No More Learning

If we close our eyes the brain immediately conjures up a
medley of impressions of light and color, apparently a sort of imitation
and echo of the impressions forced in upon the brain during its waking
moments. And now the mind, in co-operation with the imagination,
transforms this formless play of light and color into definite figures,
moving groups, landscapes. What really takes place is a sort of
reasoning from effect back to cause. As the brain inquires: whence these
impressions of light and color? it posits as the inducing causes of such
lights and colors, those shapes and figures. They serve the brain as the
occasions of those lights and colors because the brain, when the eyes
are open and the senses awake, is accustomed to perceiving the cause of
every impression of light and color made upon it. Here again the
imagination is continually interposing its images inasmuch as it
participates in the production of the impressions made through the
senses day by day: and the dream-fancy does exactly the same thing--that
is, the presumed cause is determined from the effect and _after_ the
effect: all this, too, with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this
matter, as in a matter of jugglery or sleight-of-hand, a confusion of
the mind is produced and an after effect is made to appear a
simultaneous action, an inverted succession of events, even. --From
these considerations we can see how _late_ strict, logical thought, the
true notion of cause and effect must have been in developing, since our
intellectual and rational faculties to this very day revert to these
primitive processes of deduction, while practically half our lifetime is
spent in the super-inducing conditions. --Even the poet, the artist,
ascribes to his sentimental and emotional states causes which are not
the true ones. To that extent he is a reminder of early mankind and can
aid us in its comprehension.


14

=Association. =[9]--All strong feelings are associated with a variety of
allied sentiments and emotions. They stir up the memory at the same
time. When we are under their influence we are reminded of similar
states and we feel a renewal of them within us. Thus are formed habitual
successions of feelings and notions, which, at last, when they follow
one another with lightning rapidity are no longer felt as complexities
but as unities. In this sense we hear of moral feelings, of religious
feelings, as if they were absolute unities. In reality they are streams
with a hundred sources and tributaries. Here again, the unity of the
word speaks nothing for the unity of the thing.

[9] Miterklingen: to sound simultaneously with.


15

=No Within and Without in the World. =[10]--As Democritus transferred the
notions above and below to limitless space, where they are destitute of
meaning, so the philosophers do generally with the idea "within and
without," as regards the form and substance (Wesen und Erscheinung) of
the world. What they claim is that through the medium of profound
feelings one can penetrate deep into the soul of things (Innre), draw
close to the heart of nature. But these feelings are deep only in so far
as with them are simultaneously aroused, although almost imperceptibly,
certain complicated groups of thoughts (Gedankengruppen) which we call
deep: a feeling is deep because we deem the thoughts accompanying it
deep. But deep thought can nevertheless be very widely sundered from
truth, as for instance every metaphysical thought. Take from deep
feeling the element of thought blended with it and all that remains is
_strength_ of feeling which is no voucher for the validity of
knowledge, as intense faith is evidence only of its own intensity and
not of the truth of that in which the faith is felt.

[10] Kein Innen und Aussen in der Welt: the above translation may seem
too literal but some dispute has arisen concerning the precise idea the
author means to convey.


