communication by means of words is a shameless mode of procedure; words reduce and stultify; words make impersonal; words make common that which is uncommon.
811. It is exceptional states that determine the artist such states as are all intimately related and entwined with morbid symptoms, so that it would seem almost impossible to be an artist without being ill. The physiological conditions which in the artist become moulded into a " personality," and which, to a certain degree, may attach themselves to any man: 1 i ) Intoxication, the feeling of enhanced power; the inner compulsion to make things a mirror of one s own fulness and perfection. (2) The extreme sharpness of certain senses, so that they are capable of understanding a totally different language of signs and to create such a language (this is a condition which manifests itself in some nervous diseases); extreme susceptibility out of which great powers of communion are developed; the desire to speak on the part of everything that is capable of making -signs; a need of being rid of one s self by means of gestures 255 and attitudes; the ability of speaking about one s self in a hundred different languages in fact, a state of explosion. One must first imagine this condition as one in which there is a pressing and compulsory desire of ridding one s self of the ecstasy of a state of tension, , by all kinds of muscular work and movement; also as an involuntary co-ordination of these move ments with inner processes (images, thoughts, desires) as a kind of automatism of the whole muscular system under the compulsion of strong stimuli acting from within; the inability to resist reaction; the apparatus of resistance is also suspended. Every inner movement (feeling, thought, emotion) is accompanied by vascular changes, and consequently by changes incolor; temperature, and secretion. The suggestive power of music, its " suggestion mentale" (3) The compulsion to imitate-, extreme irritabil ity, by means of which a certain example becomes contagious a condition is guessed and represented merely by means of a few signs. ... A complete picture is visualised by one s inner consciousness, and its effect soon shows itself in the movement of the limbs, in a ceVtain suspension of the will (Schopenhauer!!!!). A sort of blindness and deafness towards the external world, the realm of admitted stimuli is sharply defined. This differentiates the artist from the layman (from the spectator of art): the latter reaches the height of his excitement in the mere act of appre hending: the former in giving and in such a way that the antagonism between these two gifts is not 2 5 6 only natural but even desirable. Each of these states has an opposite standpoint to demand of the artist that he should have the point of view of the spectator (of the critic) is equivalent to asking him to impoverish his creative power. ... In this respect the same difference holds good as that which exists between the sexes: one should not ask the artist who gives to become a woman to "receive" Our aesthetics have hitherto been women s aesthetics, inasmuch as they have only formulated the experiences of what is beautiful, from the point of view of the receivers in art. In the whole of philosophy hitherto the artist has been lacking . . . i.e. as we have already suggested, a necessary fault: for the artist who would begin to under stand himself would therewith begin to mistake himself he must not look backwards, he must not look at all; he must give. It is an honor for an artist to have no critical faculty; if he can criticize he is mediocre, he is modern.
812. Here I lay down a series of psychological states as signs of flourishing and complete life, which today we are in the habit of regarding as morbid. But, by this time, we have broken ourselves of the habit of speaking of healthy and morbid as opposites: the question is one of degree, what I maintain on this point is that what people call healthy nowadays represents a lower level of that which under favourable circumstances actually would be healthy that we are relatively sick. . . . The artist belongs to a much stronger race. That V which in us would be harmful and sickly, is natural in him. But people object to this that it is pre cisely the impoverishment of the machine which renders this extraordinary power of comprehending every kind of suggestion possible: e.g. our hysteri cal females. An overflow of spunk and energy may quite as well lead to symptoms of partial constraint, sense hallucinations, peripheral sensitiveness, as a poor vitality does the stimuli are differently deter mined, the effect is the same. . . . What is not the same is above all the ultimate result; the extreme torpidity of all morbid natlllg, after their nervous eccentricities, has nothing in common with the states of the artist, who need in no wise repent his best moments. . . . He is rich enough for it all: he can squander without becoming poor. Just as we now feel justified in judging genius j as a form of neurosis, we may perhaps think the same of artistic suggestive power, and our artists are, as a matter of fact, only too closely related to hysterical females This, however, is only an argument against the present day, and not against artists in general. The inartistic states are: objectivity, reflection suspension of the will . . . (Schopenhauer s scandal- ] ous misunderstanding consisted in regarding art as < a mere bridge to the denial of life) . . . The in artistic states are: those which impoverish, which subtract, which bleach, under which life suffers the Christian. I. R 258
813. The modern artist who, in his physiology, is next of kin to the hysteric, may also be classified as a character belonging to this state of morbid ness. The hysteric is false, he lies from the love of lying, he is admirable in all the arts of dissimulation, unless his morbid vanity hood wink him. This vanity is like a perpetual fever which is in need of stupefying drugs, and which recoils from no self-deception and no farce that promises it the most fleeting satisfaction. (The incapacity for pride and the need of continual revenge for his deep-rooted self-contempt, this is almost the definition of this man s vanity.) The absurd irritability of his system, which makes a crisis out of every one of his experiences, and sees dramatic elements in the most insignifi cant occurrences of life, deprives him of all calm reflection: he ceases from being a personality, at most he is a rendezvous of personalities of which first one and then the other asserts itself with barefaced assurance. Precisely on this account he is great as an actor: all these poor will-less people, whom doctors study so profoundly, astound one through their virtuosity in mimicking, in trans figuration, in their assumption of almost any character required.
814. Artists are not men of great passion, despite all their assertions to the contrary both to themselves and to others. And for the following two reasons: 259 they lack all shyness towards themselves (they watch themselves live, they spy upon themselves, they are much too inquisitive), and they also lack shyness in the presence of passion (as artists they exploit it). Secondly, however, that vampire, their talent, generally forbids them such an ex penditure of energy as passion demands. A man who has a talent is sacrificed to that talent; he lives under the vampirism of his talent. A man does not get rid of his passion by re producing it, but rather he is rid of it if he is able to reproduce it. (Goethe teaches the reverse, but it seems as though he deliberately misunderstood himself here from a sense of delicacy.)
815. Concerning a reasonable mode of life. -.Relative chastity, a fundamental and shrewd caution in regard to erotica, even in thought, may be a reason able mode of life even in richly equipped and perfect natures. But this principle applies more particularly to artists; it belongs to the best wisdom of their lives. Wholly trustworthy voices have already been raised in favour of this view, e.g. Stendhal, Th. Gautier, and Flaubert. The artist is perhaps in his way necessarily a sensual man, generally susceptible, accessible to everything, and capable of responding to the remotest stimulus or suggestion of a stimulus. Nevertheless, as a rule he is in the power of his work, of his will to mastership, really a sober and often even a chaste man. His dominating instinct will have him so: it does not allow him to spend himself haphazardly. It is one and the same form of strength which is spent in artistic conception and in the sexual act: there is only one form of strength. The artist who yields in this respect, and who spends himself, is betrayed: by so doing he reveals his lack of instinct, his lack of will in general. It may be a sign of decadence, in any case it re duces the value of his art to an incalculable degree.
816. Compared with the artist, the scientific man, regarded as a phenomenon, is indeed a sign of a certain storing-up and levelling-down of life (but also of an increase of strength, severity, hardness, and will-power). To what extent can falsity and indifference towards truth and utility be a sign of youth, of childishness, in the artist? . . . Their habitual manner, their unreasonableness, their ignorance of themselves, their indifference to " eternal values their seriousness in play, their lack of dignity; clowns and gods in one; the saint and the rabble. . . . Imitation as an imperi ous instinct. t)o not artists of ascending life and artists of degeneration belong to all phases? . . . Yes!
817. Would any link be missing in the whole chain of science and art, if woman, if woman s work, were excluded from it? Let us acknowledge the exception it proves the rule that woman is capable of perfection in everything which does not constitute a work: in letters, in memoirs, in the most intricate handiwork in short, in everything which is not a craft; and just precisely because in the things mentioned woman perfects herself, be cause in them she obeys the only artistic impulse in her nature, which is to captivate. . . . But what has woman to do with the passionate indiffer ence of the genuine artist who sees more importance in a breath, in a sound, in the merest trifle, than in himself? who with all his five fingers gropes for his most secret and hidden treasures? who attri butes no value to anything unless it knows how to take shape (unless it surrenders itself, unless it visualises itself in some way). Art as it is practiced by artists do you not understand what it is? is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs? . . . Only in this century has woman dared to try her hand at literature ( " Vers la canaille plumiere fariv- assiere" to speak with old Mirabeau): woman now writes, she now paints, she is losing her instincts. And to what purpose, if one may put such a question?
818. A man is an artist to the extent to which he regards everything that inartistic people call " form " as the actual substance, as the " prin cipal " thing. With such ideas a man certainly belongs to a world upside down: for hencefor ward substance seems to him something merely formal, his own life included.
819. A sense for, and a delight in, nuances (which is characteristic of modernity), in that which is not general, runs counter to the instinct which finds its joy and its strength in grasping what is typical: like Greek taste in its best period. In this there is an overcoming of the plenitude of life; restraint dominates, the peace of the strong soul which is slow to move and which feels a certain repug nance towards excessive activity is defeated. The general rule, the law, is honored and made prominent: conversely, the exception is laid aside, and shades are suppressed. All that which is firm, mighty, solid, life resting on a broad and powerful basis, concealing its strength this " pleases ": i.e. it corresponds with what we think of ourselves.
820. In the main I am much more in favour of artists than any philosopher that has appeared hitherto: artists, at least, did not lose sight of the great course which life pursues; they loved the things " of this world," they loved their senses. v To strive after " spirituality," in cases where this is not pure hypocrisy or self-deception, seems to me to be either a misunderstanding, a disease, or a cure. I wish myself, and all those who live with out the troubles of a puritanical conscience, and who are able to live in this way, an ever greater spiritualisation and multiplication of the senses. Indeed, we would fain be grateful to the senses for X x 263 their subtlety, power, and plenitude, and on that account offer them the best we have in the way of spirit. What do we care about priestly and meta physical anathemas upon the senses? We no longer require to treat them in this way: it is a sign of well-constitutedness when a man like Goethe clings with ever greater joy and heartiness to the " things of this world " in this way he holds firmly to the grand concept of mankind, which is that man becomes the glorifying power j of existence when he learns to glorify himself.
821. Pessimism in art? The artist gradually learns to like for their own sake, those means which bring about the condition of aesthetic elation; extreme delicacy and glory of color, definite delineation, quality of tone; distinctness where in normal conditions distinctness is absent. All distinct things, all nuances, in so far as they recall extreme degrees of power which give rise to intoxication, kindle this feeling of intoxication by association; the effect of works of art is the excitation of the state which creates art, of aesthetic intoxication. The essential feature in art is its power of perfecting existence, its production of perfection and plenitude; art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence. . . . What does a pessimistic art signify? Is it not a contradictio? Yes. Schopenhauer is in error when he makes certain works of art serve the L purpose of pessimism. Tragedy does not teach " resignation." ... To represent terrible and questionable things is, in itself, the sign of an instinct of power and magnificence in the artist; 1 he doesn t fear them. . . . There is no such thing j as a pessimistic art. . . . Art affirms. Job j frirms. But Zola? and the Goncourts? the things they show us are ugly; their reason, however, for showing them to us is their love of ugliness. . . I don t care what you say! You simply deceive yourselves if you think otherwise. What a relief Dostoievsky is!
822. If I have sufficiently initiated my readers into the doctrine that even " goodness," in the whole comedy of existence, represents a form of exhaus tion, they will now credit Christianity with con sistency for having conceived the good to be the ugly. In this respect Christianity was right. It is absolutely unworthy of a philosopher to say that " the good and the beautiful are one "; if he should add " and also the true," he deserves to; be thrashed. Truth is ugly. Art is with us in order that we may not perish through truth.
823. Moralising tendencies may be combated with art. Art is freedom from moral bigotry and philosophy a la Little Jack Homer: or it may be the mockery of these things. The flight to Nature, where beauty and terribleness are coupled. The concept of the great man. Fragile, useless souls-de-luxe, which are dis concerted by a mere breath of wind, " beautiful souls." Ancient ideals, in their inexorablehardnessand brutality, ought to be awakened, as the mightiest of monsters that they are. We should feel a boisterous delight in the psychological perception of how all moralised artists become worms and actors without know ing it. The falsity of art, its immorality, must be brought into the light of day. The " fundamental idealising powers " (sensuality, intoxication, excessive animality) should be brought to light.
824. Modern counterfeit practices in the arts: regarded as necessary that is to say, as fully in keeping with the needs most proper to the modern soul. The gaps in the gifts, and still more in the education, antecedents, and schooling of modern artists, are now filled up in this way: First: A less artistic public is sought which is capable of unlimited love (and is capable of falling on its knees before a personality). The superstition of our century, the belief in " genius," assists this process. Secondly; Artists harangue the dark instincts of the dissatisfied, the ambitious, and the self-deceivers of a democratic age: the importance of poses. Thirdly: The procedures of one art are trans ferred to the realm of another; the object of art is confounded with that of science, with that of the Church, or with that of the interests of the race (nationalism), or with that of philosophy a man rings all bells at once, and awakens the vague suspicion that he is a god. Fourthly: Artists flatter women, sufferers, and indignant folk. Narcotics and opiates are made to- preponderate in art. The fancy of cultured people, and of the readers of poetry and ancient history, is tickled.
825. We must distinguish between the " public " and the " select "; to satisfy the public a man must be a charlatan today, to satisfy the select he will be a virtuoso and nothing else. The geniuses peculiar to our century overcame this distinction, they , were great for both; the great charlatanry of Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner was coupled with such genuine virtuosity that it even satisfied I the most refined artistic connoisseurs. This is! why greatness is lacking: these geniuses had a double outlook; first, they catered for the coarsest needs, and then for the most refined.
826. False "accentuation": (i) In romanticism; this unremitting " exp-ressivo " is not a sign of strength, but of a feeling of deficiency; (2) Picturesque music, the so-called dramatic 267 kind, is above all easier (as is also the brutal scandalmongering and the juxtaposition of facts and traits in realistic novels); (3) "Passion" as amatter of nerves and exhausted souls; likewise the delight in high mountains, deserts, storms, orgies, and disgusting details, in bulkiness and massiveness (historians, forinstance); as amatter of fact, there is actually a cult of exaggerated feel ings (how is it that in stronger ages art desired just the opposite a restraint of passion?); (4) The preference for exciting materials (Erotica or Socialistic* or Pathologicd): all these things are the signs of the style of public that is being catered for today that is to say, for overworked, absentminded, or enfeebled people. Such people must be tyrannised over in order to be affected.
827. Modern art is the art of tyrannising. A coarse and salient definiteness in delineation; the motive simplified into a formula; formulae tyrannise. Wild arabesques within the lines; overwhelming masses, before which the senses are confused; brutality in coloration, in subject-matter, in the desires. Examples: Zola, Wagner, and, in a more spiritualised degree, Taine. Hence logic, massiveness, and brutality.
828. In regard to the painter: Tous ces modernes sont des poetes qui ont voulu etre peintres. Lun a chercJit des drames dans l histoire t I autre des scenes de moeurs, celui ci traduit des religions, celui la une philosophie. One imitates Raphael, another the early Italian masters. The landscapists employ trees and clouds in order to make odes and elegies. Not one is simply a painter; they are ajl archaeologists, psychologists, and impresarios of one or another kind of event or theory. They enjoy our erudition and our philosophy. Like us, they are full, and too full, of general ideas. They like a form, not because it is what it is, but because of what it expresses. They are the scions of a learned, tormented, and reflecting generation, a thousand miles away from the Old Masters who never read, and only concerned themselves with feasting their eyes.
829. At bottom, even Wagner s music, in so far as it stands for the whole of French romanticism, is literature: the charm of exoticism (strange times, customs, passions), exercised upon sensitive cosy- corner people. The delight of entering into ex tremely distant and prehistoric lands to which books lead one, and by which means the whole horizon is painted with new colors and new possibilities. . . . Dreams of still more distant and unexploited worlds; disdain of the boulevards. . . . For Nationalism, let us not deceive ourselves, is also only a form of exoticism. . . . Romantic musicians merely relate what exotic books have made of them: people would fain experience exotic sensations and passions according to Florentine and Venetian taste; finally they are satisfied to look for them in an image. . . . The essential factor is the kind of novel desire, the desire to imitate, the desire to live as people have lived once before in the past, and the disguise and dissimulation of the soul. . . . Romantic art is only an emergency exit from defective " reality." The attempt to perform new things: revolution, Napoleon. Napoleon represents the passion of new spiritual possibilities, of an extension of the I soul s domain. The greater the debility of the will, the greater the extravagances in the desire to feel, to repre sent, and to dream new things. The result of j the excesses which have been indulged in: an insatiable thirst for unrestrained feelings. . . . Foreign literatures afford the strongest spices.
830. Winckelmann s and Goethe s Greeks, Victor 1 Hugo s Orientals, Wagner s Edda characters, Walter Scott s Englishmen of the thirteenth century some day the whole comedy will be exposed! All of it was disproportionately historical and false, but modern.
831. Concerning the characteristics of national genius in regard to the strange and to the borrowed English genius vulgarises and makes realistic everything it sees; The French whittles down, simplifies, rational ises, embellishes; The German muddles, compromises, involves, and infects everything with morality; The Italian has made by far the freest and most subtle use of borrowed material, and has enriched it with a hundred times more beauty than it ever drew out of it: it is the richest genius, it had the most to bestow.
832. The Jews, with Heinrich Heine and Offenbach, approached genius in the sphere of art. The latter was the most intellectual and most high- spirited satyr, who as a musician abided by great tradition, and who, for him who has something more than ears, is a real relief after the senti mental and, at bottom, degenerate musicians of German romanticism.
833. Offenbach: French music imbued with Voltaire s intellect, free, wanton, with a slight sardonic grin, but clear and intellectual almost to the point of banality (Offenbach never titivates), and free from the mignardise of morbid or blond-Viennese sensuality.
834. If by artistic genius we understand the most consummate freedom within the law, divine ,ease, and facility in overcoming the greatest difficulties, then Offenbach has even more right to the title genius than Wagner has. Wagner is heavy and clumsy: nothing is more foreign to him than the moments of wanton perfection which this clown Offenbach achieves as many as five times, six times, in nearly every one of his buffooneries. But by genius we ought perhaps to understand something else.
835. Concerning " music French, German, and Italian music. (Our most debased periods in a political sense are our most productive. The Slavs?) The ballet, which is the outcome of excessive study of the history of strange civilisa tions, has become master of opera. Stage music and musicians music. It is an error to suppose that what Wagner composed was a form: it was rather formlessness. The possibilities of dramatic construction have yet to be discovered. Rhythm. " Expression " at all costs. Harlotry in instru mentation. All honor to Heinrich Schiitz; all honor to Mendelssohn: in them we find an element of Goethe, but nowhere else! (We also find another element of Goethe coming to blossom in Rahel; a third element in Heinrich Heine.)
836. Descriptive music leaves reality to work its effects alone. ... All these kinds of art are easier, and more easy to imitate; poorly gifted 272 people have recourse to them. The appeal to the instincts; suggestive art.
837. Concerning our modern music. The decay of melody, like the decay of " ideas," and of the freedom of intellectual activity, is a piece of clumsiness and obtuseness, which is developing itself into new feats of daring and even into principles; in the end man has only the prin ciples of his gifts, or of his lack of gifts. " Dramatic music " nonsense! It is simply bad music. ..." Feeling " and " passion " are merely substitutes when lofty intellectuality and the joy of it (e.g. Voltaire s) can no longer be attained. Expressed technically, " feeling " and " passion " are easier; they presuppose a much poorer kind of artist. The recourse to drama be trays that an artist is much more a master in tricky means than in genuine ones. Today we have both dramatic painting and dramatic poetry, etc.
838. What we lack in music is an aesthetic which would impose laws upon musicians and give them a conscience; and as a result of this we lack a real contest concerning " principles." For as musicians we laugh at Herbart s velleities in this department just as heartily as we laugh at Schopenhauer s. As a matter of fact, tremendous difficulties present themselves here. We no longer know on what basis to found our concepts of what is " exemplary," " masterly," " perfect." With the instincts of old loves and old admiration we grope about in a realm of values, and we almost believe, " that is good which pleases us." ... I am always suspicious when I hear people every where speak innocently of Beethoven as a "classic ": what I would maintain, and with some severity, is that, in other arts, a classic is the very reverse of Beethoven. But when the complete and glaring dissolution of style, Wagner s so-called dramatic style, is taught and honored as exemplary, as masterly, as progressive, then my impatience exceeds all bounds. Dramatic style in music, as Wagner understood it, is simply renunciation of all style whatever; it is the assumption that something else, namely, drama, is a hundred times more important than music. Wagner can paint; he does not use music for the sake of music, with" it he accentuates attitudes; he is a poet. Finally he made an appeal to beautiful feelings and heaving breasts, just as all other theatrical artists have done, and with it all he converted women and even those whose souls thirst for culture to him. But what do women and the uncultured care about music? All these people have no conscience for art: none of them suffer when the first and fundamental virtues of an art are scorned and trodden upon in favour of that which is merely secondary (as ancilla dramaturgicd}. What good can come of all extension in the means of expression, when that which is expressed, art itself, has lost all its law and order? The picturesque pomp and power I. S 274 of tones, the symbolism of sound, rhythm, the color effects of harmony and discord, the suggestive significance of music, the whole sensuality of this art which Wagner made prevail- it is all this that Wagner derived, developed, and drew out of music. Victor Hugo did something very similar for language: but already people in France are asking themselves, in regard to the case of Victor Hugo, whether language was not corrupted by him; whether reason, intellectuality, and thorough conformity to law in language are not suppressed when the sensuality of expression is elevated to a high place? Is it not a sign of decadence that the poets in Fraace have become plastic artists, and that the musicians of Germany have become actors and culturemongers?
