FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (continued 5)

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 honour.

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, instinctively honours 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.

***

Atavism: delightful feeling, to be able to obey unconditionally for once.

***

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 realise 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 most powerful and most godly.—The conquest of the senses and the passions—everything inspired terror;—the unnatural seemed to the spectators to be supernatural 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 anæmic Christian ideal (together with what is closely I 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 immoralists 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 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 universal 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 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 phenomena 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 circumstances 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 indifferent" 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 represent 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 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, resignation, 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 examination, this point of view turns out to be: "I am not worth much," simply a psychological valuation; more plainly still: it is the feeling of impotence, of the lack of the great self-asserting 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-confidence: 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 valuation 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 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-preservative 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 circumstances.

When the Socialist, with righteous indignation, cries for "justice," "rights," "equal rights," it only shows that he is oppressed by his inadequate 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 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 inwards. 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 imagination. 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 appropriated—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 hypocrites; 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 probably 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 acknowledgment of facts (the refusal to allow one's self to be lied to) has always been greatest with liars: they actually recognised 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 naïveté.

People say what they think, they are "truthful"; 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 people think about him, but not what he thinks. ("The powerful man is always a liar.")**

379.

The great counterfeit coinage of Nihilism concealed beneath an artful abuse of moral values:—

(a) Love regarded as self-effacement; as also pity.

(b) The most impersonal intellect ("the philosopher") 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 Schopenhauer is a moral one. Transference of the gregarious standards into the realm of metaphysics.

The "individual" lacks sense, he must therefore 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.

380.

1. Systematic falsification of history, so that it may present a proof of the moral valuation:

(a) The decline of a people and corruption. (b) 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, "immorality," the right to repudiate a belief, belongs to greatness (Cæsar, 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 required 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 prejudices which is coincident with the emancipation 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 honoured—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, I know 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 consider 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.... 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 predominance 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[8]). 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.

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 particular 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 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 lacking that might become master here....

386.

There are some very simple peoples and men who believe that continuous fine weather would be a desirable thing: they still believe to-day 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 dominion of evil, man's gradual emancipation 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 the 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 (1) as if it only manifested itself in an unseemly way and were not necessary and always the motive force, (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 psychological baseness and falseness which hitherto 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 justification, 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 enfeeblement, 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 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 "desirable" man of any ideal that has ever existed hitherto; that all "desiderata" in regard to mankind 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 to-day, 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....

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 enlightenment?... 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 personalities 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 continually adding to his store of knowledge: and long abstinence acts as a sort of tonic on his talent.... Certainly, as far as society is concerned, 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 perform 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 cannot be undone. Because some one forgets something 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 "Europeans" "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 deterioration?... 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 proposition: "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. Provided, 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? Nothing 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 remained 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 refutation. 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 discovered 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 particularly to the greatest on earth, to the geniuses: readers will remember how Goethe has been attacked on every conceivable occasion in Germany (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 miscarriage—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 harmful....

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 husbanding 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....

(b) 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—however 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 honour 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).

All that is of average worth is high (the protest 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-destruction 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 value? What, in sooth, is morality? The instinct of decadence; it is the exhausted and the disinherited 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 affirmative 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....

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 succeed in ruling have become: instincts, "humanity," "institutions." ...

3. The proof of this rule on the part of the 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?[9] ...

We have seen two "wills to power" at war (in this special case we had a principle: that of agreeing with the one that has hitherto succumbed, and of disagreeing with the one that has hitherto triumphed): we have recognised 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 determined 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 infection, 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 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 morality.

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.

CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.

1. 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 dangerous cultures too).

408.

What have philosophers lacked! (1) 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 (1) from times immemorial 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 concepts; 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 intelligent 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).

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 particularly was, that no scientific scepticism or dogmatism has ever arisen quite free from all arrières pensées—that it has only a secondary value as soon as the motive lying immediately behind it is discovered.

Fundamental aspect: Kant's, Hegel's, Schopenhauer's, the sceptical and epochistical, the historifying 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 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 particularly 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 recognised 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 unconditional 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 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 rechristened and called philosophy) to its own use, and represented history as being the self-revelation 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 rôle (Anaximander 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 arrières-pensées.