16

=Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself. =--The philosophers are in the habit of
placing themselves in front of life and experience--that which they call
the world of phenomena--as if they were standing before a picture that
is unrolled before them in its final completeness. This panorama, they
think, must be studied in every detail in order to reach some conclusion
regarding the object represented by the picture. From effect,
accordingly is deduced cause and from cause is deduced the
unconditioned. This process is generally looked upon as affording the
all sufficient explanation of the world of phenomena. On the other hand
one must, (while putting the conception of the metaphysical distinctly
forward as that of the unconditioned, and consequently of the
unconditioning) absolutely deny any connection between the unconditioned
(of the metaphysical world) and the world known to us: so that
throughout phenomena there is no manifestation of the thing-in-itself,
and getting from one to the other is out of the question. Thus is left
quite ignored the circumstance that the picture--that which we now call
life and experience--is a gradual evolution, is, indeed, still in
process of evolution and for that reason should not be regarded as an
enduring whole from which any conclusion as to its author (the
all-sufficient reason) could be arrived at, or even pronounced out of
the question. It is because we have for thousands of years looked into
the world with moral, aesthetic, religious predispositions, with blind
prejudice, passion or fear, and surfeited ourselves with indulgence in
the follies of illogical thought, that the world has gradually become so
wondrously motley, frightful, significant, soulful: it has taken on
tints, but we have been the colorists: the human intellect, upon the
foundation of human needs, of human passions, has reared all these
"phenomena" and injected its own erroneous fundamental conceptions into
things. Late, very late, the human intellect checks itself: and now the
world of experience and the thing-in-itself seem to it so severed and so
antithetical that it denies the possibility of one's hinging upon the
other--or else summons us to surrender our intellect, our personal will,
to the secret and the awe-inspiring in order that thereby we may attain
certainty of certainty hereafter. Again, there are those who have
combined all the characteristic features of our world of
phenomena--that is, the conception of the world which has been formed
and inherited through a series of intellectual vagaries--and instead of
holding the intellect responsible for it all, have pronounced the very
nature of things accountable for the present very sinister aspect of the
world, and preached annihilation of existence. Through all these views
and opinions the toilsome, steady process of science (which now for the
first time begins to celebrate its greatest triumph in the genesis of
thought) will definitely work itself out, the result, being, perhaps, to
the following effect: That which we now call the world is the result of
a crowd of errors and fancies which gradually developed in the general
evolution of organic nature, have grown together and been transmitted to
us as the accumulated treasure of all the past--as the _treasure_, for
whatever is worth anything in our humanity rests upon it. From this
world of conception it is in the power of science to release us only to
a slight extent--and this is all that could be wished--inasmuch as it
cannot eradicate the influence of hereditary habits of feeling, but it
can light up by degrees the stages of the development of that world of
conception, and lift us, at least for a time, above the whole spectacle.
Perhaps we may then perceive that the thing-in-itself is a meet subject
for Homeric laughter: that it seemed so much, everything, indeed, and
is really a void--void, that is to say, of meaning.


17

=Metaphysical Explanation. =--Man, when he is young, prizes metaphysical
explanations, because they make him see matters of the highest import in
things he found disagreeable or contemptible: and if he is not satisfied
with himself, this feeling of dissatisfaction is soothed when he sees
the most hidden world-problem or world-pain in that which he finds so
displeasing in himself. To feel himself more unresponsible and at the
same time to find things (Dinge) more interesting--that is to him the
double benefit he owes to metaphysics. Later, indeed, he acquires
distrust of the whole metaphysical method of explaining things: he then
perceives, perhaps, that those effects could have been attained just as
well and more scientifically by another method: that physical and
historical explanations would, at least, have given that feeling of
freedom from personal responsibility just as well, while interest in
life and its problems would be stimulated, perhaps, even more.