839. Today there exists a sort of musical pes simism even among people who are not musi cians. Who has not met and cursed the confounded youthlet who torments his piano until it shrieks with despair, and who single- handed heaves the slime of the most lugubrious and drabby harmonies before him? By so doing a man betrays himself as a pessimist. . . . It is open to question, though, whether he also proves himself a musician by this means. I for my part could never be made to believe it. A Wagnerite pur sang is unmusical; he submits to the elementary forces of music very much as a woman submits to the will of the man who hypnotises her and in order to be able to do this he must not be made suspicious in rebus musicis et musicantibus by a too severe or too delicate conscience. I said " very much as " but in this respect I spoke perhaps more than a parable. Let any one consider the means which Wagner uses by preference, when he wishes to make an effect (means which for the greater part he first had to invent); they are appallingly similar to the means by which a hypnotist exercises his power (the choice of his movements, the general color of his orchestration; the excruciating evasion of consistency, and fairness and squareness, in rhythm; the creepiness, the soothing touch, the mystery, the hysteria of his " unending melody "). And is the condition to which the overture to Lohengrin, for instance, reduces the men, and still more the women, in the audience, so essentially different from the somnambulistic trance? On one occasion after the overture in question had been played, I heard an Italian lady say, with her eyes half closed, in a way in which female Wagnerites are adepts: " Come si dorme con questa musica! " *
840. Religion in music. What a large amount of satisfaction all religious needs get out of Wag- nerian music, though this is never acknowledged or even understood! How much prayer, virtue, unction, " virginity," " salvation," speaks through this music! ... Oh what capital this cunning * " How the music makes one sleep! " TR. saint, who leads and seduces us back to every thing that was once believed in, makes out of the fact that he may dispense with words and concepts! . . . Our intellectual conscience has no need to feel ashamed it stands apart if any old instinct puts its trembling lips to the rim of forbid den philtres. . . . This is shrewd and healthy, and, in so far as it betrays a certain shame in regard to the satisfaction of the religious instinct, it is even a good sign. . . . Cunning Christianity: the type of the music which came from the " last Wagner."
841. I distinguish between courage before persons, courage before things, and courage on paper. The latter was the courage of David Strauss, for instance. I distinguish again between the courage before witnesses and the courage without witnesses: the courage of a Christian, or of be lievers in God in general, can never be the cour age without witnesses but on this score alone Christian courage stands condemned. Finally, I distinguish between the courage which is tempera mental and the courage which is the fear of fear; a single instance of the latter kind is moral courage. To this list the courage of despair should be added. This is the courage which Wagner possessed. His attitude in regard to music was at bottom a desperate one. He lacked two things which go to make up a good musician: nature and nurture, the predisposition for music and the discipline and schooling which music requires. He had courage: out of this deficiency he established a principle; he invented a kind of music for himself. The dramatic music which he invented was the music which he was able to compose, its limitations are Wagner s limitations. And he was misunderstood! Was he really misunderstood? . . . Such is the case with five- sixths of the artists of today. Wagner is their Saviour: five-sixths, moreover, is the " lowest pro portion." In any case where Nature has shown herself without reserve, and wherever culture is an accident, a mere attempt, a piece of dilettantism, the artist turns instinctively what do I say? I mean enthusiastically, to Wagner; as the poet says: " Half drew he him, and half sank he." *
842. " Music " and the grand style. The greatness of an artist is not to be measured by the beautiful feelings which he evokes: let this belief be left to the girls. It should be measured according to the extent to which he approaches the grand style, according to the extent to which he is capable of the grand style. This style and great passion have this in common that they scorn to please; that they forget to persuade; that they command: that they will. . . . To become master of the chaos which is in one; to compel one s inner chaos to assume form; to become consistent, simple, un equivocal, mathematical, law this is the great ambition here. By means of it one repels; nothing *This is an adapted quotation from Goethe s poem, "The Fisherman." The translation is E. A. Bowring s. TR. 28 so much endears people to such powerful men as this, a desert seems to lie around them, they impose silence upon all, and awe every one with the greatness of their sacrilege. . . . All arts know this kind of aspirant to the grand style: why are they absent in music? Never yet has a musician built as that architect did who erected the Palazzo Pitti. . . . This is a problem. Does music perhaps belong to that culture in which the reign of powerful men of various types is already at an end? Is the concept " grand style " in fact a con tradiction of the soul of music, of " the woman " in our music? . . . With this I touch upon the cardinal question: how should all our music be classified? The age of classical taste knows nothing that can be com pared with it: it bloomed when the world of the Renaissance reached its evening, when " freedom " had already bidden farewell to both men and their customs is it characteristic of music to be Counter- Renaissance? Is music, perchance, the sister of the baroque style, seeing that in any case they were contemporaries? Is not music, modern music, already decadence? . . . I have put my finger before on this question: whether music is not an example of Counter- Renaissance art? whether it is not the next of kin to the baroque style? whether it has not grown in opposition to all classic taste, so that any aspiration to classicism is forbidden by the very nature of music? The answer to this most important of all questions of values would not be a very doubtful 279 one, if people thoroughly understood the fact that music attains to its highest maturity and plenitude as romanticism likewise as a reactionary move ment against classicism. Mozart, a delicate and lovable soul, but quite eighteenth century, even in his serious lapses . . . Beethoven, the first great romanticist according to the French conception of romanticism, just as Wagner is the last great romanticist . . . both of them are instinctive opponents of classical taste, of severe style not to speak of " grand " in this regard.
843. Romanticism: an ambiguous question, like all modern questions. The aesthetic conditions are twofold: The abundant and generous, as opposed to the seeking and the desiring.
844. A romanticist is an artist whose great dissatisfaction with himself makes him productive - who looks away from himself and his fellows, and i sometimes, therefore, looks backwards.
845. Is art the result of dissatisfaction with reality? "L or is it the expression of gratitude for happiness experienced? In the first case, it is romanticism; in the second, it is glorification and dithyramb (in short, apotheosis art): even Raphael belongs to this, except for the fact that he was guilty of the duplicity of having defied the appearance of the Christian view of the world. He was thankful for life precisely where it was not exactly Christian. With a moral interpretation the world is in sufferable; Christianity was the attempt to over come the world with morality: t.e. to deny it. In praxi such a mad experiment an imbecile eleva tion of man above the world could only end in the beglooming, the dwarfing, and the impoverish ment of mankind: the only kind of man who gained anything by it, who was promoted by it, was the most mediocre, the most harmless and gregarious type. Homer as an apotheosis artist; Rubens also. Music has not yet had such an artist. The idealisation of the great criminal (the feeling for his greatness) is Greek; the deprecia tion, the slander, the contempt of the sinner, is Judaeo-Christian.
846. Romanticism and its opposite. In regard to all aesthetic values I now avail myself of this fundamental distinction: in every individual case I ask myself has hunger or has superabundance been creative here? At first another distinction might perhaps seem preferable, it is far more obvious, e.g. the distinction which decides whether a desire for stability, for eternity, for Being, or whether a desire for destruction, for change, for Becoming, has been the cause of creation. But both kinds of desire, when examined more closely, prove to be ambiguous, and really susceptible of interpretation only according to that scheme already mentioned and which I think is rightly preferred. The desire for destruction, for change, for Be coming, may be the expression of an overflowing power pregnant with promises for the future (my term for this, as is well known, is Dionysian); it may, however, also be the hate of the ill-con stituted, of the needy and of the physiologically botched, that destroys, and must destroy, because such creatures are indignant at, and annoyed by everything lasting and stable. The act of immortalising can, on the other hand, be the outcome of gratitude and love: an art which has this origin is always an apotheosis art; dithyrambic, as perhaps with Rubens; happy, as perhaps with Hafiz; bright and gracious, and shed ding a ray of glory over all things, as in Goethe. But it may also, however, be the outcome of the tyrannical will of the great sufferer who would make the most personal, individual, and narrow trait about him, the actual idiosyncrasy of his pain in fact, into a binding law and imposition, and who thus wreaks his revenge upon all things by stamp ing, branding, and violating them with the image of his torment. The latter case is romantic pessim ism in its highest form, whether this be Schopen- hauerian voluntarism or Wagnerian music.
847. It is a question whether the antithesis, classic and romantic, does not conceal that other antithesis, the active and the reactive.
848. In order to be a classic, one must be possessed of all the strong and apparently contradictory gifts and passions: but in such a way that they run in harness together, and culminate simultaneously in elevating a certain species of literature or art or politics to its height and zenith (they must not do this after that elevation has taken place . . .). They must reflect the complete state (either of a people or of a culture), and express its most profound and most secret nature, at a time when it is still stable and not yet discolored by the imitation of foreign things (or when it is still dependent . . .); not a reactive but a deliberate and progressive spirit, saying Yea in all circumstances, even in its hate. " And does not the highest personal value belong thereto? "... It is worth considering whether moral prejudices do not perhaps exercise their in fluence here, and whether great moral loftiness is not perhaps a contradiction of the classical? . . . Whether the moral monsters must not necessarily I be romantic in word and deed? Any such pre ponderance of one virtue over others (as in the case of the moral monster) is precisely what with most hostility counteracts the classical power in equilibrium; supposing a people manifested this moral loftiness and were classical notwithstanding, we should have to conclude boldly that they were also on the same high level in immorality! this was perhaps the case with Shakespeare (provided that he was really Lord Bacon).
849. Concerning the future. Against the romanticism of great passion. We must understand how a certain modicum of coldness, lucidity, and hard ness "is inseparable from all classical taste: above all consistency, happy intellectuality, " the three unities," concentration, hatred of all feeling, of all sentimentality, of all esprit, hatred of all multi formity, of all uncertainty, evasiveness, and of all nebulosity, as also of all brevity, finicking, pretti- ness and good nature. Artistic formulae must not be played with: life must be remodelled so that it should be forced to formulate itself accordingly. It is really an exhilarating spectacle which we have only learned to laugh at quite recently, be cause we have only seen through it quite recently: this spectacle of Herder s, Winckelmann s, Goethe s, and Hegel s contemporaries claiming that they had I rediscovered the classical ideal . . . and at the same time, Shakespeare! And this same crew of men had scurvily repudiated all relationship with the classical school of France! As if the essential principle could not have been learnt as well here as elsewhere! . . . But what people wanted was " nature," and " naturalness ": Oh, the stupidity of it! It was thought that classicism was a kind of naturalness! Without either prejudice or indulgence we should try and investigate upon what soil a classical taste can be evolved. The hardening, the simplification, the strengthening, and the bedevilling of man are inseparable from classical taste. Logical and 284 psychological simplification. A contempt of de tail, of complexity, of obscurity. The romanticists of Germany do not protest against classicism, but against reason, against illumination, against taste, against the eighteenth century. The essence of romantico-Wagnerian music is the opposite of the classical spirit. The will to unity (because unity tyrannises: e.g. the listener and the spectator), but the artist s in ability to tyrannise over himself where it is most needed that is to say, in regard to the work it self (in regard to knowing what to leave out, what to shorten, what to clarify, what to simplify). The overwhelming by means of masses (Wagner, Victor Hugo, Zola, Taine).
850. The Nihilism of artists. Nature is cruel in her cheerfulness; cynical in her sunrises. We are hostile to emotions. We flee thither where Nature moves our senses and our imagination, where we have nothing to love, where we are not reminded of the moral semblances and delicacies of this northern nature; and the same applies to the arts. We prefer that which no longer reminds us of good and evil. Our moral sensibility and tender ness seem to be relieved in the heart of terrible and happy Nature, in the fatalism of the senses and forces. Life without goodness. Great well-being arises from contemplating Nature s indifference to good and evil. No justice in history, no goodness in Nature. 285 That is why the pessimist when he is an artist prefers those historical subjects where the absence of justice reveals itself with magnificent simplicity, where perfection actually comes to expression and likewise he prefers that in Nature, where her callous evil character is not hypocritically concealed, where that character is seen in perfection. . . . The Nihilistic artist betrays himself in willing and preferring cynical history and cynical Nature.
851. What is tragic? Again and again I have pointed to the great misunderstanding of Aristotle in maintaining that the tragic emotions were the two depressing emotions fear and pity. Had he been right, tragedy would be an art unfriendly to life: it would have been necessary to caution people against it as against something generally harmful and suspicious. Art, otherwise the great stimulus of life, the great intoxicant of life, the great will to life, here became a tool of decadence, the hand maiden of pessimism and ill-health (for to sup pose, as Aristotle supposed, that by exciting these emotions we thereby purged people of them, is simply an error). Something which habitually excites fear or pity, disorganises, weakens, and dis courages: and supposing Schopenhauer were right in thinking that tragedy taught resignation (i.e. a meek renunciation of happiness, hope, and of the will to live), this would presuppose an art in which art itself was denied. Tragedy would then constitute a process of dissolution; the in stinct of life would destroy itself in the instinct of 286 art. Christianity, Nihilism, tragic art, physiological decadence; these things would then be linked, they would then preponderate together and assist each other onwards downwards. . . . Tragedy would thus be a symptom of decline. This theory may be refuted in the most cold blooded way, namely, by measuring the effect of a tragic emotion by means of a dynamometer The result would be a fact which only the bottom less falsity of a doctrinaire could misunderstand: that tragedy is a tonic. If Schopenhauer refuses to see the truth here, if he regards general depres sion as a tragic condition, if he would have informed the Greeks (who to his disgust were not " re signed ") that they did not firmly possess the highest principles of life: it is only owing to his parti pris, to the need of consistency in his system, to the dishonesty of the doctrinaire that dreadful dishonesty which step for step corrupted the whole psychology of Schopenhauer (he who had arbitrarily and almost violently misunderstood genius, art itself, morality, pagan religion, beauty, knowledge, and almost everything).
852. The tragic artist. Whether, and in regard to what, the judgment beautiful " is established is a question of an individual s or of a people s strength The feeling of plenitude, of overflowing strength (which gaily and courageously meets many an obstacle before which the weakling shudders) the feeling of power utters the judgment " beautiful " concerning things and conditions which the in stinct of impotence can only value as hateful and ugly. The flair which enables us to decide whether the objects we encounter are dangerous, problem atic, or alluring, likewise determines our aesthetic Yea. (" This is beautiful," is an affirmation). From this we see that, generally speaking, a preference for questionable and terrible things is a symptom of strength; whereas the taste for pretty and charming trifles is characteristic of the weak and the delicate. The love of tragedy is typical of strong ages and characters: its non plus ultra is perhaps the Divina Commedia. It is the heroic spirits which in tragic cruelty say Yea unto them selves: they are hard enough to feel pain as a pleasure. On the other hand, supposing weaklings desire to get pleasure from an art which was not designed for them, what interpretation must we suppose they would like to give tragedy in order to make it suit their taste? They would interpret their own feel ings of value into it: e.g. the " triumph of -the moral order of things," or the teaching of the " uselessness of existence," or the incitement to " resignation " (or also half-medicinal and half- moral outpourings, a la Aristotle). Finally, the art of terrible natures, in so far as it may excite the nerves, may be regarded by the weak and ex hausted as a stimulus: this is now taking place, for instance, in the case of the admiration meted out to Wagner s art. A test of man s well-being and consciousness of power is the extent to which he can acknowledge the terrible and questionable character of things, and whether he is in any need of a faith at the end. 288 This kind of artistic pessimism is precisely the reverse of that religio-moral pessimism which suffers from the corruption of man and the enigmatic character of existence: the latter in sists upon deliverance, or at least upon the hope of deliverance. Those who suffer, doubt, and dis trust themselves, the sick, in other words, have in all ages required the transporting influence of visions in order to be able to exist at all (the notion " blessedness " arose in this way). A similar case would be that of the artists of decadence, who at bottom maintain a Nihilistic attitude to life, and take refuge in the beauty of form, in those select cases in which Nature is perfect, in which she is indifferently great and in differently beautiful. (The " love of the beautiful " may thus be something very different from the ability to see or create the beautiful: it may be the expressionof impotence in this respect.VfThe most convincing artists are those who make harmony ring out of every discord, and who benefit all things by the gift ol their power and inner harmony: in every work ol art the)*- merely reveal the symbol of their inmost experiences their creation Is gratitie for thqjy life. The depth of the tragic artist consists in the fact that his aesthetic instinct surveys the more remote results, that he does not halt shortsightedly at the thing that is nearest, that he says Yea to the whole cosmic economy, which justifies the terrible, the evil, and the questionable; which more than justifies it.
853. Art in the "Birth of Tragedy? I. The conception of the work which lies right in the background of this book, is extra ordinarily gloomy and unpleasant: among all the types of pessimism which have ever been known hitherto, none seems to have attained to this degree of malice. The contrast of a true and of an ap parent world is entirely absent here: there is but one world, and it is false, cruel, contradictory, seductive, and without sense. ... A world thus constituted is the true world. We are in need of lies in order to rise superior to this reality, to this truth that is to say, in order to live. . . . That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence. Metaphysics, morality, religion, science, in this book, all these things are regarded merely as different forms of falsehood: by means of them we are led to believe in life. " Life must inspire con fidence ": the task which this imposes upon us is enormous. In order to .solve this problem -msM,. must already be a liar in his heart, but he must above all else be an artist. And he is that. Metaphysics, religion, morality, science, all these things are but the offshoot of his will to art, to falsehood, to a flight from " truth," to a denial of " truth." This ability, this artistic capacity par excellence of man thanks to which he overcomes reality with lies, is a quality which he has in common with all other forms of existence. He himself is indeed a piece of reality, of truth, of nature: how could he help being also a piece of genius in prevarication! The fact that the character of existence is misunderstood, is the profoundest and the highest secret motive behind everything relating to virtue, science, piety, and art. To be blind to many things, to see many things falsely, to fancy many things: Oh, how clever man has been in those circumstances in which he believed he was anything but clever! Love, enthusiasm, " God " are but subtle forms of ultimate gelf-deception; they are but seductions to life r and to the belief in Jife! In those moments when man was deceived, when he had befooled himself and when he believed in life: Oh, how his spirit swelled within him! Oh, what ecstasies he had! What power he felt! And what artistic triumphs in the feeling of power! . . . Man had once more become master of " matter," master of truth! . . . And whenever man rejoices it is always in the same way: he rejoices as an artist, his power is his joy, he enjoys falsehood as his power. . . . II. Art and nothing else! Art is the great means of making life possible, the great seducer to life, the great stimulus of life. Art is the only superior counteragent to all will to the denial oTTHeT "It "is "Jar excellence the anti- Christian, the anti-Buddhistic, the anti-Nihilistic force. Art is the alleviation of the seeker after know ledge, of him who recognises the terrible and questionable character of existence, and who will recognise it, of the tragic seeker after know- ledge. Art is the alleviation of the man of action, of him who not only sees the terrible and questionable character of existence, but also lives it, will live it, of the tragic and warlike man, the hero. Art is the alleviation of the sufferer, as the way to states in which pain is willed, is trans figured, is deified, where suffering is a form of great ecstasy. III. It is clear that in this book pessimism, or, better still, Nihilism, stands for " truth." But truth is not postulated as the highest measure of value, and still less as the highest power. The will to . appearance, to illusion, to deception, to becoming, and to change r (lo objective" deception), is here re garded as more profound, as more primeval, as" more metaphysical than the will to truth, to reality, to appearance: the latter is merely a form of the will to illusion. Happiness is likewise conceived as more primeval than pain: and pain is considered as conditioned, as a consequence of the will to happiness (of the will to Becoming, to growth, to forming, i.e. to creating; in creating, however, de- ( struction is included). The highest state of Yea- saying to existence is conceived as one from which the greatest pain may not be excluded: the tragico- Dionysian state. IV. In this way this book is even anti-pessimistic, namely, in the sense that it teaches something which is stronger than pessimism and which is more " divine " than truth: Art. Nobody, it would seem, would be more ready seriously to utter a radical denial of life, an actual denial of action even more than a denial of life, than the author of this book. Except that he knows for he has experienced it, and perhaps experienced little else! that art is of more value than truth. Even in the preface, in which Richard Wagner is, as it were, invited to join with him in conversa tion, the author expresses this article of faith, this gospel for artists: " Art is the only task of life, art is the metaphysical activity of life. . . ,"
FOURTH BOOK. DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING.
I. THE ORDER OF RANK
i. THE DOCTRINE OF THE ORDER OF RANK
854. IN this age of universal suffrage, in which every body is allowed to sit in judgment upon everything and everybody, I feel compelled to re-establish the order of rank.
855. Quanta of power alone determine rank and dis tinguish rank: nothing else does.
856. The will to power. How must those men be constituted who would undertake this transvalua- tion? The order of rank as the order of power: war and danger are the prerequisites which allow of a rank maintaining its conditions. The pro digious example: man in Nature the weakest and shrewdest creature making himself master, and putting a yoke upon all less intelligent forces. 295 296
857. I distinguish between the type which represents ascending life and that which represents decay, decomposition and weakness. Ought one to suppose that the question of rank between these two types can be at all doubtful? . .
858. The modicum of power which you represent decides your rank; all the rest is cowardice.
859. The advantages of standing detached from one s age. Detached from the two movements, that of individualism and that of collectivist morality; for even the first does not recognise the order of rank, and would give one individual the same freedom as another. My thoughts are not concerned with the degree of freedom which should be granted to the one or to the other or to all, but with the degree of power which the one or the other should exercise over his neighbour or over all; and more especially with the question to what extent a sacrifice of freedom, or even enslavement, may afford the basis for the cultivation of a superior type. In plain words: how could one sacrifice the development of mankind in order to assist a higher species than man to come into being.
860. Concerning rank. The terrible consequences of "equality" in the end everybody thinks he has the right to every problem. All order of rank has vanished.
861. It is necessary for higher men to declare war | upon the masses! In all directions mediocre people are joining hands in order to make them selves masters. Everything that pampers, that softens, and that brings the "people" or "woman" to the front, operates in favour of universal suffrage that is to say, the dominion of inferior men. But we must make reprisals, and draw the whole state of affairs (which commenced in Europe with Christianity) to the light of day and to judgment.
862. A teaching is needed which is strong enough to work in a disciplinary manner; it should operate in such a way as to strengthen the strong and to paralyse and smash up the world-weary. The annihilation of declining races. The decay of Europe. The annihilation of slave-tainted valuations. The dominion of the world as a means to the rearing of a higher type. The annihilation of the humbug which is called morality (Christianity as a hysterical kind of honesty in this regard: Augustine, Bunyan). The annihilation of universal suffrage that is to say, that system by means of which the lowest natures prescribe themselves as a law for higher natures. The annihilation of mediocrity and its prevalence. (The one-sided, the indivi duals peoples; constitutional plenitude should be aimed at by means of the coupling of opposites; to this end race-combinations should be tried.) The new kind of courage no a priori truths (those who were accustomed to believe in some thing sought such truths!), but free submission to a ruling thought, which has its time; for instance, time conceived as the quality of space, etc.