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, 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 justifying 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 initiative was misused by the powers that were (State, 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 æsthetic 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 recuperative measure: what seemed to me to be fundamentally 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 suppressed—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 increasing weakness of personality. I sought a new centrum.

(2) The impossibility of this endeavour is recognised.

(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 imperfection, 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—save, of course, the rainbow 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 boorishness of the natural sciences, how far from the vulgar din of "modern ideas"! One wants to get back to the Greeks via the Fathers of the Church, from North to South, from formulæ 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 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 above all of pre-Socratic philosophy—the most thoroughly dilapidated of all Greek temples! Possibly, in à 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. To-day we are once more approaching all the fundamental principles of the cosmogony which the Greek mind in Anaximander, Heraclitus, 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 Greasing 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 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 because he is told to do so, and because others have done so before him.

422.

The superstition concerning 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 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 honour 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 distinction, as if there were an instinct of knowledge, which, without inquiring into the utility or harmfulness 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 something 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 knowledge (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 consciousness 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. Consciousness 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 disorganisation. 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.

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 instinctive 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 physiologists 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 thoughts. The deepest and most inexhaustible books will certainly always have something of the aphoristic and impetuous character of Pascal's Pensées. The motive forces and valuations have lain long below the surface; that which comes uppermost is their effect.

I guard against all the humbug of a false scientific spirit:—

(1) In respect of the manner of demonstration, if it does not correspond to the genesis of the thoughts;

(2) In respect of the demands for methods which, at a given period in science, may be quite impossible;

(3) In respect of the demand for objectivity for 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, Sainte-Beuve's. He actually worried himself all his life because he had shown some warmth or passion either "pro" or "con," and he would fein have lied 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. Unscrupulousness in the use of dangerous means; perversity and complexity of character considered as an advantage and exploited.

My profound indifference 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 character, 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 presupposed 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; déniaiser 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 morality 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-contemplation: we regard it almost as a sign of degeneration when an instrument endeavours "to know itself":[10] 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 interested 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 concerned with ourselves. Regarded more deeply, the case is again different, we thoroughly mistrust all men who thus contemplate their own navels: because introspection seems to us a degenerate form of the psychologist's genius, as a note of interrogation 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.

2. A Criticism of Greek Philosophy.

427.

The apparition of Greek philosophers since the time of Socrates is a symptom of decadence; the anti-Hellenic instincts become paramount.

The "Sophist" is still quite Hellenic—as are also Anaxagoras, Democritus, and the great Ionians; but only as transitional forms. The polis loses its faith in the unity of its culture, in its rights of dominion over every other polis.... Cultures, that is to say, "the 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 separating 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 the decay of institutions: 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 superannuated (just, as the Jews kept themselves together as a "people" after they had fallen into slavery). They become interested in all tyrants: their desire is to re-establish virtue with "force majeure".

Gradually everything 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 anti-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 valuation 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 (b) 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 corrupted 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 a polis); 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 decadence of every kind of Greek ability, but also made it contagious.... This "virtue" made wholly abstract 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 within sight of the first criticism of morality, the first knowledge of morality:—they classify the majority of moral valuations (in view of their dependence upon local conditions) together;—they lead one to understand that every form of morality is capable of being upheld dialectically: that is to say, they guessed that all the fundamental principles of a morality must be sophistical—a proposition which was afterwards proved in the grandest possible style by the ancient philosophers 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 not: it has its predecessors in Heraclitus, Democritus, and in the scientific types of the old philosophy; it finds expression in the elevated culture of Thucydides, for instance. And—it has ultimately shown itself to be right: every step in the science of epistemology and morality has confirmed the attitude of the Sophists.... Our modern attitude of mind is, to a great extent, Heraclitean, Democritean, and Protagorean ... to say that it is 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 less 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 immorality....

Is it to be supposed that these small Greek independent republics, so filled with rage and envy that they would fain have devoured 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 submission? 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 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 cause of virtue and justice, they were Jews or I know not what. Grote's tactics in the defence of the Sophists are false: he would like to raise them to the rank of men of honour and moralisers—but it was their honour 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 unconsciously....