18

=The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics. =--If a history of the
development of thought is ever written, the following proposition,
advanced by a distinguished logician, will be illuminated with a new
light: "The universal, primordial law of the apprehending subject
consists in the inner necessity of cognizing every object by itself, as
in its essence a thing unto itself, therefore as self-existing and
unchanging, in short, as a substance. " Even this law, which is here
called "primordial," is an evolution: it has yet to be shown how
gradually this evolution takes place in lower organizations: how the
dim, mole eyes of such organizations see, at first, nothing but a blank
sameness: how later, when the various excitations of desire and aversion
manifest themselves, various substances are gradually distinguished, but
each with an attribute, that is, a special relationship to such an
organization. The first step towards the logical is judgment, the
essence of which, according to the best logicians, is belief. At the
foundation of all beliefs lie sensations of pleasure or pain in relation
to the apprehending subject. A third feeling, as the result of two
prior, single, separate feelings, is judgment in its crudest form. We
organic beings are primordially interested by nothing whatever in any
thing (Ding) except its relation to ourselves with reference to pleasure
and pain. Between the moments in which we are conscious of this
relation, (the states of feeling) lie the moments of rest, of
not-feeling: then the world and every thing (Ding) have no interest for
us: we observe no change in them (as at present a person absorbed in
something does not notice anyone passing by). To plants all things are,
as a rule, at rest, eternal, every object like itself. From the period
of lower organisms has been handed down to man the belief that there are
like things (gleiche Dinge): only the trained experience attained
through the most advanced science contradicts this postulate. The
primordial belief of all organisms is, perhaps, that all the rest of the
world is one thing and motionless. --Furthest away from this first step
towards the logical is the notion of causation: even to-day we think
that all our feelings and doings are, at bottom, acts of the free will;
when the sentient individual contemplates himself he deems every
feeling, every change, a something isolated, disconnected, that is to
say, unqualified by any thing; it comes suddenly to the surface,
independent of anything that went before or came after. We are hungry,
but originally we do not know that the organism must be nourished: on
the contrary that feeling seems to manifest itself without reason or
purpose; it stands out by itself and seems quite independent. Therefore:
the belief in the freedom of the will is a primordial error of
everything organic as old as the very earliest inward prompting of the
logical faculty; belief in unconditioned substances and in like things
(gleiche Dinge) is also a primordial and equally ancient error of
everything organic. Inasmuch as all metaphysic has concerned itself
particularly with substance and with freedom of the will, it should be
designated as the science that deals with the fundamental errors of
mankind as if they were fundamental truths.


19

=Number. =--The invention of the laws of number has as its basis the
primordial and prior-prevailing delusion that many like things exist
(although in point of fact there is no such thing is a duplicate), or
that, at least, there are things (but there is no "thing"). The
assumption of plurality always presupposes that _something_ exists which
manifests itself repeatedly, but just here is where the delusion
prevails; in this very matter we feign realities, unities, that have no
existence. Our feelings, notions, of space and time are false for they
lead, when duly tested, to logical contradictions. In all scientific
demonstrations we always unavoidably base our calculation upon some
false standards [of duration or measurement] but as these standards are
at least _constant_, as, for example, our notions of time and space, the
results arrived at by science possess absolute accuracy and certainty in
their relationship to one another: one can keep on building upon
them--until is reached that final limit at which the erroneous
fundamental conceptions, (the invariable breakdown) come into conflict
with the results established--as, for example, in the case of the atomic
theory. Here we always find ourselves obliged to give credence to a
"thing" or material "substratum" that is set in motion, although, at the
same time, the whole scientific programme has had as its aim the
resolving of everything material into motions [themselves]: here again
we distinguish with our feeling [that which does the] moving and [that
which is] moved,[11] and we never get out of this circle, because the
belief in things[12] has been from time immemorial rooted in our
nature. --When Kant says "the intellect does not derive its laws from
nature, but dictates them to her" he states the full truth as regards
the _idea of nature_ which we form (nature = world, as notion, that is,
as error) but which is merely the synthesis of a host of errors of the
intellect. To a world not [the outcome of] our conception, the laws of
number are wholly inapplicable: such laws are valid only in the world of
mankind.

[11] Wir scheiden auch hier noch mit unserer Empfindung Bewegendes und
Bewegtes.

[12] Glaube an Dinge.


20

=Some Backward Steps. =--One very forward step in education is taken when
man emerges from his superstitious and religious ideas and fears and,
for instance, no longer believes in the dear little angels or in
original sin, and has stopped talking about the salvation of the soul:
when he has taken this step to freedom he has, nevertheless, through the
utmost exertion of his mental power, to overcome metaphysics. Then a
backward movement is necessary: he must appreciate the historical
justification, and to an equal extent the psychological considerations,
in such a movement. He must understand that the greatest advances made
by mankind have resulted from such a course and that without this very
backward movement the highest achievements of man hitherto would have
been impossible. --With regard to philosophical metaphysics I see ever
more and more who have arrived at the negative goal (that all positive
metaphysic is a delusion) but as yet very few who go a few steps
backward: one should look out over the last rungs of the ladder, but not
try to stand on them, that is to say. The most advanced as yet go only
far enough to free themselves from metaphysic and look back at it with
an air of superiority: whereas here, no less than in the hippodrome, it
is necessary to turn around in order to reach the end of the course.