2. THE STRONG AND THE WEAK.
863. The notion, " strong and weak man" resolves itself into this, that in the first place much strength is inherited the man is a total sum: in the other, not yet enough (inadequate inheritance, subdivision of the inherited qualities). Weakness may be a starting phenomenon: not yet enough; or a final phenomenon: " no more." The determining point is there where great strength is present, or where a great amount of i strength can be discharged. The mass, as the j sum-total of the weak, reacts slowly; it defends . itself against much for which it is too weak, against that for which it has no use; it never creates, it never takes a step forward. This is opposed to the theory which denies the strong individual and would maintain that the " masses do everything." The difference is similar to that which obtains between separated generations: four or even five generations may lie between the masses and him who is the moving spirit it is a chronological difference. The values of the weak are in the van, because the strong have adopted them in order to lead with them.
864. Why the weak triumph. On the whole, the sick and the weak have more sympathy and are more "humane"; the sick and the weak have more intellect, and are more changeable, more variegated, more entertaining more malicious; the sick alone invented malice. *A morbid precocity is often to be observed among rickety, scrofulitic, and tuberculous people.) Esprit: the property of older races; Jews, Frenchmen, Chinese. (The anti-Semites do not forgive the Jews for having both intellect and money. Anti-Semites another name for " bungled and botched.") The sick and the weak have always had fascina tion on their side; they are more interesting than the healthy: the fool and the saint the two most interesting kinds of men. . . . Closely related thereto is the " genius." The " great adventurers and criminals " and all great men, the most healthy in particular, have always been sick at certain periods of their lives great disturbances of the emotions, the passion for power, love, revenge, are all accompanied by very profound perturbations. And, as for decadence, every man who does not die prematurely manifests it in almost every respect he therefore knows from experience the instincts which belong to it: for half his life nearly every man is decadent. And finally, woman! One-half of mankind is weak, chronically sick, changeable, shifty woman requires strength in order to cleave to it; she also requires a religion of the weak which glorifies weakness, love, and modesty as divine: or, better still, she makes the strong weak she rules when she succeeds in overcoming the strong. Woman has always conspired with decadent types, the priests, for instance, against the " mighty," against! the " strong," against men. Women avail them selves of children for the cult of piety, pity, and love: the mother stands as the symbol of convincing altruism. Finally, the increase of civilisation with its necessary correlatives, the increase of morbid elements, v of the neurotic and psychiatric and of the criminal. A sort of intermediary species arises, the artist. He is distinct from those who are .criminals as the result of weak wills and of the fear of society, although they may not yet be ripe for the asylum; but he has antennae which grope inquisitively into both spheres: this specific plant of culture, the modern artist, painter, musician, and, above all, novelist, who designates his particular kind of attitude with the very indefinite word " naturalism." . . . Lunatics, criminals, and realists * are on the increase: this is the sign of a growing culture plunging forward at headlong speed that is to say, its excrement, its refuse, the rubbish that is shot from it every day, is beginning to acquire more importance, the retrogressive movement keeps pace with the advance. Finally! the social mishmash, which is the result of revolution, of the establishment of equal rights, and of the superstition, the " equality of men." Thus the possessors of the instincts of decline (of resentment, of discontent, of the lust of destruction, of anarchy and Nihilism), as also the instincts of slavery, of cowardice, of craftiness, and of rascality, which are inherent among those classes of society which have long been suppressed, are beginning to get infused into the blood of all ranks. Two or three generations later, the race can no longer be recognized everything has become mob. And thus there results a collective instinct against selection, against every kind of privilege; and this instinct operates with such power, certainty, hardness, and cruelty that, as a matter of fact, in the end, even the privileged classes have to submit: all those who still wish to hold on to power flatter the mob, work with the mob, and must have the mob on their side the " geniuses " above all The latter become the heralds of those feelings with which the mob can be inspired, the expression of pity, of honor, even for all that suffers, all that is low and despised, and has lived * The German word is " Naturalist," and really means " realist " in a bad sense. TR. under persecution, becomes predominant (types: Victor Hugo, Richard Wagner). The rise of the mob signifies once more the rise of old values. In the case of such an extreme movement, both in tempo and in means, as characterises our civil isation, man s ballast is shifted. Those men whose worth is greatest, and whose mission, as it were, is to compensate for the very great danger of such a morbid movement, such men become dawdlers par excellence; they are slow to accept anything, and are tenacious; they are creatures that are relatively lasting in the midst of this vast mingling and changing of elements. In such circumstances power is necessarily relegated to the mediocre-, mediocrity , as the trustee and bearer of the future, consolidates itself against the rule of the mob and of eccentricities (both of which are, in most cases, united). In this way a new antagonist is evolved for exceptional men or in certain cases a new temptation. Provided that they do not adapt themselves to the mob, and stand up for what satisfies the instincts of the disinherited, they will find it necessary to be " mediocre " and sound. They know: mediocritas is also aurea, it alone has command of money and gold (of all that glitters ...).... And, once more, old virtue and the whole superannuated world of ideals in general secures a gifted host of special-pleaders. . . . Result: mediocrity acquires intellect, wit, and genius, it becomes entertaining, and even seductive. * Result. -A high culture can only stand upon a broad basis, upon a strongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity. In its service and assisted by it, science and even art do their work. Science could not wish for a better state of affairs: in its essence it belongs to a middle-class type of man, among exceptions it is out of place, there is not anything aristocratic and still less anything anarchic in its instincts. The power of the middle classes is then upheld by means of commerce, but, above all, by means of money-dealing: the instinct of great financiers is opposed to everything extreme on this account the Jews are, for the present, the most conservative power in the threatening and insecure conditions of modern Europe. They can have no use either for revolutions, for social ism, or for militarism: if they would have power, and if they should need it, even over the revolu tionary party, this is only the result of what I have already said, and it in no way contradicts it. Against other extreme movements they may occasionally require to excite terror by showing how much power is in their hands. But their instinct itself is inveterately conservative and " mediocre." . . . Wherever power exists, they know how to become mighty; but the application of their power always takes the same direction. The polite term for mediocre, as is well known, is the word" Liberal" * Reflection. It is all nonsense to suppose that this general conquest of values is anti- biological. In order to explain it, we ought to try and show that it is the result of a certain interest of life to maintain the type " man," even by means of this 304 method which leads to the prevalence of the weak and the physiologically botched if things were otherwise, might man not cease to exist? Problem. . . The enhancement of the type may prove fatal to the maintenance of the species. Why? The experience of history shows that strong races decimate each other mutually, by means of war, lust for power, and venturousness; the strong emotions; wastefulness (strength is no longer capitalised, disturbed mental systems arise from excessive tension); their existence is a costly affair in short, they persistently give rise to friction between themselves; periods of profound slackness and torpidity intervene: all great ages have to be paid for. . . . The strong are, after all, weaker, less wilful, and more absurd than the average weak ones. They are squandering races. " Permanence? in itself, can have no value: that which ought to be preferred thereto would be a shorter life for the species, but a life richer in creations. It would remain to be proved that, even as things are, a richer sum of creations is attained than in the case of the shorter existence; i.e. that man, as a storehouse of power, attains to a much higher degree of dominion over things under the con ditions which have existed hitherto. . . . We are here face to face with a problem of economics.
865. The state of mind which calls itself " idealism," and which will neither allow mediocrity to be 305 mediocre nor woman to be woman! Do not make everything uniform! We should have a clear idea of how dearly we have to pay for the establishment of a virtue; and that virtue is nothing generally desirable, but a noble piece of madness a beautiful exception, which gives us the privilege of feeling elated. . . .
866. It is necessary to show that a counter-movement is inevitably associated with any increasingly economical consumption of men and mankind, and with an ever more closely involved " machinery " of interests and services. I call this counter- movement the separation of the luxurious surplus of mankind-, by means of it a stronger kind, a higher type, must come to light, which has other conditions for its origin and for its maintenance than the average man. My concept, my metaphor for this type is, as you know, the word " Superman." Along the first road, which can now be completely surveyed, arose adaptation, stultification, higher Chinese culture, modesty inlKenstincts, and satisfaction at the sight of the belittlement of man a kind of stationary level of mankind. Ifever we get that inevitable and imminent, general control of the economy of the earth, then man kind can be used as machinery and find its best purpose in the service of this economy as an enormous piece of clock-work consisting of ever smaller and ever more subtly adapted wheels; then all the dominating and commanding elements I. U 306 will become ever more superfluous; and the whole gains enormous energy, while the individual factors which compose it represent but small modicums of strength and of value. To oppose this dwarfing and adaptation of man to a special ised kind of utility, a reverse movement is needed (_ ,;,i the procreation of the synthetic man who em-bodies everything and justifies it; that man for whom the turning of mankind into a machine is a first condition of existence, for whom the rest of mankind is but soil on which he can devise his higher mode of existence. He is in need of the opposition of the masses, of those who are " levelled down "; he requires that feeling of distance from them; he stands upon them, he lives on them. This higher form of aristocracy is the form of the future. From the moral point of view, the collective machinery above described, that solidarity of all wheels, represents the most extreme example in the exploitation of mankind: but it presupposes the existence of those for whom such an exploitation would have some meaning* Otherwise it would signify, as a matter of fact, merely the general depreciation of the type man, a. retrograde phenomenon on a grand scale. Readers are beginning to see what I am combating namely, economic optimism: as if * This sentence for ever distinguishes Nietzsche s aristoc racy from our present plutocratic and industrial one, for which, at the present moment at any rate, it would be difficult to discover some meaning. TR. the general welfare of everybody must necessarily increase with the growing self-sacrifice of every body. The very reverse seems to me to be the case, the self-sacrifice of everybody amounts to a collective loss; man becomes inferior so that nobody knows what end this monstrous purpose has served. A wherefore? a new wherefore? this is what mankind requires.
867. The recognition of the increase of collective power-, we should calculate to what extent the ruin of individuals, of castes, of ages, and of peoples, is included in this general increase. The transposition of the ballast of a culture. The cost of every vast growth: who bears it? Why must it be enormous at the present time f
868. General aspect of the future European: the latter regarded as the most intelligent servile animal, very industrious, at bottom very modest, inquisitive to excess, multifarious, pampered, weak of will, a chaos of cosmopolitan pas sions and intelligences. How would it be possible for a stronger race to be bred from him? Such a race as would have a classical taste? The classical taste: this is the will to simplicity, to accentuation, and to happiness made visible, the will to the terrible, and the courage for psychological nakedness (simplification is the 308 outcome of the will to accentuate; allowing happiness as well as nakedness to become visible is a consequence of the will to the terrible . . .). In order to fight one s way out of that chaos, and up to this form, a certain disciplinary constraint is necessary: a man should have to choose between either going to the dogs <yc prevailing. A ruling race can only arise amid terrible and violent conditions. Problem: where are the barbarians of the twentieth century? Obviously they will only show themselves and consolidate themselves after enormous socialistic crises. They will con sist of those elements which are capable of the greatest hardness towards themselves, and which can guarantee the most enduring will-power.
869. The mightiest and most dangerous passions of man, by means of which he most easily goes to rack and ruin, have been so fundamentally banned that mighty men themselves have either become impossible or else must regard themselves as evil, " harmful and prohibited." The losses are heavy, but up to the present they have been necessary. Now, however, that a whole host of counter-forces has been reared, by means of the temporary suppression of these passions (the passion for dominion, the love of change and deception), their liberation has once more become possible: they will no longer possess their old savagery. We can now allow ourselves this tame sort of bar barism: look at our artists and our statesmen!
870. The root of all evil: that the slave morality of modesty, chastity, selflessness, and absolute obedience should have triumphed. Dominating natures were thus condemned (i) to hypocrisy, (2) to qualms of conscience, creative natures regarded themselves as rebels against frod, un certain and hemmed in by eternal values. The barbarians showed that the ability of keeping within the bounds of moderation was not in the scope of their powers: they feared and slandered the passions and instincts of nature likewise the aspect of the ruling Caesars and castes. On the other hand, there arose the sus picion that all restraint is a form of weakness or of incipient old age and fatigue (thus La Rochefoucauld suspects that "virtue" is only a euphemism in the mouths of those to whom vice no longer affords any pleasure). The capacity for restraint was represented as a matter of hardness, self-control, asceticism, as a fight with the devil, etc. etc. The natural delight of aesthetic natures, in measure; the pleasure derived from the beauty of measure, was overlooked and denied, because that which was desired was an anti-eudaemonistic morality. The belief in the pleasure which comes of restraint has been lacking hitherto this pleasure of a rider on a fiery steed! The moderation of weak natures was confounded with the restraint of the strong!In short, the best things have been blasphemed because weak or immoderate swine have thrown a I bad light upon them the best men have remained concealed and have often misunderstood them selves.
871. Vicious and unbridled people: their depressing influence upon the value of the passions. It was the appalling barbarity of morality which was principally responsible in the Middle Ages for the compulsory recourse to a veritable " league of virtue " and this was coupled with an equally appalling exaggeration of all that which consti tutes the value of man. Militant " civilisation " (taming) is in need of all kinds of irons and tortures in order to maintain itself against terrible and beast-of-prey natures. In this case, confusion, although it may have the most nefarious influences, is quite natural: that which men of power and will are able to demand of themselves gives them the standard for what they may also allow themselves. Such natures are the very opposite of the vicious and the un bridled , although under certain circumstances they may perpetrate deeds for which an inferior man would be convicted of vice and intemperance. In this respect the concept, " all men are equal before God! does an extraordinary amount of harm; actions and attitudes of mind were for bidden which belonged to the prerogative of the strong alone, just as if they were in themselves unworthy of man. All the tendencies of strong men were brought into disrepute by the fact that the defensive weapons of the most weak (even of those who were weakest towards themselves) were established as a standard of valuation. The confusion went so far that precisely the great virtuosos of life (whose self-control presents the sharpest contrast to the vicious and the un bridled) were branded with the most opprobrious names. Even to this day people feel themselves 1 compelled to disarage a Caesar Borgia: it is i simply ludicrous. The "Church has anathematisedGerman Kaisers owing to their vices: as if a monk or a priest had the right to say a word as to what a Frederick II. should allow himself. Don Juan is sent to hell: this is very naif. Has anybody ever noticed that all interesting men are lacking in heaven? . . . This is only a hint to the girls, as to where they may best find salvation. If one , think at all logically, and also have a profound insight into that which makes a great man, there can be no doubt at all that the Church has dis-patched all " great men " to Hades its fight isagainst all " greatness in man."
872. The rights which a man arrogates to himself are relative to the duties which he sets himself, and to the tasks which he feels capable of per forming. The great majority of men have no right to life, and are only a misfortune to their higher fellows.
873. The misunderstanding of egoism: on the part of ignoble natures who know nothing of the lust of 3. 12 conquest and the insatiability of great love, and who likewise know nothing of the overflowing feelings of power which make a man wish to overcome things, to force them over to himself, and to lay them on his heart, the power which impels an artist to his material. It often happens also that the active spirit looks for a field for its activity. In ordinary " egoism " it is precisely the " non-ego," the profoundly mediocre creature the member _pf the herd who wishes to maintain himself and when this is perceived by the rarer, more subtle, and less mediocre natures, it revolts them. For the judgment of the latter is this: " We are the noble It is much more important to maintain us than that cattle! "
874. The degeneration of the ruler and of the ruling classes has been the cause of all the great dis orders in history! Without the Roman Caesars and Roman society, Christianity would never have prevailed. When it occurs to inferior men to doubt whether higher men exist, then the danger is great! It is then that men finally discover that there are virtues even among inferior, suppressed, and poor-spirited men, and that everybody is equal before God: which is the non plus ultra of all confounded nonsense that has ever appeared on earth! For in the end higher men begin to measure themselves according to the standard of virtues upheld by the slaves and discover that they are "proud," etc., and that all their higher qualities should be condemned. When Nero and Caracalla stood at the helm, it was then that the paradox arose: " The lowest man is of more value than that one on the throne! " And thus the path was prepared for an image of God which was as remote as possible from the image of the mightiest, God on the Cross!
875. Higher man and gregarious man. When great! men are ivanting, the great of the past are con verted into demigods or whole gods: the rise of religions proves that mankind no longer has any pleasure in man (" nor in woman neither," as in Hamlet s case). Or a host of men are brought together in a heap, and it is hoped that as a Parliament they will operate just as tyrannically. Tyrannising is the distinctive quality of great meq: they make inferior men stupid.
876. Buckle affords the best example of the extent to which a plebeian agitator of the mob is in capable of arriving at a clear idea of the concept, " higher nature." The opinion which he combats so passionately that " great men," individuals, princes, statesmen, geniuses, warriors, are the levers and causes of all great movements, is in stinctively misunderstood by him, as if it meant that all that was essential and valuable in such 314 a " higher man," was the fact that he was capable of setting masses in motion; in short, that his sole merit was the effect he produced. . . . But the " higher nature " of the great man resides precisely in being different, in being unable to communicate with others, in the loftiness of his rank not in any sort of effect he may produce even though this be the shattering of both hemi spheres.
877. The Revolution made Napoleon possible: that is its justification. We ought to desire the anarchical collapse of the whole of our civilisation if such a reward were to be its result. Napoleon made nationalism possible: that is the latter s excuse. The value of a man (apart, of course, from morality and immorality: because with these concepts a man s worth is not even skimmed) does not lie in his utility; because he would continue to exist even if there were nobody to whom he could be useful. And why could not that man be the very pinnacle of manhood who was the source of the worst possible effects for his race: so high and so superior, that in his presence everything would go to rack and ruin from envy?
878. To appraise the value of a man according to his utility to mankind, or according to what he costs it, or the damage he is able to inflict upon it, 315 is just as good and just as bad as to appraise the value of a work of art according to its effects. But in this way the value of one man compared with another is not even touched upon. The " moral valuation," in so far as it is social, measures men altogether according to their effects. But what about the man who has his own taste on his tongue, who is surrounded and concealed by his isolation, uncommunicative and not to be communicated with; a man whom no one has fathomed yet that is to say, a creature of a higher, and, at any rate, different species: how would ye appraise his worth, seeing that ye cannot know him and can compare him with nothing? Moral valuation was the cause of the most enormous obtuseness of judgment: the value of a man in himself is underrated , well-nigh over looked, practically denied. This is the remains of simple-minded teleology: the value of man can only be measured with regard to other men.
879. To be obsessed by moral considerations pre supposes a very low grade of intellect: it shows that the instinct for special rights, for standing apart, the feeling of freedom in creative natures, in " children of God " (or of the devil), is lacking. And irrespective of whether he preaches a ruling morality or criticizes the prevailing ethical code from the point of view of his own ideal: by doing these things a man shows that he belongs 316 to the herd even though he may be what it is most in need of that is to say, a " shepherd."
880. We should substitute, morality by the will to our own ends, and consequently to the means to them.
881. Concerning the order of rank. What is it that constitutes the mediocrity of the typical man? That he does not understand that things neces sarily have their other side; that he combats evil conditions as if they could be dispensed with; that he will not take the one with the other; that he would fain obliterate and erase the specific character of a thing, of a circumstance, of an age, and of a person, by calling only a portion of their qualities good, and suppressing the remainder. The " desirability " of the mediocre is that which we others combat: their ideal is something which shall no longer contain anything harmful, evil, dangerous, questionable, and destructive. We recognise the reverse of this: that with every growth of man his other side must grow as well; that the highest man, if such a concept be allowed, would be that man who would represent the antag onistic character of existence most strikingly, and would be its glory and its only justification. . . . Ordinary men may only represent a small corner and nook of this natural character; they perish the moment the multifariousness of the elements composing them, and the tension between their 317 antagonistic traits, increases: but this is the pre requisite for greatness in man. That man should become better and at the same time more evil, is | my formula for this inevitable fact. The majority of people are only piecemeal and fragmentary examples of man: only when all these creatures are jumbled together does one whole man arise. Whole ages and whole peoples in this sense, have a fragmentary character about them; it may perhaps be part of the economy of human development that man should develop himself only piecemeal. But, for this reason, one should not forget that the only important con sideration is the rise of the synthetic man; that inferior men, and by far the great majority of people, are but rehearsals and exercises out of v which here and there a whole man may arise; a man who is a human milestone, and who indicates how far mankind has advanced up to a certain point. Mankind does not advance in a straight line; often a type is attained which is again lost (for instance, with all the efforts of three hundred years, we have not reached the men of the Renais sance again, and in addition to this we must not forget that the man of the Renaissance was already behind his brother of classical antiquity).
882. The superiority of the Greek and the man of the Renaissance is recognized, but people would like to produce them without the conditions and causes of which they were the result.
883. " Purification of taste " can only be the result of the strengthening of the type. Our society today represents only the cultivating systems; the cultivated man is lacking. The great synthetic man, in whom the various forces for attaining a- purpose are correctly harnessed together, is alto gether wanting. The specimen we possess is the multifarious man, the most interesting form of chaos that has ever existed: but not the chaos preceding the creation of the world, but that fol lowing it: Goethe as the most beautiful expression of the type (completely and utterly un- Olympian!)*
884. Handel, Leibniz, Goethe, and Bismarck, are characteristic of the strong German type. They lived with equanimity, surrounded by contrasts. They were full of that agile kind of strength which cautiously avoids convictions and doctrines, by using the one as a weapon against the other, and reserving absolute freedom for themselves.
885. Of this I am convinced, that if the rise of great and rare men had been made dependent upon the voices of the multitude (taking for granted, of *Tbe Germans always call Goethe the Olympian. TR. 319 course, that the latter knew the qualities which belong to greatness, and also the price that all greatness pays for its self-development), then there would never have been any such thing as a great man! The fact that things pursue their course inde- pendently of the voice of the many, is the reason why a few astonishing things have taken place on earth.