What, then, does Socrates' reaction mean, which recommended dialectics as the way to virtue, and which was charmed when morality was unable to justify itself logically? But this is precisely what proves its superiority—without unconsciousness it is worth nothing!

In reality it means the dissolution of Greek instincts, when demonstrability is posited as the first condition of personal excellence in virtue. All these great "men of virtue" and of words are themselves types of dissolution.

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 Græco-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 apotheosis in Plato.... And then it was necessary to invent the perfectly abstract man also:—good, just, wise, and a dialectician to boot—in short, the scarecrow of the ancient philosopher: a plant without any soil whatsoever; a human race devoid of all definite ruling instincts; a virtue which "justifies" itself with reasons. The perfectly absurd "individual" per se! the highest form of Artificiality....

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 the noble:—the mob gets the upper hand along with dialectics. Previous to Socrates dialectic manners were repudiated in good society; they were regarded as indecent; the youths were Warned against them. What 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 distrusted. 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 instrument in his hand: he can play the tyrant with it; he compromises when he conquers. The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to demonstrate that he is not an idiot; he is made furious and helpless, while the dialectician himself remains calm and still possessed of his triumphant reasoning powers—he paralyses his opponent's intellect.—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 honoured and deified the concept as a form of ideal. Dialectical intoxication: as the consciousness of being able to exercise control over one's self by means of it—as an instrument of the Will to Power.

432.

The problem of Socrates.—The two antitheses: the tragic and the Socratic spirits—measured according to the law of Life.

To what 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. 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 highest form of 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 practised 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 philosophy could not rid itself of this doctrine....

Absolute lack of objective interest: hatred of science: the idiosyncrasy of considering one's self a problem. Acoustic hallucinations in Socrates: morbid element. When the intellect is rich and 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 community, they are signs of a state of distress.

433.

Intelligence, clearness, hardness, and logic as 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 make a tyrant of intelligence the 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. They regard him as a doctor: Logic as will to power, as will to control self, as will to "happiness." The wildness and anarchy of Socrates' instincts is a sign of decadence, as is also the superfœtation of logic and clear reasoning in him. Both are abnormities, each belongs to the other. Criticism. Decadence reveals itself in this concern about "happiness" (i.e. about the "salvation of the soul"; i.e. to feel that one's condition is a danger). Its fanatical interest in "happiness" shows the pathological condition of the subconscious 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 regarded "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 happiness, why is it? Because he mistakes the means thereto.—What is the unfailing means of acquiring happiness? Answer: virtue.—Why virtue? Because virtue is supreme rationalness, and rationalness 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 exaltation involves....

The ancient philosophers combat everything that intoxicates and exalts—everything that impairs 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" theoretically to dufferdom,.... In practice everything resolved itself into theatricalness: and he who saw through it, as Pyrrho did, for instance, thought as everybody did—that is to say, that in goodness and uprightness "paltry people" were far superior to philosophers.

All the deeper natures of antiquity were disgusted at the philosophers of virtue; all people saw in 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: and however little they may be aware of the fact, it is generally discovered, subsequently that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.

Let us examine the philosophers of Greece—Plato, for instance. He it was who separated the instincts from the polis, from the love of contest, from military efficiency, from art, beauty, the mysteries, and the belief in tradition and in ancestors.... He was the seducer of the nobles: 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 the example of a man whose instincts were the example of a man whose instincts were most perfectly separated from tradition. He is profound and passionate in everything that is anti-Hellenic....

One after the other, these great philosophers represent the typical forms of decadence: the moral and religious idiosyncrasy, anarchy, nihilism, (ἀδιαφορία), cynicism, hardening principles, hedonism, 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 intelligible 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 (in 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 represented these concepts, they made systems out of themselves. Nothing run give a higher idea of Greek intellect than this sudden fruitfulness in types, than this involuntary completeness in the drawing 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 necessarily the last—Pyrrho the nihilist. His instincts were opposed to the influences which had become ascendant in the mean-time the Socratic school, Plato, and the artistic optimism of Heraclitus. (Pyrrho goes back to Democritus via Protagoras....)