21

=Presumable [Nature of the] Victory of Doubt. =--Let us assume for a
moment the validity of the skeptical standpoint: granted that there is
no metaphysical world, and that all the metaphysical explanations of the
only world we know are useless to us, how would we then contemplate men
and things? [Menschen und Dinge]. This can be thought out and it is
worth while doing so, even if the question whether anything metaphysical
has ever been demonstrated by or through Kant and Schopenhauer, be put
altogether aside. For it is, to all appearances, highly probable that
men, on this point, will be, in the mass, skeptical. The question thus
becomes: what sort of a notion will human society, under the influence
of such a state of mind, form of itself? Perhaps the _scientific
demonstration_ of any metaphysical world is now so difficult that
mankind will never be free from a distrust of it. And when there is
formed a feeling of distrust of metaphysics, the results are, in the
mass, the same as if metaphysics were refuted altogether and _could_ no
longer be believed. In both cases the historical question, with regard
to an unmetaphysical disposition in mankind, remains the same.


22

=Disbelief in the "monumentum aere perennius". =[13]--A decided
disadvantage, attending the termination of metaphysical modes of
thought, is that the individual fixes his mind too attentively upon his
own brief lifetime and feels no strong inducement to aid in the
foundation of institutions capable of enduring for centuries: he wishes
himself to gather the fruit from the tree that he plants and
consequently he no longer plants those trees which require centuries of
constant cultivation and are destined to afford shade to generation
after generation in the future. For metaphysical views inspire the
belief that in them is afforded the final sure foundation upon which
henceforth the whole future of mankind may rest and be built up: the
individual promotes his own salvation; when, for example, he builds a
church or a monastery he is of opinion that he is doing something for
the salvation of his immortal soul:--Can science, as well, inspire such
faith in the efficacy of her results? In actual fact, science requires
doubt and distrust as her surest auxiliaries; nevertheless, the sum of
the irresistible (that is all the onslaughts of skepticism, all the
disintegrating effects of surviving truths) can easily become so great
(as, for instance, in the case of hygienic science) as to inspire the
determination to build "eternal" works upon it. At present the contrast
between our excitated ephemeral existence and the tranquil repose of
metaphysical epochs is too great because both are as yet in too close
juxtaposition. The individual man himself now goes through too many
stages of inner and outer evolution for him to venture to make a plan
even for his life time alone. A perfectly modern man, indeed, who wants
to build himself a house feels as if he were walling himself up alive in
a mausoleum.

[13] Monument more enduring than brass: Horace, Odes III:XXX.


23

=Age of Comparison. =--The less men are bound by tradition, the greater
is the inner activity of motives, the greater, correspondingly, the
outer restlessness, the promiscuous flow of humanity, the polyphony of
strivings. Who now feels any great impulse to establish himself and his
posterity in a particular place? For whom, moreover, does there exist,
at present, any strong tie? As all the methods of the arts were copied
from one another, so were all the methods and advancements of moral
codes, of manners, of civilizations. --Such an age derives its
significance from the fact that in it the various ideas, codes, manners
and civilizations can be compared and experienced side by side; which
was impossible at an earlier period in view of the localised nature of
the rule of every civilization, corresponding to the limitation of all
artistic effects by time and place. To-day the growth of the aesthetic
feeling is decided, owing to the great number of [artistic] forms which
offer themselves for comparison. The majority--those that are condemned
by the method of comparison--will be allowed to die out. In the same way
there is to-day taking place a selection of the forms and customs of the
higher morality which can result only in the extinction of the vulgar
moralities. This is the age of comparison! That is its glory--but also
its pain. Let us not, however shrink from this pain. Rather would we
comprehend the nature of the task imposed upon us by our age as
adequately as we can: posterity will bless us for doing so--a posterity
that knows itself to be [developed] through and above the narrow, early
race-civilizations as well as the culture-civilization of comparison,
but yet looks gratefully back upon both as venerable monuments of
antiquity.