886. The Order of Rank in Human Values. (a] A man should not be valued according to isolated acts. Epidermal actions. Nothing is more rare than a personal act. Class, rank, race, environment, accident all these things are much more likely to be expressed in an action or deed than the " personality " of the doer. (b] We should on no account jump to the con clusion that there are many people who are per sonalities. Some men are but conglomerations of personalities, whilst the majority are not even one. In all cases in which those average qualities pre ponderate, which ensure the maintenance of the species, to be a personality would involve un necessary expense, it would be a luxury in fact, it would be foolish to demand of anybody that he should be a personality. In such circumstances everybody is a channel or a transmitting vessel. (c] A " personality " is a relatively isolated phen omenon; in view of the superior importance of- 7 the continuation of the race at an average level, a 320 personality might even be regarded as something hostile to nature. For a personality to be possible, timely isolation and the necessity for an existence of offence and defence, are prerequisites; something in the nature of a walled enclosure, a capacity for , shutting out the world; but above all, a much lower degree of sensitiveness than the average man has, who is too easily infected with the views of others. The first question concerning the order of rank: how far is a man disposed to be solitary or gre- garioust (in the latter case, his valueconsists in those qualities which secure the survival of his tribe or his type; in the former case, his qualities are those which distinguish him from others, which isolate and defend him, and make his solitude possible). Consequence: the solitary type should not be valued from the standpoint of the gregarious type, or vice versa. Viewed from above, both types are necessary; as is likewise their antagonism, and nothing is more thoroughly reprehensible than the " desire " which would develop a third thing out of the two (" virtue " as hermaphroditism). This is as little worthy of desire as the equalisation and reconcilia tion of the sexes. The distinguishing qualities must be developed ever more and more, the gulf must be made ever wider. . . . The concept of degeneration in both cases: the approximation of the qualities of the herd to those of solitary creatures: and vice versa in short, when they begin to resemble each other. This concept of degeneration is beyond the sphere of moral judgments.
887. Where the strongest natures are to be sought. The ruin and degeneration of the solitary species is much greater and more terrible: they have the in stincts of the herd, and the tradition of values, against them; their weapons of defence, their in stincts of self-preservation, are from the beginning insufficiently strong and reliable fortune must be peculiarly favourable to them if they are to prosper (they prosper best in the lowest ranks and dregs of society; if ye are seeking personalities it is there that ye will find them with much greater certainty than in the middle classes!) When the dispute between ranks and classes, which aims at equality of rights, is almost settled, the fight will begin against the solitary person. (In a certain sense the latter can maintain and develop himself most easily in a democratic society there where the coarser means of defence are no longer necessary, and a certain habit of order, honesty, justice, trust, is already a general condition.) t The strongest must be most tightly bound, most strictly watched, laid in chains and supervised: this is the instinct of the herd. To them belongs a regime of self-mastery, of ascetic detachment, of " duties " consisting in exhausting work, in which one can no longer call one s soul one s own.
888. I am attempting an economic justification of virtue. The object is to make man as useful as I. X, possible, and to make him approximate as nearly as one can to an infallible machine: to this end he must be equipped with machine- like virtues (he must learn to value those states in which he works in a most mechanically useful way, as the highest of all: to this end it is necessary to make him as disgusted as possible with the other states, and to represent them as very dangerous and despicable). Here is the first stumbling-block: the tedious- ness and monotony which all mechanical activity brings with it. To learn to endure this and not only to endure it, but to see tedium enveloped in a ray of exceeding charm: this hitherto has been the task of all higher schools. To learn something which you don t care a fig about, and to find pre cisely your " duty " in this " objective " activity; to learn to value happiness and duty as things apart; this is the invaluable task and performance of higher schools. It is on this account that the philologist has, hitherto, been the educator per se: because his activity, in itself, affords the best pattern of magnificent monotony in action; under his banner youths learn to " swat ": first pre requisite for the thorough fulfilment of mechanical duties in the future (as State officials, husbands, slaves of the desk, newspaper readers, and soldiers). Such an existence may perhaps require a philosoph ical glorification and justification more than any other: pleasurable feelings must be valued by some sort of infallible tribunal, as altogether of inferior rank; " duty per se" perhaps even the pathos of re verence in regard to everything unpleasant, must be demanded imperatively as that which is above all 323 useful, delightful, and practical things. ... A mechanical form of existence regarded as the highest and most respectable form of existence, worshipping itself (type: Kant as the fanatic of the formal concept " Thou shalt ").
889. The economic valuation of all the ideals that have existed hitherto that is to say, the selection and rearing of definite passions and states at the cost of other passions and states. The law-giver (or the instinct of the community) selects a number of states and passions the existence of which guarantees the performance of regular actions (mechanical actions would thus be the result of the regular requirements of those passions and states). In the event of these states and passions con taining ingredients which were painful, a means would have to be found for overcoming this pain- fulness by means of a valuation; pain would have to be interpreted as something valuable, as some thing pleasurable in a higher sense. Conceived in a formula: " How does something unpleasant become pleasant? " For instance, when our obedience and our submission to the law become honored, thanks to the energy, power, and self-control they entail. The same holds good of our public spirit, of our neighbourliness, of our patriotism, our " humanisa- tion," our " altruism," and our " heroism." The object of all idealism should be to induce people To do unpleasant things cheerfully. 324
890. The belittlement of man must be held as the chief aim for a long while: because what is needed in the first place is a broad basis from which a stronger species of man may arise (to what extent hitherto has every stronger species of man arisen from a substratum of inferior people?).
891. The absurd and contemptible form of idealism which would not have mediocrity mediocre, and which instead of feeling triumphant at being ex ceptional, becomes indignant at cowardice, false ness, pettiness, and wretchedness. We should not wish things to be any different, we should make the gulfs even wider The higher types among men should be compelled to distinguish themselves by means ot the sacrifices which they make to their own existence. Principal point of view: distances must be es tablished, but no contrasts must be created. The middle classes must be dissolved, and their influence decreased: this is the principal means of maintaining distances.
892. Who would dare to disgust the mediocre of their mediocrity! As you observe, I do precisely the reverse: every step away from mediocrity thus do I teach leads to immorality.
893. To hate mediocrity is unworthy of a philosopher: it is almost a note of interrogation to his " right to philosophy." It is precisely because he is the exception that he must protect the rule and ingratiate all mediocre people.
894. What I combat: that an exceptional form should make war upon the rule instead of understanding that the continued existence of the rule is the first condition of the value of the exception. For in stance, there are women who, instead of consider ing their abnormal thirst for knowledge as a dis tinction, would fain dislocate the whole status of womanhood.
895. The increase of strength despite the temporary ruin of the individual: A new level must be established; We must have a method of storing up forces for the maintenance of small performances, in opposition to economic waste; Destructive nature must for once be reduced to an instrument of this economy of the future; The weak must be maintained, because there is an enormous mass of finicking work to be done; The weak and the suffering must be upheld in their belief that existence is still possible; Solidarity must be implanted as an instinct opposed to the instinct of fear and servility; War must be made upon accident, even upon the accident of " the great man."
896. War upon great men justified on economic grounds. Great men are dangerous; they are accidents, exceptions, tempests, which are strong enough to question things which it has taken time to build and establish. Explosive material must not only be discharged harmlessly, but, if possible, its discharge must be prevented altogether; this is the fundamental instinct of all civilised society.
897. I He who thinks over the question of how the type man may be elevated to its highest glory and , power, will realize from the start that he must place himself beyond morality; for morality was directed in its essentials at the opposite goal that is to say, its aim was to arrest and to annihilate i that glorious development wherever it was in pro- * cess of accomplishment. For, as a matter of fact, development of that sort implies that such an enormous number of men must be subservient to it, that a counter-movement is only too natural: the weaker, more delicate, more mediocre existences, find it necessary to take up sides against that glory of life and power; and for that purpose they must get a new valuation of themselves by means of which they are able to condemn, and if possible to destroy, life in this high degree of plenitude. Morality is therefore essentially the expression of ( hostility to life, in so far as it would overcome vital types.
898. The strong of the future. To what extent neces sity on the one hand and accident on the other have attained to conditions from which a stronger species may be reared: this we are now able to understand and to bring about consciously; we can now create those conditions under which such an elevation is possible. Hitherto education has always aimed at the utility of society: not the greatest possible utility for the future, but the utility of the society actually extant. What people required were " instruments" for this purpose. Provided the wealth of forces were greater it would be possible to think of a draft being made upon them, the aim of which would not be the utility of society, but some future utility. The more people grasped to what extent the present form of society was in such a state of transition as sooner or later to be no longer able to exist for its own sake, but only as a means in the hands of a stronger race, the more this task would have to be brought forward. The increasing belittlement of man is precisely the impelling power which leads one to think of 328 the cultivation of a stronger race-, a race which would have a surplus precisely there where the dwarfed species was weak and growing weaker (will, responsibility, self-reliance, the ability to postulate aims for one s self). The means would be those which history teaches: isolation by means of preservative interests which would be the reverse of those generally accepted; exercise in revalued valuations; distance as pathos; a clean conscience in what today is most despised and most prohibited. The levelling of the mankind of Europe is the great process which should not be arrested; it should even be accelerated. The necessity of cleaving gulfs, of distance, of the order of rank, is therefore imperative; but not the necessity of re tarding the process above mentioned. This levelled- down species requires justification as soon as it is attained: its justification is that it exists for the service of a higher and sovereign race which stands upon it and can only be elevated upon its shoulders to the task which it is destined to perform. Not only a ruling race whose task would be consummated in ruling alone: but a race with vital spheres of its own, with an overflow of energy for beauty, bravery, culture, and manners, even for the most abstract thought; a yea-saying race which would be able to allow itself every kind of great luxury strong enough to be able to dis pense with the tyranny of the imperatives of virtue, rich enough to be in no need of economy or pedantry; beyond good and evil; a forcing-house for rare and exceptional plants.
899. Our psychologists, whose glance dwells in voluntarily upon the symptoms of decadence, lead us to mistrust intellect ever more and more. People persist in seeing only the weakening, pam pering, and sickening effects of intellect, but there are now going to appear: The union of Cynics intellectual New Experi ment- superiority barbarians alists with well-be * Conquerors ing and an overflow of strength.
900. I point to something new: certainly for such a democratic community there is a danger of barbarians; but these are sought only down below. There is also another kind of barbarians who come from the heights: a kind of conquering and ruling natures, which are in search of material that they can mould. Prometheus was a barbarian of this stamp.
901. Principal standpoint: one should not suppose the mission of a higher species to be the leading of inferior men (as Comte does, for instance); but the inferior should be regarded as the foundation upon which a higher species may live their higher life upon which alone they can stand. The conditions under which a strong, noble species maintains itself (in the matter of intellectual discipline) are precisely the reverse of those under which the industrial masses the tea-grocers a la Spencer subsist. Those qualities which are within the grasp only of the strongest and most terrible natures, and which make their existence possible leisure, adventure, disbelief, and even4isb. station would necessarily ruin mediocre natures and does do so when they possess them. In the case of the latter industry, regularity, moderation, and strong " conviction " are in their proper place in short, all " gregarious virtues ": under their influence these mediocre men become perfect.
902. Concerning the ruling types. The shepherd as opposed to the " lord " (the former is only a means to the maintenance of the herd; the latter, the purpose for which the herd exists).
903. The temporary preponderance of social valuations is both comprehensible and useful; it is a matter of building a foundation upon which a stronger species will ultimately be made possible. The standard of strength: to be able to live under the revalued valuations, and to desire them for all eternity. State and society regarded as a sub structure: economic point of view, education con- ceived as breeding.
904. A consideration which " free spirits lack: that the same discipline which makes a strong nature still stronger, and enables it to go in for big under takings, breaks up and withers the mediocre: doubt la largeur de cceur experiment independence.
905. The hammer. How should men who must value in the opposite way be constituted? Men who possess all the qualities of the modern soul, but are strong enough to convert them into real health? The means to their task.
906. The strong man, who is mighty in the instincts of a strong and healthy organization, digests his deeds just as well as he digests his meals; he even gets over the effects of heavy fare: in the main, iB| however, he is led by an inviolable and severe instinct which prevents his doing anything which goes against his grain, just as he never does any thing against his taste.
907. Can we foresee the favourable circumstances under which creatures of the highest value might arise? It is a thousand times too complicated, and the probabilities of failure are very great: on that account we cannot be inspired by the thought of striving after them! Scepticism. To oppose this we can enhance courage, insight, hardness, inde pendence, and the feeling of responsibility; we can also subtilise and learn to forestall the delicacy of the scales, so that favourable accidents may be enlisted on our side.
908. Before we can even think of acting, an enormous amount of work requires to be done. In the main, however, a cautious exploitation of the present con ditions would be our best and most advisable course of action. The actual creation of conditions such as those which occur by accident, presupposes the existence of iron men such as have not yet lived. Our first task must be to make the personal ideal prevail and become realized. He who has understood the nature of man and the origin of mankind's greatest specimens, shudders before man and takes flight from all action. This is the result of inherited valuations!! My consolation is, that the nature of man is evil, and this guarantees his strength.
909. The typical forms of self-development, or the eight principal questions: 1. Do we want to be more multifarious or more simple than we are? 2. Do we want to be happier than we are, or more indifferent to both happiness and un- happiness? 3. Do we want to be more satisfied with ourselves, or more exacting and more inexorable? 4. Do we want to be softer, more yielding, and more human than we are, or more in human? 5. Do we want to be more prudent than we are, or more daring? 6. Do we want to attain a goal, or do we want to avoid all goals (like the philosopher, for t instance, who scents a boundary, a cul-de- sac, a prison, a piece of foolishness in every goal)? 7. Do we want to become more respected, or more feared, or more despised? 8. Do we want to become tyrants, and seducers, or do we want to become shepherds and gregarious animals?
910. The type of my disciples. To such men as con cern me in any way I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities of all kinds. I wish them to be acquainted with profound self- contempt, with the martyrdom of self-distrust, with the misery of the defeated: I have no pity for them; because I wish them to have the only thing which today proves whether a man has any value or not, namely, the capacity of sticking to his guns.
911. The happiness and self-contentedness of the lazzaroni, or the blessedness of " beautiful souls," or the consumptive love of Puritan pietists, proves nothing in regard to the order of rank I among men. As a great educator one ought in- i exorably to thrash a race of such blissful creatures into unhappiness. The danger of belittlement and of a slackening of powers follows immediately I am opposed to happiness a la Spinoza or a la Epicurus, and to all the relaxation of contemplative states. But when virtue is the means to such happiness, well then, one must master even virtue.
912. I cannot see how any one can make up for having missed going to a good school at the proper ( time. Such a person does not know himself; he walks through life without ever having learned to walk. His soft muscles betray themselves at every step. Occasionally life itself is merciful enough to make a man recover this lost and severe schooling: by means of periods of sickness, perhaps, which exact the utmost will-power and self-control; or j by means of a sudden state of poverty, which threatens his wife and child, and which may force a man to such activity as will restore energy to his slackened tendons, and a tough spirit to his will to life. The most desirable thing of all, however, is, under all circumstances to have severe discipline at the right time, i.e. at that age when it makes us proud that people should expect great things from us. For this is what distinguishes hard schooling, as good schooling, from every other schooling, namely, that a good deal is demanded, that a good deal is severely exacted; that goodness, nay even excellence itself, is required as if it were normal; that praise is scanty, that leniency is non-existent; that blame is sharp, practical, and without reprieve, and has no regard to talent and antecedents. We are in every way in need of such a school: and this holds good of corporeal as well as of spiritual things; it would be fatal to draw distinctions here! * The same discipline makes the soldier and the scholar efficient; and, looked at more closely, there is no true scholar who has not the instincts of a true soldier in his veins. To be able to command and to be able to obey in a proud fashion; to keep one s place in rank and file, and yet to be ready at any moment to lead; to prefer danger to comfort; not to weigh what is permitted and what is forbidden in a tradesman s balance; to be more hostile to pettiness, slyness, and parasitism than to wickedness. What is it that one learns in a hard school? to obey and to command.
913. We should repudiate merit and do only that which stands above all praise and above all understanding.
914. The new forms of morality: Faithful vows concerning that which one wishes to do or to leave undone; complete and definite abstention from many things. Tests as to whether one is ripe for such discipline.
915. It is my desire to naturalise asceticism: I would substitute the old intention of asceticism, " self-denial," by my own intention, " self -strengthening ": a gymnastic of the will; a period of abstinence and occasional fasting of every kind, even in things intellectual; a casuistry in deeds, in regard to the opinions which we derive from our powers; we should try our hand at adventure and at deliberate dangers. (Diners chez Magny: all intellectual gourmets with spoilt stomachs.) Tests ought also to be devised for discovering a man s power in keeping his word.
916. The things which have become spoilt through having been abused by the Church: (i) Asceticism. People have scarcely got the courage yet to bring to light the natural utility and necessity of asceticism for the purpose of the . education of the will. Our ridiculous world of education, before whose eyes the useful State official hovers as an ideal to be striven for, believes that it has completed its duty when it has in structed or trained the brain; it never even suspects that something else is first of all necessary i the education of will-power; tests are devised for everything except for the most important thing of all: whether a man can will, whether he can promise , the young man completes his education without a question or an inquiry having been made concerning the problem of the highest value of his nature. (2) Fasting. In every sense even as a means of maintaining the capacity for taking pleasure in all good things (for instance, to give up reading for a while, to hear no music for a while, to cease from being amiable for a while: one ought also to have fast days for one s virtues). (3) The monastery. Temporary isolation with severe seclusion from all letters, for instance; a kind of profound introspection and self-recovery, which does not go out of the way of " temptations," but out of the way of " duties "; a stepping out of the daily round of one s environment; a detach ment from the tyranny of stimuli and external influences, which condemns us to expend our power only in reactions, and does not allow it to gather volume until it bursts into spontaneous activity (let anybody examine our scholars closely: they only think reflexively, i.e. they must first read before they can think). (4) Feasts. A man must be very coarse in order not to feel the presence of Christians and Christian values as oppressive, so oppressive as to send all festive moods to the devil. By feasts we under stand: pride, high-spirits, exuberance; scorn of all kinds of seriousness and Philistinism; a divine saying of Yea to one s self, as the result of physical plenitude and perfection all states to which the Christian cannot honestly say Yea. A feast is a pagan thing par excellence. (5) The courage of one s own nature: dressing- up in morality. To be able to call one s passions I. Y 338 good without the help of a moral formula: this is the standard which measures the extent to which a man is able to say Yea to his own nature, namely, how much or how little he has to have recourse to morality. (6) Death. The foolish physiological fact must be converted into a moral necessity. One should , live in such a way that one may have the will to die at the right time
917. To feel one s self stronger or, expressed other wise: happiness always presupposes a comparison (not necessarily with others, but with one s self, in the midst of a state of growth, and without being conscious that one is comparing). Artificial accentuation: whether by means of exciting chemicals or exciting errors (" halluci nations.") Take, for instance, the Christian s feeling of security; he feels himself strong in his confidence, in his patience, and his resignation: this artificial accentuation he owes to the fancy that he is pro tected by a God. Take the feeling of superiority, for instance: as when the Caliph of Morocco sees only globes on which his three united kingdoms cover four-fifths of the space. Take the feeling of uniqueness, for instance: as when the European imagines that culture belongs to Europe alone, and when he regards himself as a sort of abridged cosmic process; or, as when the Christian makes all existence revolve round the " Salvation of man." The question is, where does one begin to feel the pressure of constraint: it is thus that different degrees are ascertained. A philosopher, for instance, in the midst of the coolest and most transmontane feats of abstraction feels like a fish that enters its element: while colors and tones oppress him; not to speak of those dumb desires of that which others call " the ideal."
918. A healthy and vigorous little boy will look up sarcastically if he be asked: " Wilt thou become virtuous? "-but he immediately becomes eager if he be asked: " Wilt thou become stronger than thy comrades? " * How does one become stronger? By deciding slowly; and by holding firmly to the decision once it is made. Everything else follows of itself. Spontaneous and changeable natures: both species of the weak. We must not confound ourselves with them; we must feel distance betimes! Beware of good-natured people! Dealings with them make one torpid. All environment is good which makes one~~exercise those defensive and aggressive powers which are instinctive in man. All one s inventiveness should apply itself to putting one s power of will to the test. . . . Here the determining factor must be recognized as something which is not knowledge, astuteness, or wit. One must learn to command betimes, likewise to obey. A man must learn modesty and tact in modesty: he must learn to distinguish and to honor where modesty is displayed; he must like wise distinguish and honor wherever he bestows his confidence. * What does one repent most? One s modesty; the fact that one has not lent an ear to one s most individual needs; the fact that one has mistaken one s self; the fact that one has esteemed one s self low; the fact that one has lost all delicacy of hearing in regard to one s instincts. This want of reverence in regard to one s self is avenged by all sorts of losses: in health, friendship, well-being, pride, cheerfulness, freedom, determination, cour age. A man never forgives himself, later on, for this want of genuine egoism: he regards it as an objection and as a cause of doubt concerning his real ego.
919. I should like man to begin by respecting himself: everything else follows of itself. Naturally a man ceases from being anything to others in this way: for this is precisely what they are least likely to forgive. " What? a man who respects himself? " * This is something quite different from the blind instinct to love one s self. Nothing is more common in the love of the sexes or in that duality which is * Cf. Disraeli in Tancred: " Self-respect, too, is a super stition of past ages. ... It is not suited to these times; it is much too arrogant, too self-conceited, too egoistical. No one is important enough to have self-respect nowadays " (book iii. chap. v.). TR. 341 called ego, than_.a. certain contempt for that which is loved: the fatalism of love.
920. " I will have this or that "; u I would that this or that were so "; "I know that this or that is so" the degrees of power: the man of will, the man of desire, the man of fate.
921. The means by which a strong species maintains itself: It grants itself the right of exceptional actions, as a test of the power of self-control and of freedom. It abandons itself to states in which a man is not allowed to be anything else than a barbarian. It tries to acquire strength of will by everykind of asceticism. It is not expansive; it practises silence; it is cautious in regard to all charms. It learns to obey in such a way that obedi ence provides a test of self-maintenance. Casujstryis carried to its highest pitch in regard to points of honor. It never argues, " What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," but conversely! it regards reward, and the ability to repay, as a privilege, as a distinction. It does not covet other people s virtues.
922. The way in which one has to treat raw savages and the impossibility of dispensing with barbarous methods, becomes obvious, in practice, when one is transplanted, with all one s European pampering, to a spot such as the Congo, or anywhere else where it is necessary to maintain one s mastery over barbarians.
923. Warlike and peaceful people. Art thou a man who has the instincts of a warrior in thy blood? If this be so, another question must be put. Do thy instincts impel thee to attack or to defend? The rest of mankind, all those whose instincts are not warlike, desire peace, concord, " freedom," " equal rights ": these things are but names and steps for one and the same thing. Such men only wish to go where it is not necessary for them to defend themselves, such men become discon tented with themselves when they are obliged to offer resistance: they would fain create circum stances in which war is no longer necessary. If the worst came to the worst, they would resign themselves, obey, and submit: all these things are better than waging war thus does the Christian s instinct, for instance, whisper to him. In the born warrior s character there is something of armour, likewise in the choice of his circumstances and in the development of every one of his qualities: weapons are best evolved by the latter type, shields are best devised by the former. What expedients and what virtues do the un armed and the undefended require in order to survive and even to conquer?