24

=Possibility of Progress. =--When a master of the old civilization (den
alten Cultur) vows to hold no more discussion with men who believe in
progress, he is quite right. For the old civilization[14] has its
greatness and its advantages behind it, and historic training forces one
to acknowledge that it can never again acquire vigor: only intolerable
stupidity or equally intolerable fanaticism could fail to perceive this
fact. But men may consciously determine to evolve to a new civilization
where formerly they evolved unconsciously and accidentally. They can now
devise better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for their
nourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth as an
economic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of men and
select them accordingly. This new, conscious civilization is killing the
other which, on the whole, has led but an unreflective animal and plant
life: it is also destroying the doubt of progress itself--progress is
possible. I mean: it is hasty and almost unreflective to assume that
progress must _necessarily_ take place: but how can it be doubted that
progress is possible? On the other hand, progress in the sense and along
the lines of the old civilization is not even conceivable. If romantic
fantasy employs the word progress in connection with certain aims and
ends identical with those of the circumscribed primitive national
civilizations, the picture presented of progress is always borrowed from
the past. The idea and the image of progress thus formed are quite
without originality.

[14] Cultur, culture, civilisation etc. , but there is no exact English
equivalent.


25

=Private Ethics and World Ethics. =--Since the extinction of the belief
that a god guides the general destiny of the world and, notwithstanding
all the contortions and windings of the path of mankind, leads it
gloriously forward, men must shape oecumenical, world-embracing ends for
themselves. The older ethics, namely Kant's, required of the individual
such a course of conduct as he wishes all men to follow. This evinces
much simplicity--as if any individual could determine off hand what
course of conduct would conduce to the welfare of humanity, and what
course of conduct is preeminently desirable! This is a theory like that
of freedom of competition, which takes it for granted that the general
harmony [of things] _must_ prevail of itself in accordance with some
inherent law of betterment or amelioration. It may be that a later
contemplation of the needs of mankind will reveal that it is by no means
desirable that all men should regulate their conduct according to the
same principle; it may be best, from the standpoint of certain ends yet
to be attained, that men, during long periods should regulate their
conduct with reference to special, and even, in certain circumstances,
evil, objects. At any rate, if mankind is not to be led astray by such a
universal rule of conduct, it behooves it to attain a _knowledge of the
condition of culture_ that will serve as a scientific standard of
comparison in connection with cosmical ends. Herein is comprised the
tremendous mission of the great spirits of the next century.


26

=Reaction as Progress. =--Occasionally harsh, powerful, impetuous, yet
nevertheless backward spirits, appear, who try to conjure back some past
era in the history of mankind: they serve as evidence that the new
tendencies which they oppose, are not yet potent enough, that there is
something lacking in them: otherwise they [the tendencies] would better
withstand the effects of this conjuring back process. Thus Luther's
reformation shows that in his century all the impulses to freedom of the
spirit were still uncertain, lacking in vigor, and immature. Science
could not yet rear her head. Indeed the whole Renaissance appears but as
an early spring smothered in snow. But even in the present century
Schopenhauer's metaphysic shows that the scientific spirit is not yet
powerful enough: for the whole mediaeval Christian world-standpoint
(Weltbetrachtung) and conception of man (Mensch-Empfindung)[15] once
again, notwithstanding the slowly wrought destruction of all Christian
dogma, celebrated a resurrection in Schopenhauer's doctrine. There is
much science in his teaching although the science does not dominate,
but, instead of it, the old, trite "metaphysical necessity. " It is one
of the greatest and most priceless advantages of Schopenhauer's teaching
that by it our feelings are temporarily forced back to those old human
and cosmical standpoints to which no other path could conduct us so
easily. The gain for history and justice is very great. I believe that
without Schopenhauer's aid it would be no easy matter for anyone now to
do justice to Christianity and its Asiatic relatives--a thing impossible
as regards the christianity that still survives. After according this
great triumph to justice, after we have corrected in so essential a
respect the historical point of view which the age of learning brought
with it, we may begin to bear still farther onward the banner of
enlightenment--a banner bearing the three names: Petrarch, Erasmus,
Voltaire. We have taken a forward step out of reaction.