924. What will become of a man who no longer has any reasons for either defence or attack? What will remain of his passions when he has lost those which form his defence and his weapons?
925. A marginal note to a niaiserie anglaise: " Do not to others that which you would not that they should do unto you." This stands for wisdom; this stands for prudence; this stands as the very basis of morality as " a golden maxim." John Stuart Mill believes in it (and what Englishman does not?). . . . But the maxim does not bear investigation. The argument, " Do not as you would not be done by," forbids action which pro duce harmful results; the thought behind always is that an action is invariably requited. What if some one came forward with the " Principe " in his hands, and said: " We must do those actions alone which enable us to steal a march on others, and which deprive others of the power of doing the same to us "? On the other hand, let us re member the Corsican who pledges his honor to vendetta. He too does not desire to have a bullet through him; but the prospect of one, the proba bility of getting one, does not deter him from vindicating his honor. . . . And in all really de cent actions are we not intentionally indifferent as to what result they will bring? To avoid an action which might have harmful results, that would be tantamount to forbidding all decent actions in general. Apart from this, the above maxim is valuable because it betrays a certain type of man: it is the instinct of the herd which formulates itself through him, we are equal, we regard each other as equal: as I am to thee so art thou to me. In this com munity equivalence of actions is really believed in an equivalence which never under any circum stances manifests itself in real conditions. It is impossible to requite every action: among real individuals equal actions do not exist, consequently there can be no such thing as " requital." . . . When I do anything I am very far from thinking that any" man is able to do anything at all tike it: the action belongs to me . . . . Nobody can pay me back for anything I do; the most that can be done is to make me the victim of another action.
926. Against John Stuart Mill. I abhor the man s vulgarity when he says: " What is right for one man is right for another "; " Do not to others that which you would not that they should do unto you." Such principles would fain establish the whole of human traffic upon mutual services so that every action would appear to be a cash pay ment for something done to us. The hypothesis here is ignoble to the last degree: it_is_ taken- for granted. that there is some sort of cqttivalence in value between my actions and thine; the most per sonal value of an action is simply cancelled in this manner (that part of an action which has no equivalent and which cannot be remunerated). " Reciprocity " is a piece of egregious vulgarity; the mere fact that what I do cannot and may not be done by another, that there is no such thing as equivalence (except in those very select circles where one actually has one s equal, inter pares], that in a really profound sense a man never re quites because he is something unique in himself and can only do unique things, this fundamental conviction contains the cause of aristocratic aloof ness from the mob, because the latter believes in equality,and consequently in the feasibility of equiva lence and " reciprocity."
927. The suburban Philistinism of moral valuations and of its concepts " useful " and " harmful " is well founded; it is the necessary point of view of a community which is only able to see and survey immediate and proximate consequences. The State and the political man are already in need of a more super-moral attitude of mind: because they have to calculate concerning a much * more complicated tissue of consequences. An eco- nomic policy for the whole world should be possible which could look at things in such broad perspec- l tive that all its isolated demands would seem for J:he moment not only unjust, but arbitrary.
928. " Should one follow one s feelings? " To set one s life at stake on the impulse of the moment, and actuated by a generous feeling, has little worth, and does not even distinguish one. Everybody is alike in being capable of this and in behaving in this way with determination, the criminal, the bandit, and the Corsican certainly outstrip thej honest man. A higher degree of excellence would be to over come this impulse, and to refrain from performing an heroic deed at its bidding, and to remain cold, raisonnable, free from the tempestuous surging of concomitant sensations of delight. . . . The same -. holds good of pity: it must first be sifted through I reason; without this it becomes just as dangerous 1 as any other passion. i The blind yielding to a passion, whether it be j generosity, pity, or hostility, is the cause of the I greatest evil. Greatness of character does not consist in not possessing these passions on the contrary, a man should possess them to a terrible degree: but he should lead them by the bridle . . . and even this he should not do out of love of con trol, but merely because. . . .
929. " To give up one s life for a cause " very effec tive. But there are many things for which one gives up one s life: the passions, one and all, will be gratified. Whether one s life be pledged to pity, to anger, or to revenge it matters not from the point of view of value. How many have not sacrificed their lives for pretty girls and even what is worse, their health! When one has temperament, one instinctively chooses the most dangerous things: if one is a philosopher, for in stance, one chooses the adventures of speculation; if one is virtuous, one chooses immorality. One kind of man will risk nothing, another kind will risk everything. Are we despisers of life? On the contrary, what we seek is life raised to a higher power, life in danger. . . . But, let me re- peat, we do not, on that account, wish to be more virtuous than others. Pascal, for instance, wished to risk nothing, and remained a Christian. That perhaps was virtuous. A man always sacrifices something.
930. How many advantages does not a man sacrifice! To how small an extent does he seek his own profit! All his emotions and passions wish to assert their rights, and how remote a passion is irom that cautious utility which consists in personal profit! A man does not strive after " happiness "; one must be an Englishman to be able to believe that a man is always seeking his own advantage. Our desires long to violate things with passion their overflowing strength seeks obstacles.
931. All passions are generally useful, some directly, others indirectly; in regard to utility it is absolutely impossible to fix upon any gradation of values, however certainly the forces of nature in general may be regarded as good (i.e. useful), from an economic point of view, they are still the sources of much that is terrible and much that is fatally irrevocable. The most one might say would be, that the mightiest passions are the most valuable: seeing that no stronger sources of power exist.
932. All well-meaning, helpful, good-natured attitudes of mind have not come to be honored on account , of their usefulness: but because they are the conditions peculiar to rich souls who are able to 4 bestow and whose value consists in their vital exuberance. Look into the eyes of the benevolent man! In them you will see the exact reverse of self-denial, of hatred of self, of " Pascalism."
933. In short what we require is to dominate the passions and not to weaken or to extirpate them! The greater the dominating power of the will, the greater the freedom that may be given to t the passions. The " great man " is so, owing to the free scope which he gives to his desires, and to the still greater power which knows how to enlist these magnificent monsters into its service. The " good man " in every stage of civilisation is at one and the same time the least dangerous and the most useful: a sort of medium; the idea formed of such a man by the common mind is that he is some one whom one has no reason to fear but whom one must not therefore despise. Education: essentially a means of ruining ex ceptions in favour of the rule. Culture: essenti- I ally the means of directing taste against the exceptions in favour of the mediocre. Only when a culture can dispose of an overflow of force, is it capable of being a hothouse for the luxurious culture of the exception, of the experi ment, of the danger, of the nuance: this is the tendency of every aristocratic culture.
934. All questions of strength: to what extent ought one to try and prevail against the preservative measures of society and the latter s prejudices? to what extent ought one to unfetter one s terrible qualities through which so many go to the dogs? to what extent ought one to run counter to truth and take up sides with its most questionable aspects? to what extent ought one to oppose suffering, self-contempt, pity, disease, vice, when it is always open to question whether one can ever master them (what does not kill us makes us stronger . . .)? and, finally, to what extent ought one to acknowledge the rights of the rule, of the common-place, of the petty, of the good, of the upright, in fact of the average man, without thereby allowing one s self to become vulgar? . . . The strongest test of character is to resist being ruined by the seductiveness of goodness. Good ness must be regarded as a luxury, as a refine ment, as a vice.
3. THE NOBLE MAN.
935. Type: real goodness, nobility, greatness of soul, as the result of vital wealth: which does not give in order to receive and which has no desire to elevate itself by being good; squandering is typical of genuine goodness; vital personal wealth is its prerequisite.
936. Aristocracy. Gregarious ideals at present culminating in the highest standard of value for society. It has been attempted to give them a cosmic, yea, and even a metaphysical, value. I defend aristocracy against them. Any society which would of itself preserve a feeling of respect and dtticatesse in regard to freedom, must consider itself as an exception, and have a force against it from which it distinguishes itself, and upon which it looks down with hostility. The more rights I surrender and the more I level myself down to others, the more deeply do I sink into the average and ultimately into the greatest number. The first condition which an aristocratic society must have in order to maintain a high degree of freedom among its members, is that extreme tension which arises from the presence of the most antagonistic instincts in all its units: from their will to dominate. . . . If ye would fain do away with strong contrasts and differences of rank, ye will also abolish strong love, lofty attitudes of mind, and the feeling of individuality. * Concerning the actual psychology of societies based upon freedom and equality. What is it that tends to diminish in such a society? The will to be responsible for one s self (the loss of this is a sign of the decline of autonomy); the ability to defend and to attack, even in spiritual matters; the power of command; the sense of reverence, of subservience, the ability to be silent; great passion, great achievements, tragedy and cheerfulness.
937. In 1814 Augustin Thierry read what Mont- losier had said in his work, De la Monarchic francaise: he answered with a cry of indignation, and set himself to his task. That emigrant had said: " Race d affranchis, race d esclaves arrache s de nos mains, peuple tributaire, peuple nouveau, licence vous fut octroyce d etre libres, et non pas a nous d etre nobles; pour nous tout est de droit, pour vous tout est de grace, nous ne sommes point de votre com- munautt; nous sommes un tout par nous memes"
938. How constantly the aristocratic world shears and weakens itself ever more and more! By means of its noble instincts it abandons its privileges, and owing to its refined and excessive culture, it takes an interest in the people, the weak, the poor, and the poetry of the lowly, etc.
939. There is such a thing as a noble and dangerous form of carelessness, which allows of profound conclusions and insight: the carelessness of the self-reliant and over-rich soul, which has never troubled itself about friends, but which knows only hospitality and knows how to practise it; whose heart and house are open to all who will enter beggar, cripple, or king. This is genuine sociability: he who is capable of it has hundreds of " friends," but probably not one friend.
940. The teaching {meden agan} applies to men with overflowing strength, not to the mediocre. {enkrateia} and {askesis} are only steps to higher things. Above them stands "golden Nature." "Thou shalt" unconditional obedience in Stoics, in Christian and Arabian Orders, in Kant s philosophy (it is immaterial whether this obedience is shown to a superior or to a concept). Higher than "Thou shalt" stands "I will" (the heroes); higher than "I will" stands "I am" (the gods of the Greeks). Barbarian gods express nothing of the pleasure of restraint, they are neither simple, nor light-hearted, nor moderate.
941. The essence of our gardens and palaces (and to the same extent the essence of all yearning after riches) is the desire to rid the eye of disorder and vulgarity, and to build a home for our soul's nobility. The majority of people certainly believe that they will develop higher natures when those beautiful and peaceful things have operated upon them: hence the exodus to Italy, hence all travelling, etc., and all reading and visits to theatres. People want to be formed, that is the kernel of their labors for culture! But the strong, the mighty, would themselves have a hand in the forming, and would fain have nothing strange about them. It is for this reason, too, that men go to open nature, not to find themselves, but to lose themselves and to forget themselves. The desire "to get away from one's self" is proper to all weaklings, and to all those who are discontented with themselves.
942. The only nobility is that of birth and blood. (I do not refer here to the prefix " Lord " and L almanac de Gotha: this is a parenthesis for donkeys.) Wherever people speak of the " aristo cracy of intellect," reasons are generally not lacking for concealing something; it is known to be a password among ambitious Jews. Intellect alone does not ennoble; on the contrary, some thing is always needed to ennoble intellect. What then is needed? Blood.
943. " T1 iat is noble? External punctiliousness; because this punc tiliousness hedges a man about, keeps him at a distance, saves him from being confounded with somebody else. A frivolous appearance in word, clothing, and bearing, with which stoical hardness and self- control protect themselves from all prying inquisi- tiveness or curiosity. A slow step and a slow glance. There are not too many valuable things on earth: and these come and wish to come of themselves to him who has value. We are not quick to admire. We know how to bear poverty, want, and even illness. We avoid small honors owing to our mis trust of all who are over-ready to praise: for the man who praises believes he understands what he praises: but to understand Balzac, that typical man of ambition, betrayed the fact comprendre Jest galer. Our doubt concerning the communicativeness of our hearts goes very deep; to us, loneliness is not a matter of choice, it is imposed upon us. We are convinced that we only have duties to our equals, to others we do as we think best: we know that justice is only to be expected among equals (alas! this will not be realized for some time to come). We are ironical towards the " gifted "; we hold the belief that no morality is possible with out good birth. We always feel as if we were those who had to dispense honors: while he is not found too frequently who would be worthy of honoring us. We are always disguised: the higher a man s nature the more is he in need of remaining incog nito. If there be a God, then out of sheer decency He ought only to show Himself on earth in the form of a man. We are capable of otium, of the uncondi tional conviction that although a handicraft does not shame one in any sense, it certainly reduces one s rank. However much we may respect " in dustry," and know how to give it its due, we do not appreciate it in a bourgeois sense, or after the manner of those insatiable and cackling artists who, like hens, cackle and lay eggs, and cackle again. We protect artists and poets and any one who happens to be a master in something; but as creatures of a higher order than those, who only know how to do something, who are only " pro ductive men," we do not confound ourselves with them. We find joy in all forms and ceremonies; we would fain foster everything formal, and we are convinced that courtesy is one of the greatest virtues; we feel suspicious of every kind of laisser alter, including the freedom of the press and of thought; because, under such conditions, the intel lect grows easy-going and coarse, and stretches its limbs. We take pleasure in women as in a perhaps daintier, more delicate, and more ethereal kind of creature. What a treat it is to meet creatures who have only dancing and nonsense and finery in their minds! They have always been the de light of every tense and profound male soul, whose life is burdened with heavy responsibilities. We take pleasure in princes and in priests, because in big things, as in small, they actually up hold the belief in the difference of human values, even in the estimation of the past, and at least symbolically. We are able to keep silence: but we do not breathe a word of this in the presence of listeners. We are able to endure long enmities: we lack the power of easy reconciliations. We have a loathing of demagogism, of en lightenment, of amiability, and plebeian familiarity. We collect precious things, the needs of higher and fastidious souls; we wish to possess nothing in common. We want to have our own books, our own landscapes. We protest against evil and fine experiences, and take care not to generalise too quickly. The individual case: how ironically we regard it when it has the bad taste to put on the airs of a rule! We love that which is natf, and naif people, but as spectators and higher creatures; we think Faust is just as simple as his Margaret. We have a low estimation of good people, because they are gregarious animals: we know how often an invaluable golden drop of goodness lies concealed beneath the most evil, the most malicious, and the hardest exterior, and that this single grain outweighs all the mere goody-goodi- ness of milk-and-watery souls. We don t regard a man of our kind as refuted by his vices, nor by his tomfooleries. We are well aware that we are not recognized with ease, and that we have every reason to make our foreground very prominent.
944. What is noble? The fact that one is constantly forced to be playing a part. That one is constantly searching for situations in which one is forced to put on airs. That one leaves happiness to the greatest number: the happiness which consists of inner peacefulness, of virtue, of comfort, and of Anglo-angelic-back-parlour-smugness,tf la Spencer. That one instinctively seeks for heavy responsi bilities. That one knows how to create enemies everywhere, at a pinch even in one s self. That one contradicts the greatest number not in words at all, but by continually behaving differently from them.
945. Virtue (for instance, truthfulness) is our most noble and most dangerous luxury. We must not decline the disadvantages which it brings in its train.
946. We refuse to be praised: we do what serves our purpose, what gives us pleasure, or what we are obliged to do.
947. What is chastity in a man? It means that his taste in sex has remained noble; that in eroticis he likes neither the brutal, the morbid, nor the clever.
948. The concept of honor is founded upon the belief in select society, in knightly excellences, in the obligation of having continually to play a part. In essentials it means that one does not take one s life too seriously, that one adheres unconditionally to the most dignified manners in one s dealings with everybody (at least in so far as they do not belong to " us "); that one is neither familiar, nor good-natured, nor hearty, nor modest, except inter pares; that one is always playing a part.
949. The fact that one sets one s life, one s health, and one s honor at stake, is the result of high spirits and of an overflowing and spendthrift will: it is not the result of philanthropy, but of the fact that every danger kindles our curiosity concern ing the measure of our strength, and provokes our courage.
950. " Eagles swoop down straight " nobility of soul is best revealed by the magnificent and proud foolishness with which it makes its attacks.
951. War should be made against all namby-pamby ideas of nobility A certain modicum of brutality cannot be dispensed with: no more than we can do without a certain approximation to criminality. " Self-satisfaction " must not be allowed; a man should look upon himself with an adventurous spirit; he should experiment with himself and run risks with himself no beautiful soul-quackery should be tolerated. I want to give a more robust ideal a chance of prevailing.
952. " Paradise is under the shadow of a swordsman " this is also a symbol and a test-word by which souls with noble and warrior-like origin betray and discover themselves.
953. The two paths. There comes a period when man has a surplus amount of power at his dis posal. Science aims at establishing the slavery of nature. Then man acquires the leisure in which to develop himself into something new and more lofty. A new aristocracy. It is then that a large number of virtues which are now conditions of existence are superseded. Qualities which are no longer needed are on that account lost. We no longer need virtues: consequently we are losing them (likewise the morality of "one thing is needful," of the salvation of the soul, and of im mortality: these were means wherewith to make man capable of enormous self-tyranny, through the emotion of great fear!!!). The different kinds of needs by means of whose discipline man is formed: need teaches work, thought, and self-control. * Physiological purification and strengthening. The new aristocracy is in need of an opposing body which it may combat: it must be driven to ex tremities in order to maintain itself. The two futures of mankind: (i) the conse quence of a levelling-down to mediocrity; (2) conscious aloofness and self-development. A doctrine which would cleave gulf: it maintains the highest and the lowest species (it destroys the intermediate). The aristocracies, both spiritual and temporal, which have existed hitherto prove nothing against the necessity of a new aristocracy.
4. THE LORDS OF THE EARTH.
954. A certain question constantly recurs to us; it is perhaps a seductive and evil question; may it be whispered into the ears of those who have a right to such doubtful problems those strong souls of today whose dominion over themselves is un swerving: is it not high time, now that the type " gregarious animal " is developing ever more and more in Europe, to set about rearing, thoroughly, artificially, and consciously, an opposite type, and to attempt to establish the latter s virtues? And would not the democratic movement itself find for the first time a sort of goal, salvation, and justifi cation, if some one appeared who availed himself of it so that at last, beside its new and sublime product, slavery (for this must be the end of European democracy), that higher species of ruling and Caesarian spirits might also be produced, which would stand upon it, hold to it, and would elevate themselves through it? This new race would climb aloft to new and hitherto impossible things, to a broader vision, and to its task on earth.
955. The aspect of the European of today makes me very hopeful. A daring and ruling race is here building itself up upon the foundation of an extremely intelligent, gregarious mass. It is obvious that the educational movements for the latter are not alone prominent nowadays.
956. The same conditions which go to develop the gregarious animal also force the development of the leaders.
957. The question, and at the same time the task, is approaching with hesitation, terrible as Fate, but nevertheless inevitable: how shall the earth as a whole be ruled? And to what end shall man as a whole no longer as a people or as a race be reared and trained? Legislative moralities are the principal means by which one can form mankind, according to the fancy oi a creative and profound will: provided, of course, that such an artistic will of the first order gets the power into its own hands, and can make its creative will prevail over long periods in the form of legislation, religions, and morals. At present, and probably for some time to come, one will seek such colossally creative men, such really great men, as I understand them, in vain: they will be lacking, until, after many disappointments, we are forced to begin to understand why it is they are lacking, and that nothing bars with greater hostility their rise and development, at present and for some time to come, than that which is now called the morality in Europe. Just as if there were no other kind of morality, and could be no other kind, than the one we have already characterised as herd-morality. It is this morality which is now striving with all its power , to attain to that green-meadow happiness on earth, which consists in security, absence of danger, ease, I facilities for livelihood, and, last but not least, " if! all goes well," even hopes to dispense with all; kinds of shepherds and bell-wethers. The two doctrines which it preaches most universally are ~" equality of rights " and " pity for all sufferers " and it even regards suffering itself as something which must be got rid of absolutely. That such ideas may be modern leads one to think very poorly of modernity. He, however, who has re flected deeply concerning the question, how and where the plant man has hitherto grown most vigorously, is forced to believe that this has 363 always taken place under the opposite conditions; that to this end the danger of the situation has to increase enormously, his inventive faculty and dissembling powers have to fight their way up under long oppression and compulsion, and his will to life has to be increased to the uncon ditioned will to power, to over-power: he believes that danger, severity, violence, peril in the street and in the heart, inequality of rights, secrecy, stoicism, seductive art, and devilry of every kind in short, the opposite of all gregarious desiderata are necessary for the elevation of man. Such a morality with opposite designs, which would rear man upwards instead of to comfort and mediocrity; such a morality, with the intention of producing a ruling caste the future lords of the earth must, in order to be taught at all, introduce itself as if it were in some way correlated to the prevailing moral law, and must come forward under the cover of the latter s words and forms. But seeing that, to this end, a host of transitionary and de ceptive measures must be discovered, and that the life of a single individual stands for almost nothing in view of the accomplishment of such lengthy tasks and aims, the first thing that must be done is- to rear a new kind of man in whom the duration of the necessary will and the necessary instincts is guaranteed for many generations. This must be a new kind of ruling species and caste this ought to be quite as clear as the somewhat lengthy and not easily expressed consequences of this thought. The aim should be to prepare a trans- valuation of values for a particularly strong kind of 364 man, most highly gifted in intellect and will, and, to this end, slowly and cautiously to liberate in him a whole host of slandered instincts hitherto held in check: whoever meditates about this problem belongs to us, the free spirits certainly not to that kind of " free spirit " which has existed hitherto: for these desired practically the reverse. To this order, it seems to me, belong, above all, the pessimists of Europe, the poets and thinkers of a revolted idealism, in so far as their discontent with existence in general must consistently at least have led them to be dissatisfied with the man of the present; the same applies to certain insati ably ambitious artists who courageously and un conditionally fight against the gregarious animal for the special rights of higher men, and subdue all herd-instincts and precautions of more ex ceptional minds by their seductive art. Thirdly and lastly, we should include in this group all those critics and historians by whom the dis covery of the Old World, which has begun so happily this was the work of the new Columbus, of German intellect will be courageously con tinued (for we still stand in the very first stages of this conquest). For in the Old World, as a matter of fact, a different and more lordly morality ruled than that of today; and the man of antiquity, under the educational ban of his morality, was a stronger and deeper man than the man of today up to the present he has been the , only well - constituted man. The temptation, however, which from antiquity to the present day has always exercised its power on such lucky 365 strokes of Nature, i.e. on strong and enterprising souls, is, even at the present day, the most subtle and most effective of anti-democratic and anti- Christian powers, just as it was in the time of the Renaissance.
958. I am writing for a race of men which does not yet exist: for "the lords of the earth." In Plato's Theages the following passage will be found: "Every one of us would like if possible to be master of mankind; if possible, a God." This attitude of mind must be reinstated in our midst. Englishmen, Americans, and Russians.
959. That primeval forest-plant " Man " always appears where the struggle for power has been waged longest. Great men. Primeval forest creatures, the Romans.
960. From now henceforward there will be such favourable first conditions for greater ruling powers as have never yet been found on earth. And this is by no means the most important point. The establishment has been made possible of in ternational race unions which will set themselves the task of rearing a ruling race, the future " lords of the earth " a new, vast aristocracy based upon the most severe self-discipline, in which the will of philosophical men of power and artist-tyrants will 366 be stamped upon thousands of years: a higher species of men which, thanks to their preponder ance of will, knowledge, riches, and influence, will avail themselves of democratic Europe as the most suitable and supple instrument they can have for taking the fate of the earth into their own hands, and working as artists upon man him self. Enough! The time is coming for us to transform all our views on politics.
5. THE GREAT MAN.
961. I will endeavour to see at which periods in history great men arise. The significance of despotic moralities that have lasted a long time: they strain the bow, provided they do not break it.
962. A great man, a man whom Nature has built up an 5 inverTtetTin a grand style, What is siih a man? First t in his general course of action his consistency is so broad that owinLJtCL_its very breadtn it can be surveyed only with difficulty, and consequently misleads;? he possesses the capacity of extending his will over great stretches of his life, and of despising and rejecting all small things, whatever most beautiful and " divine " things of the world there may be among them. , he is colder, harder, less cautious and more reejrom the fear of " public opinioft "; he does n t econ freej possess the VI H-IMHI whuph TC nrnpaHKIf* with nnr nny of those things whidy. .are rrlinf f " virtues ot" the hurJ.",. If he is unable to tw7, he walks alone; (he he asks for no compassionate" heart, but servants instruments; in his dealings with men his one aim is to make something out of them. He knows that he cannot reveal himself to anybody: he thinks it bad taste to become familiar; and as a rule he is not familiar when people think he is. When he is not talking to his soul, he wears a mask. He would rather lie than tell the truth, because lying requires morejpirit and will. Jbere is1a_ loneliness, wifhin his heart i which neither praise nor blame can reach, because he js his own ju dge from whomjs no appeal.
963. The great man is necessarily a sceptic (I do not mean to say by this that he must appear to be one), provided that greatness consists in this: to will something great, together with the means thereto. Freedom from any kind of conviction is j a factor in his strength of will. And thus it is in keeping with that " enlightened form of des potism " which every great passion exercises. Such a passion enlists intellect in its service; it even has the courage for unholy means; it creates without hesitation; it allows itself con victions, it even uses them, but it never submits to them. The need of faith and of anything un conditionally negative or affirmative is a proof of weakness; all weakness is weakness of will. The man of faith, the believer, is necessarily an inferior species of man. From this it follows that " all freedom of spirit," i.e. instinctive scepticism, is the prerequisite of greatness.
964. The great man is conscious of his power over a people, and of the fact that he coincides temporarily with a people or with a century this magnifying of his self-consciousness as causa and voluntas is misunderstood as "altruism": he feels driven to means of communication: all great men are in ventive in such means. They want to form great communities in their own image; they would fain give multiformity and disorder definite shape; it stimulates them to behold chaos. The misunderstanding of love. There is a slavish love which subordinates itself and gives itself away which idealises and deceives itself; there is a divine species of love which despises and loves at the same time, and which remodels and elevates the thing it loves. The object is to attain that enormous energy of greatness which can model the man of the future by means of discipline and also by means of the annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched, and which can yet avoid going to ruin at the sight of the suffering created thereby, the like of which has never been seen before.
965. The revolution, confusion, and distress of whole peoples is in my opinion of less importance than the misfortunes which attend great individuals in their development. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived: the many misfortunes of all these small folk do not together constitute a sum-total, except in the feelings of mighty men. To think of one s self in moments of great danger, and to draw one s own advantage from the calamities of thou sands in the case of the man who differs very much from the common ruck may be a sign of a great character which is able to master its feelings of pity and justice.
966. In contradistinction to the animal, man has developed such a host of antagonistic instincts and impulses in himself, that he has become master of the earth by means of this synthesis. Moralities are only the expression of local and limited orders of rank in this multifarious world of instincts which prevent man from perishing through their antagonism. Thus a masterful instinct so weakens and subtilises the instinct which opposes it that it becomes an impulse which provides the stimulus for the activity of the principal instinct. The highest man would have the greatest multifariousness in his instincts, and he would possess these in the relatively strongest degree in which he is able to endure them. As a matter of fact, wherever the plant, man, is found strong, mighty instincts are to be found opposing each other (e.g. Shakespeare), but they are subdued.
967. Would one not be justified in reckoning all i great men among the wickedl This is not so easy to demonstrate in the case of individuals. They are so frequently capable of masterly dis simulation that they very often assume the airs and forms of great virtues. Often, too, they seriously reverence virtues, and in such a way as to be passionately hard towards themselves; but as the result of cruelty. Seen from a distance such things are liable to deceive. Many, on the other hand, misunderstand themselves; not infrequently, too, a great mission will call forth great qualities, eg. justice. The essential fact is: the greatest men may also perhaps have great virtues, but then they also have the opposites of these virtues. I believe that it is precisely out of the presence of these opposites and of the feelings they suscitate, that the great man arises, for the great man is the broad arch which spans two banks lying far apart.
968. In great men we find the specific qualities ol life in their highest manifestation: injustice, false hood, exploitation. But inasmuch as their effect has always been overwhelming, their essential nature has been most thoroughly misunderstood, and interpreted as goodness. The type of such an interpreter would be Carlyle.*
969. Generally speaking, everything is worth no more and no less than one has paid for it. This of course does not hold good in the case of an isolated individual; the great capacities of the individual have no relation whatsoever to that which he has done, sacrificed, and suffered for them. But if one should examine the previous history of his race one would be sure to find the record of an extraordinary storing up and capitalising of power by means of all kinds of abstinence, struggle, in dustry, and determination. It is because the great man has cost so much, and not because he stands there as a miracle, as a gift from heaven, or as an accident, that he became great: " Heredity " is a false notion. A man s ancestors have always paid the price of what he is.
970. The danger of modesty. To adapt ourselves too early to duties, societies, and daily schemes of work in which accident may have placed us, at a time when neither our powers nor our aim in life has stepped peremptorily into our consciousness; * This not only refers to Heroes and Hero- Worship, but doubtless to Carlyle s prodigious misunderstanding of Goethe a misunderstanding which still requires to be put right by a critic untainted by Puritanism. TR. the premature certainty of conscience and feeling of relief and of sociability which is acquired by this precocious, modest attitude, and which appears to our minds as a deliverance from those inner and outer disturbances of our feelings all this pampers and keeps a man down in the most dangerous fashion imaginable, To learn to respect things which people about us respect, as if we had no standard or right of our own to determine values; the strain of appraising things as others appraise them, counter to the whisperings of our inner taste, which also has a conscience of its own, becomes a terribly subtle kind of constraint: and if in the end no explosion takes place which bursts all the bonds of love and morality at once, then such a spirit becomes withered, dwarfed, feminine, and objective. The reverse of this is bad enough, but still it is better than the foregoing: to suffer from one s environment, from its praise just as much as from its blame; to be wounded by it and to fester inwardly without betraying the fact; to defend one s self involuntarily and suspiciously against its love; to learn to be silent, and perchance to conceal this by talking; to create nooks and safe, lonely hiding-places where one can go and take breath for a moment, or shed tears of sublime comfort until at last one has grown strong enough to say: " What on earth have I to do with you? " and to go one s way alone.
971. Those men who are in themselves destinies, and whose advent is the advent of fate, the whole race of heroic bearers of burdens: oh! how heartily and gladly would they have respite from themselves for once in a while! how they crave after stout hearts and shoulders, that they might free themselves, were it bwt for an hour or two, from that which oppresses them! And how fruitlessly they crave! . . They wait i_they.. observe all that passes before their eyes: no man even cometh nigh to them with a trjJusancItfh part of their suffering and passion; no" manguesseth to wnat end they have waited. . . ."" ATTat,"Tat7THey"arn the first lesson oTlheir life: to wait no longer; and forthwith they learn their second lesson: to be affable, to be modest; and from that time onwards to endure everybody and every kind of thing in short, to endure still a little more than they had endured theretofore.
6. THE HIGHEST MAN AS LAWGIVER OF THE FUTURE.
972. The lawgivers of the future. After having tried for a long time in vain to attach a particular meaning to the word " philosopher," for I found many antagonistic traits, I recognized that we can distinguish between two kinds of philosophers: (1) Those who desire to establish any large system of values (logical or moral); (2) Those who are the lawgivers of such valua tions. The former try to seize upon the world of the present or the past, by embodying or abbreviating the multifarious phenomena by means of signs: their object is to make it possible for us to survey, to reflect upon, to comprehend, and to utilise everything that has happened hitherto they serve the purpose of man by using all past things to the benefit of his future. The second class, however, are commanders; they say: " Thus shall it be! " They alone determine the " whither " and the " wherefore," and that which will be useful and beneficial to man; they have command over the previous work of scientific men, and all knowledge is to them only a means to their creations. This second kind of philosopher seldom appears; and as a matter of fact their situation and their danger is appalling. How often have they not intentionally blindfolded their eyes in order to shut out the sight of the small strip of ground which separates them from the abyss and from utter destruction. Plato, for instance, when he persuaded himself that " the good," as he wanted it, was not Plato s good, but " the good in itself," the eternal treasure which a certain man of the name of Plato had chanced to find on his way! This same will to blindness prevails in a much coarser form in the case of the founders of religion; their " Thou shalt " must on no account sound to their ears like " I will," they only dare to pursue their task as if under the command of God; their legislation of values can only be a burden they can bear if they regard it as " revelation," in this way their conscience is not crushed by the responsi bility. As soon as those two comforting expedients that of Plato and that of Muhammed have been overthrown, and no thinker can any longer relieve his conscience with the hypothesis " God " or " eternal values," the claim of the lawgiver to de termine new values rises to an awfulness which has j not yet been experienced. Now those elect, onwhom the faint light of such a duty is beginning to dawn, try and see whether they cannot escape it as their greatest danger by means of a timely side-spring: for instance, they try to persuade themselves that their task is already accomplished, or that it defies accomplishment, or that their shoulders are not broad enough for such burdens, or that they are already taken up with burdens closer to hand, or even that this new and remote duty is a temptation and a seduction, drawing them away from all other duties; a disease, a kind of madness. Many, as a matter of fact, do succeed in evading the path appointed to them: throughout the whole of history we can see the traces of such de serters and their guilty consciences. In most cases, however, there comes to such men of destiny that hour of delivery, that autumnal season of maturity,! in which they are forced to do that which they didj not even "wish to do": and that deed before which in the past they have trembled most, falls easily and unsought from the tree, as an involun-j tary deed, almost as a present.
973. The human horizon. Philosophers may be con ceived as men who make the greatest efforts to discover to what extent man can elevate himself this holds good more particularly of Plato: how far man s power can extend. But they do this as individuals; perhaps the instinct of Caesars and of all founders of states, etc., was greater, for it pre occupied itself with the question how far man could be urged forward in development under " favourable circumstances." What they did not sufficiently understand, however, was the nature of favourable circumstances. The great question: "Where has the plant man grown most magnificently heretofore?" In order to answer this, a comparative study of history is necessary.
974. Every fact and every work exercises a fresh persuasion over every age and every new species of man. History always enunciates new truths.
975. To remain objective, severe, firm, and hard while making a thought prevail is perhaps the best forte of artists; but if for this purpose any one have to work upon human material (as teachers, states men, have to do, etc.), then the repose, the coldness, and the hardness soon vanish. In natures like Caesar and Napoleon we are able to divine something of the nature of " disinterestedness " in their work on their marble, whatever be the number of men that are sacrificed in the process. In this direction the future of higher men lies: to bear the greatest re sponsibilities and not to go to rack and ruin through them. Hitherto the deceptions of inspira tion have almost always been necessary for a man not to lose faith in his own hand, and in his right to his task.
976. The reason why philosophers are mostly failures. Because among the conditions which determine them there are qualities which generally ruin other men: (1) A philosopher must have an enormous multiplicity of qualities; he must be a sort of ab breviation of man and have all man s high and base desires: the danger of the contrast within him, and of the possibility of his loathing him self; (2) He must be inquisitive in an extraordinary number of ways: the danger of versatility; (3) He must be just and honest in the highest sense, but profound both in love and hate (and in injustice); (4) He must not only be a spectator but a law giver: a judge and defendant (in so far as he is an abbreviation of the world); (5) He must be extremely multiform and yet firm and hard. He must be supple.
977. The really regal calling of the philosopher (according to the expression of Alcuin the Anglo- Saxon): " Prava corrigere, et recta corroborare et sancta sublimare"
978. The new philosopher can only arise in conjunc tion with a ruling class, as the highest spiritualisa- tion of the latter. Great politics, the rule of the earth, as a proximate contingency; the total lack of principles necessary thereto.
979. Fundamental concept: the new values must first be created this remains our duty the philosopher must be our lawgiver. New species. (How the greatest species hitherto [for instance, the Greeks] were reared: this kind of accident must now be consciously striven for.)
980. Supposing one thinks of the philosopher as an educator who, looking down from his lonely eleva tion, is powerful enough to draw long chains of generations up to him: then he must be granted the most terrible privileges of a great educator. An educator never says what he himself thinks; but only that which he thinks it is good for those (whom he is educating to hear upon any subject. This dissimulation on his part must not be found out; it is part of his masterliness that people should believe in his honesty, he must be capable of all the means of discipline and education: there are some natures which he will only be able to raise by means of lashing them with his scorn; others who are lazy, irresolute, cowardly, and vain, he will be able to affect only with exaggerated praise. Such a teacher stands beyond good and evil, but nobody must know that he does.
981. We must not make men " better," we must not talk to them about morality in any form as if " morality in itself," or an ideal kind of man in general, could be taken for granted; but we must create circumstances in which stronger men are necessary, such as for their part will require a morality (or, better still: a bodily and spiritual discipline) which makes men strong, and upon which they will consequently insist! As they will f need one so badly, they will have it. We must not let ourselves be seduced by blue eyes and heaving breasts: greatness of soul has absolutely nothing romantic about it. And unfortunately nothing whatever amiable either.
982. From warriors we must learn: (i) to associate death with those interests for which we are fighting that makes us venerable; (2) we must learn to sacrifice numbers, and to take our cause sufficiently seriously not to spare men; (3) we must practise inexorable discipline, and allow ourselves violence and cunning in war.
983. The education which rears those ruling virtues that allow a man to become master of his benevolence - soul. and his pity: the great disciplinary virtues ("Forgive thine enemies " is mere child s play beside them), and the passions of the creator, must be ele vated to the heights we must cease from carving marble! The exceptional and powerful position of those creatures (compared with that of all princes hitherto): the Roman Caesar with Christ soul.
984. We must not separate greatness of soul from intellectual greatness. For the former involves independence-, but without intellectual greatness independence should not be allowed; all it does is to create disasters even in its lust of well-doing and of practising "justice." Inferior spirits must obey, consequently they cannot be possessed of greatness.
985. The more lofty philosophical man who is sur rounded by loneliness, not because he wishes to be alone, but because he is what he is, and cannot find his equal: what a number of dangers and torments are reserved for him, precisely at the present time, when we have lost our belief in the order of rank, and consequently no longer know how to under stand or honor this isolation! Formerly the sage almost sanctified himself in the consciences of the mob by going aside in this way; today the anchor ite sees himself as though enveloped in a cloud of gloomy doubt and suspicions. And not alone by the envious and the wretched: in every well-meant act that he experiences he is bound to discover mis understanding, neglect, and superficiality. He knows the crafty tricks of foolish pity which makes these people feel so good and holy when they attempt to save him from his own destiny, by giving him more comfortable situations and more decent and reliable society. Yes, he will even get to admire the unconscious lust of destruction with which all mediocre spirits stand up and oppose him, believing all the while that they have a holy right to do so! For men of such incomprehensible loneliness it is necessary to put a good stretch ol country between them and the officiousness of their fellows: this is part of their prudence. For such a man to maintain himself uppermost today amid the dangerous maelstroms of the age which threaten to draw him under, even cunning and disguise will be necessary. Every attempt he makes to order his life in the present and with the present every time he draws near to these men and their modern desires, he will have to expiate as if it were an actual sin: and withal he may look with wonder at the concealed wisdom of his nature, which after every one of these attempts immediately leads him back to himself by means of illnesses and painful accidents.
986. " Maledetto colui che contrista un spirto immortal! " MANZONI (Conte di Carmagnola, Act II.)
987. The most difficult and the highest form which man can attain is the most seldom successful: thus the history of philosophy reveals a super abundance of bungled and unhappy cases of man hood, and its march is an extremely slow one; whole centuries intervene and suppress what has been achieved: and in this way the connecting- link is always made to fail. It is an appalling history, this history of the highest men, of the sages. What is most often damaged is precisely the recollection of great men, for the semi-successful and botched cases of mankind misunderstand them and overcome them by their " successes." Whenever an " effect " is noticeable, the masses gather in a crowd round it; to hear the inferior and the poor in spirit having their say is a terrible ear-splitting torment for him who knows and trembles at the thought, that the fate of man depends upon the success of its highest types. From the days of my childhood I have reflected upon the sage s conditions of existence, and I will not conceal my happy conviction that in Europe he has once more become possible perhaps only for a short time.
988. These new philosophers begin with a description of a systematic order of rank and difference of value among men, what they desire is, alas precisely the reverse of an assimilation and equalisation of man: they teach estrangement 383 in every sense, they cleave gulfs such as have never yet existed, and they would fain have man become more evil than he ever was. For the present they live concealed and estranged even from each other. For many reasons they will find it necessary to be anchorites and to wear masks they will therefore be of little use in the matter of seeking for their equals. They will live alone, and probably know the torments of all the loneliest forms of loneliness. Should they, however, thanks to any accident, meet each other on the road, I wager that they would not know each other, or that they would deceive each other in a number of ways.
989. " Les philosophies ne sont pas faits pour s aimer. i Les aigles ne volent point en compagnie. II faut laisser cela aux perdrix, aux etourneaux. . . Planer au-dessus et avoir des griffes, voila le lot des grands ge"nies." GALIANI.
990. I forgot to say that such philosophers are cheerful, and that they like to sit in the abyss of a perfectly clear sky: they are in need of different means for enduring life than other men; for they suffer in a different way (that is to say, just as much from the depth of their contempt of man as from their love of man). The animal L which suffered most on earth discovered for itself -laughter.
991. Concerning the misunderstanding of " cheerfulness" It is a temporary relief from long tension; it is the wantonness, the Saturnalia of a spirit, which is consecrating and preparing itself for long and terrible resolutions. The " fool " in the form of " science."
992. The new order of rank among spirits; tragic natures no longer in the van.
993. It is a comfort to me to know that over the smoke and filth of human baseness there is a higher and brighter mankind, which, judging from their number, must be a small race (for everything that is in any way distinguished is ipso facto rare). A man does not belong to this race because he happens to be more gifted, more virtuous, more heroic, or more loving than the men below, but because he is colder, brighter, more far-sighted, and more lonely; because he endures, prefers, and even insists upon, loneliness as the joy, the privilege, yea, even the condition of existence; because he lives amid clouds and lightnings as among his equals, and likewise among sunrays, dewdrops, snowflakes, and all that which must needs come from the heights, and which in its course moves ever from heaven to earth. The desire to look aloft is not our desire. Heroes, martyrs, geniuses, and enthusiasts of all kinds, are not quiet, patient, subtle, cold, or slow enough for us.
994. The absolute conviction that valuations above and below are different; that innumerable ex periences are wanting to the latter: that when looking upwards from below misunderstandings are necessary.
995. How do men attain to great power and to great tasks? All the virtues and proficiences of the body and the soul are little by little laboriously acquired, through great industry, self-control, and keeping one s self within narrow bounds, through a frequent, energetic, and genuine repetition of the same work and of the same hardships; but there are men who are the heirs and masters of this slowly acquired and manifold treasure of virtues and proficiences because, owing to happy and reasonable marriages and also to lucky accidents, the acquired and accumulated forces of many generations, instead of being squandered and subdivided, have been assembled together by means of steadfast struggling and willing. And thus, in the end, a man appears who is such a monster of strength, that he craves for a monstrous task. For it is our power which has command of us: and the wretched intellectual play of aims and intentions and motivations lies only in the foreground however much weak eyes may recognise the principal factors in these things.
996. The sublime man has the highest value, even when he is most delicate and fragile, because an abundance of very difficult and rare things have been reared through many generations and united in him.
997. I teach that there are higher and lower men, and that a single individual may under certain cir cumstances justify whole millenniums of existence that is to say, a wealthier, more gifted, greater, and more complete man, as compared with in numerable imperfect and fragmentary men.
998. Away from rulers and rid of all bonds, live the highest men: and in the rulers they have their instruments.
999. The order of rank: he who determines values and leads the will of millenniums, and does this by leading the highest natures he is the highest man.
1000. I fancy I have divined some of the things that lie hidden in the soul of the highest man; perhaps every man who has divined so much must go to ruin: but he who has seen the highest man must do all he can to make him possible. Fundamental thought: we must make the future the standard of all our valuations and not seek the laws for our conduct behind us.
1001. Not "mankind," but Superman is the goal!
1002. " Come 1 uom s eterna. . . ." Inf. xv. 85.
II. DIONYSUS.
1003. To him who is one of Nature s lucky strokes, to him unto whom my heart goes out, to him who is carved from one integral block, which is hard, sweet, and fragrant to him from whom even my nose can derive some pleasure let this book be dedicated. He enjoys that which is beneficial to him. His pleasure in anything ceases when the limits of what is beneficial to him are overstepped. He divines the remedies for partial injuries; his illnesses are the great stimulants of his existence. He understands how to exploit his serious accidents. He grows stronger under the misfortunes which threaten to annihilate him. He instinctively gathers from all he sees, hears, and experiences, the materials for what concerns him most, he pursues a selective principle, he rejects a good deal. He reacts with that tardiness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him, he tests the stimulus: whence does it come? whither does it lead? He does not submit. He is always in his own company, whether his intercourse be with books, with men, or with Nature. He honors anything by choosing it, by conceding to it, by trusting it.