[15] Literally man-feeling or human outlook.


27

=A Substitute for Religion. =--It is supposed to be a recommendation for
philosophy to say of it that it provides the people with a substitute
for religion. And in fact, the training of the intellect does
necessitate the convenient laying out of the track of thought, since the
transition from religion by way of science entails a powerful, perilous
leap,--something that should be advised against. With this
qualification, the recommendation referred to is a just one. At the same
time, it should be further explained that the needs which religion
satisfies and which science must now satisfy, are not immutable. Even
they can be diminished and uprooted. Think, for instance, of the
christian soul-need, the sighs over one's inner corruption, the anxiety
regarding salvation--all notions that arise simply out of errors of the
reason and require no satisfaction at all, but annihilation. A
philosophy can either so affect these needs as to appease them or else
put them aside altogether, for they are acquired, circumscribed needs,
based upon hypotheses which those of science explode. Here, for the
purpose of affording the means of transition, for the sake of lightening
the spirit overburdened with feeling, art can be employed to far better
purpose, as these hypotheses receive far less support from art than from
a metaphysical philosophy. Then from art it is easier to go over to a
really emancipating philosophical science.


28

=Discredited Words. =--Away with the disgustingly over-used words
optimism and pessimism! For the occasion for using them grows daily
less; only drivelers now find them indispensably necessary. What earthly
reason could anyone have for being an optimist unless he had a god to
defend who _must_ have created the best of all possible worlds, since he
is himself all goodness and perfection? --but what thinking man has now
any need for the hypothesis that there is a god? --There is also no
occasion whatever for a pessimistic confession of faith, unless one has
a personal interest in denouncing the advocate of god, the theologian or
the theological philosopher, and maintaining the counter proposition
that evil reigns, that wretchedness is more potent than joy, that the
world is a piece of botch work, that phenomenon (Erscheinung) is but the
manifestation of some evil spirit. But who bothers his head about the
theologians any more--except the theologians themselves? Apart from all
theology and its antagonism, it is manifest that the world is neither
good nor bad, (to say nothing about its being the best or the worst) and
that these ideas of "good" and "bad" have significance only in relation
to men, indeed, are without significance at all, in view of the sense in
which they are usually employed. The contemptuous and the eulogistic
point of view must, in every case, be repudiated.


29

=Intoxicated by the Perfume of Flowers. =--The ship of humanity, it is
thought, acquires an ever deeper draught the more it is laden. It is
believed that the more profoundly man thinks, the more exquisitely he
feels, the higher the standard he sets for himself, the greater his
distance from the other animals--the more he appears as a genius
(Genie) among animals--the nearer he gets to the true nature of the
world and to comprehension thereof: this, indeed, he really does through
science, but he thinks he does it far more adequately through his
religions and arts. These are, certainly, a blossoming of the world, but
not, therefore, _nearer the roots of the world_ than is the stalk. One
cannot learn best from it the nature of the world, although nearly
everyone thinks so. _Error_ has made men so deep, sensitive and
imaginative in order to bring forth such flowers as religions and arts.
Pure apprehension would be unable to do that. Whoever should disclose to
us the essence of the world would be undeceiving us most cruelly. Not
the world as thing-in-itself but the world as idea[16] (as error) is
rich in portent, deep, wonderful, carrying happiness and unhappiness in
its womb. This result leads to a philosophy of world negation: which, at
any rate, can be as well combined with a practical world affirmation as
with its opposite.

[16] Vorstellung: this word sometimes corresponds to the English word
"idea", at others to "conception" or "notion. "


30

=Evil Habits in Reaching Conclusions. =--The most usual erroneous
conclusions of men are these: a thing[17] exists, therefore it is right:
Here from capacity to live is deduced fitness, from fitness, is deduced
justification. So also: an opinion gives happiness, therefore it is the
true one, its effect is good, therefore it is itself good and true. Here
is predicated of the effect that it gives happiness, that it is good in
the sense of utility, and there is likewise predicated of the cause that
it is good, but good in the sense of logical validity. Conversely, the
proposition would run: a thing[17] cannot attain success, cannot
maintain itself, therefore it is evil: a belief troubles [the believer],
occasions pain, therefore it is false. The free spirit, who is sensible
of the defect in this method of reaching conclusions and has had to
suffer its consequences, often succumbs to the temptation to come to the
very opposite conclusions (which, in general, are, of course, equally
erroneous): a thing cannot maintain itself: therefore it is good; a
belief is troublesome, therefore it is true.

[17] Sache, thing but not in the sense of Ding. Sache is of very
indefinite application (res).


31

=The Illogical is Necessary. =--Among the things which can bring a
thinker to distraction is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary
to mankind and that from the illogical springs much that is good. The
illogical is so imbedded in the passions, in language, in art, in
religion and, above all, in everything that imparts value to life that
it cannot be taken away without irreparably injuring those beautiful
things. Only men of the utmost simplicity can believe that the nature
man knows can be changed into a purely logical nature. Yet were there
steps affording approach to this goal, how utterly everything would be
lost on the way! Even the most rational man needs nature again, from
time to time, that is, his illogical fundamental relation
(Grundstellung) to all things.


32

=Being Unjust is Essential. =--All judgments of the value of life are
illogically developed and therefore unjust. The vice of the judgment
consists, first, in the way in which the subject matter comes under
observation, that is, very incompletely; secondly in the way in which
the total is summed up; and, thirdly, in the fact that each single item
in the totality of the subject matter is itself the result of defective
perception, and this from absolute necessity. No practical knowledge of
a man, for example, stood he never so near to us, can be complete--so
that we could have a logical right to form a total estimate of him; all
estimates are summary and must be so. Then the standard by which we
measure, (our being) is not an immutable quantity; we have moods and
variations, and yet we should know ourselves as an invariable standard
before we undertake to establish the nature of the relation of any thing
(Sache) to ourselves. Perhaps it will follow from all this that one
should form no judgments whatever; if one could but merely _live_
without having to form estimates, without aversion and without
partiality! --for everything most abhorred is closely connected with an
estimate, as well as every strongest partiality. An inclination towards
a thing, or from a thing, without an accompanying feeling that the
beneficial is desired and the pernicious contemned, an inclination
without a sort of experiential estimation of the desirability of an end,
does not exist in man. We are primordially illogical and hence unjust
beings _and can recognise this fact_: this is one of the greatest and
most baffling discords of existence.


33

=Error Respecting Living for the Sake of Living Essential. =--Every
belief in the value and worthiness of life rests upon defective
thinking; it is for this reason alone possible that sympathy with the
general life and suffering of mankind is so imperfectly developed in the
individual. Even exceptional men, who can think beyond their own
personalities, do not have this general life in view, but isolated
portions of it. If one is capable of fixing his observation upon
exceptional cases, I mean upon highly endowed individuals and pure
souled beings, if their development is taken as the true end of
world-evolution and if joy be felt in their existence, then it is
possible to believe in the value of life, because in that case the rest
of humanity is overlooked: hence we have here defective thinking. So,
too, it is even if all mankind be taken into consideration, and one
species only of impulses (the less egoistic) brought under review and
those, in consideration of the other impulses, exalted: then something
could still be hoped of mankind in the mass and to that extent there
could exist belief in the value of life: here, again, as a result of
defective thinking. Whatever attitude, thus, one may assume, one is, as
a result of this attitude, an exception among mankind. Now, the great
majority of mankind endure life without any great protest, and believe,
to this extent, in the value of existence, but that is because each
individual decides and determines alone, and never comes out of his own
personality like these exceptions: everything outside of the personal
has no existence for them or at the utmost is observed as but a faint
shadow. Consequently the value of life for the generality of mankind
consists simply in the fact that the individual attaches more importance
to himself than he does to the world. The great lack of imagination from
which he suffers is responsible for his inability to enter into the
feelings of beings other than himself, and hence his sympathy with their
fate and suffering is of the slightest possible description. On the
other hand, whosoever really _could_ sympathise, necessarily doubts the
value of life; were it possible for him to sum up and to feel in himself
the total consciousness of mankind, he would collapse with a malediction
against existence,--for mankind is, in the mass, without a goal, and
hence man cannot find, in the contemplation of his whole course,
anything to serve him as a mainstay and a comfort, but rather a reason
to despair.
If he looks beyond the things that immediately engage him to
the final aimlessness of humanity, his own conduct assumes in his eyes
the character of a frittering away. To feel oneself, however, as
humanity (not alone as an individual) frittered away exactly as we see
the stray leaves frittered away by nature, is a feeling transcending all
feeling. But who is capable of it? Only a poet, certainly: and poets
always know how to console themselves.