1004. We should attain to such a height, to such a lofty eagle s ledge, in our observation, as to be able to understand that everything happens, just as it ought to happen: and that all " imperfec tion," and the pain it brings, belong to all that which is most eminently desirable.
1005. Towards 1876 I experienced a fright; for I saw that everything I had most wished for up to that time was being compromised. I realized this when I perceived what Wagner was actually driving at: and I was bound very fast to nim by all the bonds of a profound similarity of needs, by gratitude, by the thought that he could not be replaced, and by the absolute void which I saw facing me. Just about this time I believed myself to be inextricably entangled in my Philology and my professorship in the accident and last shift of my life: I did not know how to get out of it, and was tired, used up, and on my last legs. At about the same time I realized that what my instincts most desired to attain was precisely the reverse of what Schopenhauer s instincts wanted that is to say, a justification of life, even where it was most terrible, most equivocal, and most false: to this end, I had the formula " Dionysian " in my hand. Schopenhauer s interpretation of the " absolute " as will was certainly a step towards that concept of the " absolute " which supposed it to be necessarily good, blessed, true, and integral; but Schopenhauer did not understand how to deify this will: he remained suspended in the moral- Christian ideal. Indeed, he was still so very much under the dominion of Christian values, that, once he could no longer regard the absolute as God, he had to conceive it as evil, foolish, utterly reprehensible. He did not realize that there is an infinite number of ways of being different, and even of being God.
1006. * Hitherto, moral values have been the highest values: does anybody doubt this? ... If we bring down the values from their pedestal, we thereby alter all values: the principle of their order of rank which has prevailed hitherto is thus over thrown.
1007. Revalue values what does this mean? It implies that all spontaneous motives, all new, future, and stronger motives, are still extant; but that they now appear under false names and false valuations, and have not yet become conscious of themselves. We ought to have the courage to become, conscious, and to affirm all that which has been attained to get rid of the humdrum character of old valuations, which makes us unworthy of the best and strongest things that we have achieved.
1008. Any doctrine would be superfluous for which everything is not already prepared in the way of accumulated forces and explosive material. A Revaluation of values can only be accomplished when there is a tension of new needs, and a new set of needy people who feel all old values as painful, although they are not conscious of what is wrong.
1009. The standpoint from which my values are determined: is abundance or desire active? . . . Is one a mere spectator, or is one s own shoulder at the wheel is one looking away or is one turning aside? ... Is one acting spontaneously, as the j result of accumulated strength, or is one merely reacting to a goad or to a stimulus? ... Is one simply acting as the result of a paucity of elements, or of such an overwhelming dominion over a host of elements that this power enlists the latter into its service if it requires them? ... Is one a problem one s self or is one a solution already? . . . Is one perfect through the smallness of the task, or imperfect owing to the extraordinary character of the aim? ... Is one genuine or only an actor; is one genuine as an actor, or only the bad copy of an actor? is one a representative or the creature represented? Is one a personality or merely a rendezvous of personalities? ... Is one ill from a disease or from surplus health? Does one lead as a shepherd, or as an " exception " (third alternative: as a fugitive)? Is one in need of dignity, or can one play the clown? Is one in search of resistance, or is one evading it? Is one imperfect owing to one s precocity or to one s tardiness? Is it one s nature to say yea, or no, or is one a peacock s tail of garish parts? Is one proud enough not to feel ashamed even of one s vanity? Is one still able to feel a bite of conscience (this species is becoming rare; formerly conscience had to bite too often: it is as if it now no longer had enough teeth to do so)? Is one still capable of a " duty "? (there are some people who would lose the whole joy of their lives if they were deprived of their duty this holds good especially of feminine creatures, who are born subjects).
1010. Supposing our common comprehension of the universe were a misunderstanding, would it be possible to conceive of a form of perfection, within the limits of which even such a misunderstanding as this could be sanctioned? The concept of a new form of perfection: that which does not correspond to our logic, to our " beauty," to our " good," to our " truth," might be perfect in a higher sense even than our ideal is.
1011. Our most important limitation: we must not deify the unknown; we are just beginning to know so little. The false and wasted endeavours. Our " new world ": we must ascertain to what extent we are the creators of our valuations we will thus be able to put " sense " into history. This belief in truth is reaching its final logical conclusion in us ye know how it reads: that if there is anything at all that must be worshipped it is appearance; that falsehood and not truth is divine.
1012. He who urges rational thought forward, thereby also drives its antagonistic power mysticism and foolery of every kind to new feats of strength. We should recognise that every movement is (1) partly the manifestation of fatigue resulting from a previous movement (satiety after it, the malice of weakness towards it, and disease); and (2) partly a newly awakened accumulation of long slumbering forces, and therefore wanton, violent, healthy.
1013. Health and morbidness: let us be careful! The standard is the bloom of the body, the agility, courage, and cheerfulness of the mind but also, of course, how much morbidness a man can bear and overcome, and convert into health. That which would send more delicate natures to the dogs, belongs to the stimulating means of great health.
1014. It is only a question of power: to have all the morbid traits of the century, but to balance them by means of overflowing, plastic, and rejuvenating power. The strong man.
1015. Concerning the strength of the nineteenth century. We are more mediaeval than the eighteenth century; not only more inquisitive or more susceptible to the strange and to the rare. We have revolted against the Revolution. . . . We have freed ourselves from the fear of reason, which was the spectre of the eighteenth century: we once more dare to be childish, lyrical, absurd, in a word, " we are musicians." And we are just as little frightened of the ridiculous as of the absurd. The devil finds that he is tolerated even by God: * better still, he has become interesting as one who has been mis understood and slandered for ages, -we are the saviours of the devil s honor. We no longer separate trieTgreat from the terrible. We reconcile good things, in all their complexity, * This is reminiscent of Goethe s Faust. See " Prologue in Heaven." TR. with the very worst things; we have overcome the desideratum of the past (which wanted goodness to grow without the increase of evil). The cowardice towards the ideal, peculiar to the Renaissance, has diminished we even dare to aspire to the latter s morality. Intolerance towards priests and the Church has at the same time come to an end; " It is immoral to believe in God " but this is pre cisely what we regard as the best possible justifica tion of this belief. On all these things we have conferred the civic rights of our minds. We do not tremble before the back side of " good things " (we even look for it, we are brave and inquisitive enough for that), of Greek antiquity, of morality, of reason, of good taste, for instance (we reckon up the losses which we incur with all this treasure: we almost reduce ourselves to poverty with such a treasure). Neither do we conceal the back side of " evil things" from ourselves.
1016. That which does us honor. If anything does us honor, it is this: we have transferred our serious ness to other things; all those things which have been despised and laid aside as base by all ages, we regard as important on the other hand, we surrender " fine feelings " at a cheap rate. Could any aberration be more dangerous than the contempt of the body? As if all intellectuality were not thereby condemned to become morbid, and to take refuge in the vapeurs of " idealism "! Nothing that has been thought out by Christians and idealists holds water: we are more radical. We have discovered the " smallest world " every where as the most decisive. The paving-stones in the streets, good air in our rooms, food understood according to its worth: we value all the necessaries of life seriously, and despise all " beautiful soulfulness " as a form of " levity and frivolity." That which has been most despised hitherto, is now pressed into the front rank.
1017. In the place of Rousseau s " man of Nature," the nineteenth century has discovered a much more genuine image of " Man," it had the courage to do this. . . . On the whole, the Christian concept of man has in a way been reinstalled. What we have not had the courage to do, was to call precisely this " man par excellence" good, and to see the future of mankind guaranteed in him. In the same way, we did not dare to regard the growth in the terrible side of man s character as an ac companying feature of every advance in culture; in this sense we are still under the influence of the Christian ideal, and side with it against paganism, and likewise against the Renaissance concept of virtu. But the key of culture is not to be found in this way: and in praxi we still have the forgeries of history in favour of the " good man " (as if he alone constituted the progress of humanity) and the socialistic ideal (i.e. the residue of Christianity and of Rousseau in the de- Christianised world). The fight against the eighteenth century: it meets , with its greatest conquerors in Goethe and Napoleon. Schopenhauer, too, fights against the eighteenth? century; but he returns involuntarily to the!; seventeenth he is a modern Pascal, with Pascalianl valuations, without Christianity. Schopenhauer was! not strong enough to invent a new yea. Napoleon: we see the necessary relationship between the higher and the terrible man. " Man " reinstalled, and her due of contempt and fear re stored to woman. Highest activity and health are the signs of the great man; the straight line and grand style rediscovered in action; the mightiest of all instincts, that of life itself, the lust of dominion, heartily welcomed
1018. (Revue des deux mondes, I5th February 1887. Taine concerning Napoleon) " Suddenly the master faculty reveals itself: the artist, which was latent in the politician, comes forth from his scabbard; he creates dans I ideal et I impossible. He is once more recognized as that which he is: the posthumous brother of Dante and of Michelangelo; and verily, in view of the definite contours of his vision, the intensity, the coherence, and inner con sistency of his dream, the depth of his meditations, the superhuman greatness of his conception, he is their equal: son ghiie a la meme faille et la meme structure; il est un des trois esprits souverains de la renaissance italienne." Nota bene. Dante, Michelangelo, Napoleon.
1019. Concerning the pessimism of strength. In the internal economy of fat primitive man s soul, the fear of evil preponderates. What is evil. Three kinds of things: accident, uncertainty, the unexpected. How does primitive man combat evil? He conceives it as a thing of reason, of power, even as a person. By this means he is enabled to make treaties with it, and generally to operate upon it in advance to forestall it. Another expedient is to declare its evil and harmful character to be but apparent: the conse quences of accidental occurrences, and of uncer tainty and the unexpected, are interpreted as well-meant, as reasonable. A third means is to interpret evil, above all, as merited: evil is thus justified as a punishment. In short, man submits to it all religious and moral interpretations are but forms of submission to evil. The belief that a good purpose lies behind all evil, implies the renunciation of any desire to combat it. Now, the history of every culture shows a diminution of this fear of the accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected. Culture means precisely, to learn to reckon, to discover causes, to acquire the power of forestalling events, to acquire a belief in necessity. With the growth of culture, man is able to dispense with that primitive form of submission to evil (called religion or morality), and that "justification of evil." Now he wages war against " evil," he gets rid of it. Yes, a state of security, of belief in law and the possibility of cal culation, is possible, in which consciousness regards these things with tedium, in which the joy of the accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected, actually becomes a spur. Let us halt a moment before this symptom of highest culture, I call it he pessimism of strength. Man now no longer requires a "justification of evil "; justification is precisely what he abhors: he enjoys evil, pur, cru; he regards purposeless evil as the most interesting kind of evil. If he had required a God in the past, he now delights in cosmic disorder without a God, a world of accident, to the essence of which terror, ambiguity, and seductiveness belong. In a state of this sort, it is precisely goodness which requires to be justified that is to say, it must either have an evil and a dangerous basis, or else it must contain a vast amount of stupidity: in which case it still pleases. Animality no longer awakens terror now; a very intellectual and happy wanton spirit in favour of the animal in man, is, in such periods, the most triumphant form of spirit uality. Mart 4s-jiow -strong enough to be able to feel ashamed of a belief in God: he may now play the part of the devil s advocate afresh. If in practice he pretends to uphold virtue, it will be for those reasons which lead virtue to be associated with subtlety, cunning, lust of gain, and a form of the lust of power. This pessimism of strength also ends in a theo dicy , i.e. in an absolute saying of yea to the world but the same arguments will be raised in favour of life which formerly were raised against it: and in this way, in a conception of this world as the highest ideal possible, which has been effectively attained.
1020. The principal kinds of pessimism: The pessimism of sensitiveness (excessive irrit ability with a preponderance of the feelings of pain). The pessimism of the will that is not free (other wise expressed: the lack of resisting power a- gainst stimuli). The pessimism of doubt (shyness in regard to everything fixed, in regard to all grasping and touching). The psychological conditions which belong to these different kinds of pessimism, may all be ob served in a lunatic asylum, even though they are there found in a slightly exaggerated form. The same applies to " Nihilism " (the penetrating feeling of " nonentity "). What, however, is the nature of Pascal s moral pessimism, and the metaphysical pessimism of the Vedanta-Philosophy? What is the nature of the social pessimism of anarchists (as of Shelley), and of the pessimism of compassion (like that of Leo Tolstoy and of Alfred de Vigny)? Are all these things not also the phenomena of decay and sickness? . . . And is not excessive seriousness in regard to moral values, or in regard to " other-world " fictions, or social calamities, or suffering in general, of the same order? All such exaggeration of a single and narrow standpoint is in itself a sign of sickness. The same applies to the preponderance of a negative over an affirma tive attitude! In this respect we must not confound with the above: the joy of saying and doing no, which is the result of the enormous power and tenseness of an affirmative attitude peculiar to all rich and mighty men and ages. It is, as it were, a luxury, a form of courage too, which opposes the terrible, which has sympathy with the frightful and the questionable; because, among other things, one is terrible and questionable: the Dionysian in will, intellect, and taste.
1021. My Five " Noes" (1) My fight against the feeling of sin and the introduction of the notion of punishment into the physical and metaphysical world, likewise into psychology and the interpretation of history. The recognition of the fact that all philosophies and val uations hitherto have been saturated with morality. (2) My identification and my discovery of the traditional ideal, of the Christian ideal, even where the dogmatic form of Christianity has been wrecked. The danger of the Christian ideal resides in its valuations, in that which can dispense with concrete expression: my struggle against latent Christianity (for instance, in music, in Socialism). (3) My struggle against the eighteenth century of Rousseau, against his" Nature," against his "good man," his belief in the dominion of feeling against the pampering, weakening, and moralising of rn_an: an ideal born of the hatred of aristocratic culture, which in practice is the dominion of unbridled feelings of resentment, and invented as a standard for the purpose of war (the Christian morality of the feeling of sin, as well as the morality of resent ment, is an attitude of the mob). (4) My fight against Romanticism, in which the ideals of Christianity and of Rousseau converge, but which possesses at the same time a yearning for that antiquity which knew of sacerdotal and aristocratic culture, a yearning for virtu, and for the " strong man " something extremely hybrid; a false and imitated kind of stronger humanity, which appreciates extreme conditions in general and sees the symptom of strength in them (" the cult of passion"; an imitation of the most expressive forms, furore espressivo, originating not out of pleni tude, but out otwanf). (In the nineteenth century there are some things which are born out of re lative plenitude i.e. out of well-being , cheerful music, etc. among poets, for instance, Stifter and Gottfried Keller give signs of more strength and inner well-being than . The great strides of en gineering, of inventions, of the natural sciences and of history (?) are relative products of the strength and self-reliance of the nineteenth century.) (5) My struggle against the predominance of gregarious instincts, now science makes common cause with them; against the profound hate with which every kind of order of rank and of aloofness is treated.
1022. From the pressure of plenitude, from the tension of forces that are continually increasing within us and which cannot yet discharge themselves, a con dition is produced which is very similar to that which precedes a storm: we like Nature s sky- become overcast. That, too, is " pessimism." . . A teaching which puts an end to such a condition by the fact that it commands something: a trans- valuation of values by means of which the accumu lated forces are given a channel, a direction, so that they explode into deeds and flashes of light ning does not in the least require to be a hedonistic teaching: in so far as it releases strength which was compressed to an agonising degree, it brings happiness.
1023. Pleasure appears with the feeling of power. Happiness means that the consciousness of power and triumph has begun to prevail. Progress is the strengthening of the type, the ability to exercise great will-power: everything else is a misunderstanding and a danger.
1024. There comes a time when the old masquerade and moral togging-up of the passions provokes repugnance: naked Nature; when the quanta of power are recognized as decidedly simple (as deter mining rank); when grand style appears again as the result of great passion.
1025. The purpose of culture would have us enlist every thing terrible, step by step and experimentally, into its service; but before it is strong enough for this it must combat, moderate, mask, and even curse every thing terrible. Wherever a culture points to anything as evil, it betrays its fear and therefore weakness. Thesis: everything good is the evil of yore which has been rendered serviceable. Standard: the more terrible and the greater the passions may be which an age, a people, and an individual are at liberty to possess, because they are able to use them as a means, the higher is their culture-, the more mediocre, weak, submissive, and cowardly a man may be, the more things he will regard as evil: according to him the kingdom of evil is the largest. The lowest man will see the kingdom of evil (i.e. that which is forbidden him and which is hostile to him) everywhere.
1026. It is not a fact that "happiness follows virtue but it is the mighty man who first declares his happy state to be virtue. Evil actions belong to the mighty and the virtuous: bad and base actions belong to the subjected. The mightiest man, the creator, would have to be the most evil, inasmuch as he makes his ideal prevail over all men in opposition to their ideals, and remoulds them according to his own image. Evil, in this respect, means hard, painful, enforced. Such men as Napoleon must always return and always settle our belief in the self-glory of the in dividual afresh: he himself, however, was corrupted by the means he had to stoop to, and had lost noblesse of character. If he had had to prevail among another kind of men, he could have availed himself of other means; and thus it would not seem necessary that a Caesar must become bad.
1027. Man is a combination of the beast and the super- , beast higher man a combination of the monster and the superman: * these opposites belong to| each other. With every degree of a man s growth j towards greatness and loftiness,he also grows down-i wards into the depths and into the terrible: we should not desire the one without the other; or,$. better still: the more fundamentally we desire thej one, the more completely we shall achieve the; other.
1028. Terribleness belongs to greatness: let us not deceive ourselves.
1029. I have taught the knowledge of such terrible things, that all "Epicurean contentment" is impossible concerning them. Dionysian pleasure is the only adequate kind here: was the first to discover the tragic. Thanks to their superficiality in ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it. Resignation is not the lesson of tragedy, but only the misunderstanding of it! The yearning for nonentity is the denial of tragic wisdom, its opposite!
1030. A rich and powerful soul not only gets over painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, rob beries, and insults: it actually leaves such dark infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and power; and, what is most important of all, in pos session of an increased blissfulness in love. I believe that he who has divined something of the most fundamental conditions of love, will under stand Dante for having written over the door of his Inferno: " I also am the creation of eternal love."
1031. To have travelled over the whole circumference of the modern soul, and to have sat in all its corners my ambition, my torment, and my happiness. Veritably to have overcome pessimism, and, as I the result thereof, to have acquired the eyes of a | Goethe full of love and goodwill.
1032. The first question is by no means whether we are satisfied with ourselves: but whether we are satisfied with anything at all. Granting that we should say yea to any single moment, we have then affirmed not only ourselves, but the whole of ex istence. For nothing stands by itself, either in us or in other things: and if our soul has vibrated anc rung with happiness, like a chord, once only anc only once, then all eternity was necessary in order to bring about that one event, and all eternity, ii this single moment of our affirmation, was callec good, was saved, justified, and blessed.
1033. The passions which say yea. Pride, happiness, health, the love of the sexes, hostility and war, reverence, beautiful attitudes, manners, strong will, the discipline of lofty spirituality, the will to power, and gratitude to the Earth and to Life: all that is rich, that would fain bestow, and that refreshes, gilds, immortalises, and deifies Life the whole power of the virtues that glorify all declaring things good, saying yea, and doing yea.
1034. We, many or few, who once more dare to live in a world purged of morality, we pagans in faith, we are probably also the first who understand what a pagan faith is: to be obliged to imagine higher creatures than man, but to imagine them beyond good and evil; to be compelled to value all higher existence as immoral existence. We believe in Olympus, and not in the " man on the cross."
1035. The more modern man has exercised his ideal ising power in regard to a God mostly by moralis ing the latter ever more and more what does that mean? nothing good, a diminution in man s strength. As a matter of fact, the reverse would be possible: and indications of this are not wanting. God im agined as emancipation from morality, comprising the whole of the abundant assembly of Life s con trasts, and saving and justifying them in a divine agony. God as the beyond, the superior elevation, to the wretched cul-de-sac morality of " Good and Evil."
1036. A humanitarian God cannot be demonstrated from the world that is known to us: so much are ye driven and forced to conclude today. But what conclusion do ye draw from this? " He can not be demonstrated to us ": the scepticism of knowledge. You all fear the conclusion: " From the world that is known to us quite a different God would be demonstrable, such a one as would certainly not be humanitarian " and, in a word, you cling fast to your God, and invent a world for Him which is unknown to us.
1037. Let us banish the highest good from our con cept of God: it is unworthy of a God. Let us likewise banish the highest wisdom: it is the vanity of philosophers who have perpetrated the absurdity of a God who is a monster of wisdom:!.j the idea was to make Him as like them as possible, "t No! God as the highest power that is sufficient! I - Everything follows from that, even " the world "!
1038. And how many new Gods are not still pos sible! I, myself, in whom the religious that is to say, the god-creating instinct occasionally be comes active at the most inappropriate moments: how very differently the divine has revealed itself every time to me! ... So many strange things have passed before me in those timeless moments, which fall into a man s life as if they came from the moon, and in which he absolutely no longer knows how old he is or how young he still may be! ... I would not doubt that there are several kinds of gods. . . . Some are not wanting which one could not possibly imagine without a certain halcyonic calm and levity. . . . Light feet perhaps belong to the concept " God." Is it necessary to explain that a God knows how to hold Himself preferably outside all Philistine and rationalist circles? also (between ourselves) beyond good and evil? His outlook is a free one as Goethe would say. And to invoke the authority of Zarathustra, which cannot be too highly appreciated in this regard: Zarathustra goes as f ar as to confess, " I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance. , ." Again I say: how many new Gods are not still possible! Certainly Zarathustrahimself is merely an old atheist: he believes neither inoldnorinnewgods. Zarathustra says, " he would"- but Zarathustra will not. . . . Take care to understand him well. The type God conceived according to the type of creative spirits, of " great men."
1039. And how many new ideals are not, at bottom, still possible? Here is a little ideal that I seize upon every five weeks, while upon a wild and lonely walk, in the azure moment of a blasphemous joy. To spend one s life amid delicate and absurd things; a stranger to reality; half-artist, half-bird, half- metaphysician; without a yea or a nay for reality, save that from time to time one acknowledges it, after the manner of a good dancer, with the tips of one s toes; always tickled by some happy ray of sunlight; relieved and encouraged even by sorrow for sorrow preserves the happy man; fixing a little tail of jokes even to the most holy thing: this, as is clear, is the ideal of a heavy spirit, a ton in weight of the spirit of gravity.
1040. From the military -school of the soul. (Dedicated to the brave, the good-humoured, and the abstinent.) I should not like to undervalue the amiable vir tues; but greatness of soul is not compatible with them. Even in the arts, grand style excludes all merely pleasing qualities. * In times of painful tension and vulnerability, choose war. War hardens and develops muscle. * Those who have been deeply wounded have the Olympian laughter; a man only has what he needs. * It has now already lasted ten years: no sound any longer reaches me a land without rain. A man must have a vast amount of humanity at his disposal in order not to pine away in such drought.*
1041. My new road to an affirmative attitude. Philosophy, as I have understood it and lived it up to the present, is the voluntary quest of the repulsive and atrocious aspects of existence. From the long ex perience derived from such wandering over ice and desert, I learnt to regard quite differently everything that had been philosophised hitherto: the con cealed history of philosophy, the psychology of its great names came into the light for me. " How much truth can a spirit endure; for how much truth is it daring enough? " this for me was the real * For the benefit of those readers who are not acquainted with the circumstances of Nietzsche s life, it would be as well to point out that this is a purely personal plaint, comprehen sible enough in the mouth of one who, like Nietzsche, was for years a lonely anchorite. TR. measure of value. Error is a piece of cowardice . . . every victory on the part of knowledge,is the re sults! courage,of hardness towards one s self, of clean liness towards one's self. . . . experimental philosophy which I am living, even anticipates the possibility of the most fundamental Nihilism, on principle: but by this I do not mean that it re mains standing at a negation, at a no, or at a will to negation. It would rather attain to the very reverse to a Dionysian affirmation of the world, as it is, without subtraction, exception, or choice it would have eternal circular motion: the same things, the same reasoning, and the same illogical concatenation. The highest state to which a philo sopher can attain: to maintain a Dionysian attitude to Life my formula for this is amor fati. To this end we must not only consider those aspects of life which have been denied hitherto, as necessary, but as desirable, and not only desirable to those aspects which have been affirmed hitherto (as complements or first prerequisites, so to speak), but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more terrible, and more veritable aspects of life, in which the latter s will expresses itself most clearly. To this end, we must also value that aspect of existence which alone has been affirmed until now; we must understand whence this valuation arises, and to how slight an extent it has to do with a Dionysian valuation of Life: I selected and under stood that which in this respect says " yea " (on the one hand, the instinct of the sufferer; on the other, the gregarious instinct; and thirdly, the instinct of the greater number against the exceptions). 413 Thus I divined to what extent a stronger kind of man must necessarily imagine the elevation and enhancement of man in another direction: higher creatures , beyond good and evil, beyond those values which bear the stamp of their origin in the sphere of suffering, of the herd, and of the greater number I searched for the data of this topsy-turvy forma tion of ideals in history (the concepts " pagan," " classical," " noble," have been discovered afresh and brought forward).
1042. We should demonstrate to what extent the religion of the Greeks was higher than Judaeo-Christianity. The latter triumphed because the Greek religion was degenerate (and decadent).
1043. It is not surprising that a couple 01 centuries have been necessary in order to link up again a couple of centuries are very little indeed.
1044. There must be some people who sanctify func tions, not only eating and drinking: and not only in memory of them, or in harmony with them; but this world must be for ever glorified anew, and in a novel fashion.
1045. The most intellectual men feel the ecstasy and charm of sensual things in a way which other men those with " fleshy hearts " cannot possibly imagine, and ought not to be able to imagine: they are sensualists with the best possible faith, because they grant the senses a more fundamental value than that fine sieve, that thinning and mincing machine, or whatever it is called, which in the language of the people is termed " spirit . The strength and power of the senses this is the most essential thing in a sound man who is one of Nature s lucky strokes: the splendid beast must first be there otherwise what is the value of all " humanisation "?
1046. (1) We want to hold fast to our senses, and to the belief in them and accept their logical conclusions! The hostility to the senses in the philo sophy that has been written up to the present, has been man s greatest feat of nonsense. (2) The world now extant, on which all earthly and living things have so built themselves, that it now appears as it does (enduring and proceeding slowly), we would fain continue building not criticize it away as false! (3) Our valuations help in the process of build ing; they emphasize and accentuate. What does it mean when whole religions say: "Everything is bad and false and evil"? This condemnation of the whole process can only be the judgment of the failures! (4) True, the failures might be the greatest sufferers and therefore the most subtle! The contented might be worth little! (5) We must understand the fundamental artistic phenomenon which is called "Life," the formative spirit, which constructs under the most unfavourable circumstances: and in the slowest manner pos sible The proof of all its combinations must first be given afresh: it maintains itself.
1047. Sexuality, lust of dominion, the pleasure derived from appearance and deception, great and joyful gratitude to Life and its typical conditions these things are essential to all paganism, and it has a good conscience on its side. That which is hostile to Nature (already in Greek antiquity) combats paganism in the form of morality and dialectics.
1048. An anti- metaphysical view of the world yes, but an artistic one.
1049. Apollo s misapprehension: the eternity of beauti-1 ful forms, the aristocratic prescription, " Thus sJiall it ever be! " I Dionysus: Sensuality and cruelty. The perish-; able nature of existence might be interpreted as j the joy of procreative and destructive force, as un- remitting creation.
1050. The word "Dionysian" expresses: a constraint to unity, a soaring above personality, the commonplace, society, reality, and above the abyss of the ephemeral; the passionately painful sensation of superabundance, in darker, fuller, and more fluctu ating conditions; an ecstatic saying of yea to the collective character of existence, as that which remains the same, and equally mighty and blissful throughout all change; the great pantheistic sympathy with pleasure and pain, which declares even the most terrible and most questionable qualities of existence good, and sanctifies them; the eternal will to procreation, to fruitfulness, and to recurrence; the feeling of unity in regard to the necessity of creating and annihilating. The word "Apollonian" expresses: the con straint to be absolutely isolated, to the typical " individual," to everything that simplifies, distinguishes, and makes strong, salient, definite, and typical: to freedom within the law. The further development of art is just as neces sarily bound up with the antagonism of these two natural art-forces, as the further development of mankind is bound up with the antagonism of the sexes. The plenitude of power and restraint, the highest form of self-affirmation in a cool, noble, and reserved kind of beauty: the Apollonianism of the Hellenic will. This antagonism of the Dionysian and of the Apollonian in the Greek soul, is one of the great riddles which made me feel drawn to the essence of Hellenism. At bottom, I troubled about nothing save the solution of the question, why precisely Greek Apollonianism should have been forced to grow out of a Dionysian soil: the Dionysian Greek had need of being Apollonian; that is to say,in order to break his will to the titanic, to the com plex, to the uncertain, to the horrible by a will to measure, to simplicity, and to submission to rule and concept. Extravagance, wildness, and Asiatic tendencies lie at the root of the Greeks. Their courage consists in their struggle with their Asiatic nature: they were not given beauty, any more than they were given Logic and moral naturalness: in them these things are victories, they are willed and fought forthey constitute the triumph of the Greeks.
1051. It is clear that only the rarest and most lucky cases of humanity can attain to the highest and most sublime human joys in which Life celebrates its own glorification; and this only happens when these rare creatures themselves and their forbears have lived a long preparatory life leading to this goal, without, however, having done so consciously. It is then that an overflowing wealth of multi farious forces and the most agile power of " free will " and lordly command exist together in per fect concord in one man; then the intellect is just as much at ease, or at home, in the senses as the senses are at ease or at home in it; and everything that takes place in the latter must give rise to ex traordinarily subtle joys in the former. And vice versd: just think of this vice versd for a moment in a man like Hafiz; even Goethe, though to a lesser degree, gives some idea of this process. It is probable that, in such perfect and well-constituted men, the most sensual functions are finally trans figured by a symbolic elatedness of the highest intellectuality; in themselves they feel a kind of deification of the body and are most remote from the ascetic philosophy of the principle "God is a Spirit": from this principle it is clear that the ascetic is the " botched man " who declares only that to be good and " God " which is absolute, and which judges and condemns. From that height of joy in which man feels him self completely and utterly a deified form and self- justification of nature, down to the joy of healthy peasants and healthy semi-human beasts, the whole of this long and enormous gradation of the light and color of happiness was called by the Greek not without that grateful quivering of one who is initiated into secret, not without much caution and pious silence by the godlike name: Dionysus. What then do all modern men the children of a crumbling, multifarious, sick and strange age know of the compass of Greek happiness, how could they know anything about it! Whence would the slaves of " modern ideas " derive their right to Dionysian feasts! When the Greek body and soul were in full " bloom," and not, as it were, in states of morbid exaltation and madness, there arose the secret symbol of the loftiest affirmation and transfigura tion of life and the world that has ever existed. There we have a standard beside which everything that has grown since must seem too short, too poor, too narrow: if we but pronounce the word " Dionysus " in the presence of the best of more recent names and things, in the presence of Goethe, for instance, or Beethoven, or Shakespeare, or Raphael, in a trice we realize that our best things and moments are condemned. Dionysus is a judge Am I understood? There can be no doubt that the Greeks sought to interpret, by means of their Dionysian experiences, the final mysteries of the " destiny of the soul " and everything they knew concerning the education and the purification of man, and above all concerning the absolute hier archy and inequality of value between man and man. There is the deepest experience of all Greeks, which they conceal beneath great silence, we do not know the Greeks so long as this hidden and sub terranean access to them remains obstructed. The indiscreet eyes of scholars will never perceive any thing in these things, however much learned energy may still have to be expended in the service of this excavation; even the noble zeal of such friends of antiquity as Goethe and Winckelmann, seems to savor somewhat of bad form and of arrogance, precisely in this respect. To wait and to prepare oneself; to await the appearance of new sources of knowledge; to prepare oneself in solitude for the sight of new faces and the sound of new voices; to cleanse one s soul ever more and more of the dust and noise, as of a country fair, which is peculiar to this age; to overcome everything Christian by some thing super-Christian, and not only to rid oneself of it, for the Christian doctrine is the counter- doctrine to the Dionysian; to rediscover the South in oneself, and to stretch a clear, glittering, and mysterious southern sky above one; to reconquer the southern healthiness and concealed power of the soul, once more for oneself; to increase the com pass of one s soul step by step, and to become more supernational, more European, more super- European, more Oriental, and finally more Hellenic for Hellenism was, as a matter of fact, the first great union and synthesis of everything Oriental, and precisely on that account, the beginning of the European soul, the discovery of our " new world ": he who lives under such imperatives, who knows what he may not encounter some day? Possibly a new dawn.
1052. The two types: Dionysus and Christ on the Cross. We should ascertain whether the typically religious man is a decadent phenomenon (the great inno vators are one and all morbid and epileptic); but do not let us forget to include that type of the religious man who is pagan. Is the pagan cult not a form of gratitude for, and affirmation of, Life? Ought not its most representative type to be an apology and deification of Life? The type of a well-constituted and ecstatically overflowing spirit! The type of a spirit which absorbs the contradic tions and problems of existence, and which solves them! At this point I set up the Dionysus of the Greeks: the religious affirmation of Life, of the whole of Life, not of denied and partial Life (it is typical that in this cult the sexual act awakens ideas of depth, mystery, and reverence). Dionysus versus "Christ"; here you have the contrast. It is not a difference in regard to the martyrdom, but the latter has a different mean- ing. Life itself Life's eternal fruitful ness and re- currence caused anguish, destruction, and the will to annihilation. In the other case, the suffering of the "Christ as the Innocent One" stands as an objection against Life, it is the formula of Life's condemnation. Readers will guess that the prob lem concerns the meaning of suffering; whether a Christian or a tragic meaning be given to it. In the first case it is the road to a holy mode of existence; in the second case existence itself is regarded as sufficiently holy to justify an enormous amount of suffering. The tragic man says yea even to the most excruciating suffering: he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deifying, to be able to do this; the Christian denies even the happy lots on earth: he is weak, poor, and disinherited enough to suffer from life in any form. God on the Cross is a curse upon Life, a signpost directing people to deliver themselves from it; Dionysus cut into pieces is a promise of Life: it will be for ever born anew, and rise afresh from destruction.
III. ETERNAL RECURRENCE.
1053. MY philosophy reveals the triumphant thought through which all other systems of thought must ultimately perish. It is the great disciplinary (thought: those races that cannot bear it are doomed; those which regard it as the greatest blessing are destined to rule.
1054. The greatest of all fights: for this purpose a new weapon is required. A hammer: a terrible alternative must be created. Europe must be brought face to face with the logic of facts, and confronted with the question whether its will for ruin is really earnest. General levelling down to mediocrity must be avoided. Rather than this it would be preferable to perish.
1055. A pessimistic attitude of mind and a pessi mistic doctrine and ecstatic Nihilism, may in certain circumstances even prove indispensable to the philosopher, that is to say, as a mighty form of pressure, or hammer, with which he can smash up degenerate, perishing races and put them out of existence; with which he can beat a track to a new order of life, or instil a longing for nonentity in those who are degenerate and who desire to perish.
1056. I wish to teach the thought which gives unto many the right to cancel their existences. The great disciplinary thought.
1057. Eternal Recurrence. A prophecy. 1. The exposition of the doctrine and its theo retical first principles and results. 2. The proof of the doctrine. 3. Probable results which will follow from its being believed. (It makes everything break open.) (a) The means of enduring it. (8) The means of ignoring it. 4. Its place in history is a means. The period ot greatest danger. The foundation of an oligarchy above peoples and their interests: education directed at establishing a political policy for humanity in general. A counterpart of Jesuitism.
1058. The two greatest philosophical points of view (both discovered by Germans). (a) That of becoming and that of evolution. (b) That based upon the values of existence (but the wretched form of German pessimism must first be overcome!) Both points of view reconciled by me in a decisive manner. Everything becomes and returns for ever, escape is impossible. Granted that we could appraise the value of existence, what would be the result of it? The thought of recurrence is a principle of selection in the service of power (and barbarity!). The ripeness of man for this thought.
1059. I. The thought of eternal recurrence: its first principles which must necessarily be true if it were true. What its result is. 2. It is the most oppressive thought: its prob able results, provided it be not prevented, that is to say, provided all values be not revalued. 3. The means of enduring it: the transvaluation of all values. Pleasure no longer to be found in certainty, but in uncertainty; no longer " cause and effect," but continual creativeness; no longer the will to self-preservation, but to power; no longer the modest expression " it is all only sub jective," but " it is all our work! let us be proud of it,"
1060. In order to endure the thought of recurrence, freedom from morality is necessary; new means against the fact fain (pain regarded as the instru ment, as the father of pleasure; there is no accre tive consciousness of pain); pleasure derived from all kinds of uncertainty and tentativeness, as a counterpoise to extreme fatalism; suppression of the concept "necessity"; suppression of the " will "; suppression of " absolute knowledge." Greatest elevation of man s consciousness of strength, as that which creates superman.
1061. The two extremes of thought the materialistic and the platonic are reconciled in eternal recurrence: both are regarded as ideals.
1062. If the universe had a goal, that goal would have been reached by now.___ if any sort of unforeseen final state existed, that state also would have been reached. If it were capable of any Halting or stability of any " being," it would only have possessed this capability of becoming stable for one instant in its development; and again becoming would have been at an end for ages, and with it all thinking and all " spirit." The fact of " intellects " being in a state of development proves that the universe can have no goal, no final state, and is incapable of being. But the old habit of thinking of some purpose in regard to all phenomena, and of thinking of a directing and creating deity in regard to the universe, is so powerful, that the thinker has to go to great pains in order to avoid thinking of the very aimlessness of the world as intended. The idea that the universe intentionally evades a goal, and even knows artificial means wherewith it prevents itself from falling into a circular movement, must occur to all those who would fain attribute to the uni verse the capacity of eternally regenerating itself that is to say, they would fain impose upon a finite, definite force which is invariable in quantity, like the universe, the miraculous gift of renewing its forms and its conditions for all eternity. Although the universe is no longer a God, it must still be capable of the divine power of creating and transforming; it must forbid itself to relapse into any one of its previous forms; it must not only have the intention, but also the means, of avoiding any sort of repetition; every second of its existence, even, it must control every single one of its movements, with the view of avoiding goals, final states, and repetitions and all the other results of such an unpardonable and insane method of thought and desire. All this is nothing more than the old religious mode of thought and desire, which, in spite of all, longs to believe that in some way or other the universe resembles the old, beloved, infinite, and infinitely- creative God that in some way or other " the old God still lives" that longing of Spinoza's which is expressed in the words " deus sive natura " (what he really felt was " natura sive deus "). Which, then, is the proposition and belief in which the decisive change, the present preponderance of the scientific spirit over the religious and god- fancying spirit, is best formulated? Ought it not to be: the universe, as force, must not be thought of as unlimited, because it cannot be thought of in this way, we forbid ourselves the concept in finite force, because it is incompatible with the idea of force? Whence it follows that the universe lacks the power of eternal renewal.
1063. The principle of the conservation of energy inevitably involves eternal recurrence.
1064. That a state of equilibrium has never been reached, proves that it is impossible. But in infinite space it must have been reached. Like wise in spherical space. Inform of space must be the cause of the eternal movement, and ulti mately of all " imperfection." That "energy" and "stability" and "immut ability " are contradictory. The measure of energy (dimensionally) is fixed,though it is essentially fluid. " That which is timeless " must be refuted. At any given moment of energy, the absolute condi tions for a new distribution of all forces are present; it cannot remain stationary. Change is part of its essence, therefore time is as well: by this means, however, the necessity of change has only been established once more in theory.
1065. A certain emperor always bore the fleeting nature of all things in his mind, in order not to value them too seriously, and to be able to live quietly in their midst. Conversely, everything seems to me much too important for it to be so fleeting; I seek an eternity for everything: ought one to pour the most precious salves and wines into the sea? My consolation is that everything that has been is eternal: the sea will wash it up again.
1066. The new concept of the universe. The universe exists; it is nothing that grows into existence and that passes out of existence. Or, better still, it develops, it passes away, but it never began to develop, and has never ceased from passing away; it maintains itself in both states. ... It lives on itself, its excrements are its nourishment. We need not concern ourselves for one instant with the hypothesis of a created world. The concept "create" is today utterly indefinable and unrealizable; it is but a word which hails from superstitious ages; nothing can be explained with a word. The last attempt that was made to conceive of a world that began occurred quite recently, in many cases with the help of logical reasoning, generally, too, as you will guess, with an ulterior theological motive. Several attempts have been made lately to show that the concept that " the universe has an infinite past " (regressus in infinitum) is contradictory: it was even demonstrated, it is true, at the price of confounding the head with the tail. Nothing can prevent me from calculating backwards from this moment of time, and of saying: " I shall never reach the end "; just as I can calculate without end in a forward direction, from the same moment. It is only when I wish to commit the error I shall be careful to avoid it of reconciling this correct concept of a regressus in infinitum with the absolutely unrealizable concept of a finite progressus up to the present; only when I consider the direction (forwards or backwards) as logically indifferent, that I take hold of the head; this very moment and think I hold the tail: 1 this pleasure I leave to you, Mr. Dühring! . . . I have come across this thought in other thinkers before me, and every time I found that it was determined by other ulterior motives (chiefly theological, in favor of a creator spiritus). If the universe were in any way able to congeal, to dry up, to perish; or if it were capable of attaining to a state of equilibrium; or if it had any kind of goal at all which a long lapse of time, immutability, and finality reserved for it (in short, to speak metaphysically, if becoming could resolve itself into being or into nonentity), this state ought already to have been reached. But it has not been reached: it therefore follows. . . . This is the only certainty we can grasp, which can serve as a corrective to a host of cosmic hypotheses possible in themselves. If, for instance, materialism cannot consistently escape the conclusion of a finite state, which William Thomson has traced out for it, then materialism is thereby refuted. If the universe may be conceived as a definite quantity of energy, as a definite number of centres of energy, and every other concept remains indefinite and therefore useless, it follows there from that the universe must go through a calcul able number of combinations in the great game of chance which constitutes its existence. In infinity at some moment or other, every possible combination must once have been realized; not only this, , but it mustjiave been realized an infinite number of times. And inasmuch as between every onef of these combinations and its next recurrence every other possible combination would necessarily have been undergone and since every one of these combinations would determine the whole series in the same order, a circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the universe is thus shown to be a circular movement which has already repeated itself an infinite number of times, and which plays its game for all eternity. This conception is not simply materialistic; for if it were this, it would not involve an infinite recurrence of identical cases, but a finite state. Owing to the fact that the universe has not reached this finite state, materialism shows itself to be but an imperfect and provisional hypothesis.
1067. And do ye know what "the universe" is to my mind? Shall it show it to you in my mirror? This universe is a monster of energy, without beginning or end; a fixed and brazen quantity oj energy which grows neither bigger nor smaller, which does not consume itself, but only alters its face; as a whole its bulk is immutable, it is a household without either losses or gains, but likewise without increase and without sources of revenue, surrounded by nonentity as by a frontier, it is nothing vague or wasteful, it does not stretch into infinity; but it is a definite quantum of energy located in limited space, and not in space which would be anywhere empty. It is rather energy everywhere, the play of forces and force-waves, at the same time one and many, agglomerating here and diminishing there, a sea of forces storming and raging in itself, for ever changing, for ever rolling back over incalculable ages to recurrence, with an ebb and flow of its forms, producing the most complicated things out of the most simple structures; producing the most ardent, most savage, and most contradictory things out of the quietest, nost rigid, and most frozen material, and then returning from multifariousness to uniformity, from the play of contradictions back into the delight of consonance, saying yea unto itself, even this homogeneity of its courses and ages; for ever blessing itself as something which recurs for all eternity, a becoming which knows no satiety, or disgust, or weariness: this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creation, of eternal self-destruction, this mysterious world of twofold voluptuousness; this, my "beyond good and evil" without aim, unless there is an aim in the bliss of the circle, without will, unless a ring must by nature keep good-will to itself, would you have a name for my world? A solution of all your riddles? Do ye also want a light, ye most concealed, strongest and raost undaunted men of the blackest midnight? This world is the will to power--and nothing else! And even ye yourselves are this will to power--and nothing besides!

## Notes

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