34

=For Tranquility. =--But will not our philosophy become thus a tragedy?
Will not truth prove the enemy of life, of betterment? A question seems
to weigh upon our tongue and yet will not put itself into words: whether
one _can_ knowingly remain in the domain of the untruthful? or, if one
_must_, whether, then, death would not be preferable? For there is no
longer any ought (Sollen), morality; so far as it is involved "ought,"
is, through our point of view, as utterly annihilated as religion. Our
knowledge can permit only pleasure and pain, benefit and injury, to
subsist as motives. But how can these motives be distinguished from the
desire for truth? Even they rest upon error (in so far, as already
stated, partiality and dislike and their very inaccurate estimates
palpably modify our pleasure and our pain). The whole of human life is
deeply involved in _untruth_. The individual cannot extricate it from
this pit without thereby fundamentally clashing with his whole past,
without finding his present motives of conduct, (as that of honor)
illegitimate, and without opposing scorn and contempt to the ambitions
which prompt one to have regard for the future and for one's happiness
in the future. Is it true, does there, then, remain but one way of
thinking, which, as a personal consequence brings in its train despair,
and as a theoretical [consequence brings in its train] a philosophy of
decay, disintegration, self annihilation? I believe the deciding
influence, as regards the after-effect of knowledge, will be the
_temperament_ of a man; I can, in addition to this after-effect just
mentioned, suppose another, by means of which a much simpler life, and
one freer from disturbances than the present, could be lived; so that at
first the old motives of vehement passion might still have strength,
owing to hereditary habit, but they would gradually grow weaker under
the influence of purifying knowledge. A man would live, at last, both
among men and unto himself, as in the natural state, without praise,
reproach, competition, feasting one's eyes, as if it were a play, upon
much that formerly inspired dread. One would be rid of the strenuous
element, and would no longer feel the goad of the reflection that man is
not even [as much as] nature, nor more than nature. To be sure, this
requires, as already stated, a good temperament, a fortified, gentle and
naturally cheerful soul, a disposition that has no need to be on its
guard against its own eccentricities and sudden outbreaks and that in
its utterances manifests neither sullenness nor a snarling tone--those
familiar, disagreeable characteristics of old dogs and old men that have
been a long time chained up. Rather must a man, from whom the ordinary
bondages of life have fallen away to so great an extent, so do that he
only lives on in order to grow continually in knowledge, and to learn to
resign, without envy and without disappointment, much, yes nearly
everything, that has value in the eyes of men. He must be content with
such a free, fearless soaring above men, manners, laws and traditional
estimates of things, as the most desirable of all situations. He will
freely share the joy of being in such a situation, and he has, perhaps,
nothing else to share--in which renunciation and self-denial really most
consist. But if more is asked of him, he will, with a benevolent shake
of the head, refer to his brother, the free man of fact, and will,
perhaps, not dissemble a little contempt: for, as regards his "freedom,"
thereby hangs a tale. [18]

[18] den mit dessen "Freiheit" hat es eine eigene Bewandtniss.




HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS.


35

=Advantages of Psychological Observation. =--That reflection regarding
the human, all-too-human--or as the learned jargon is: psychological
observation--is among the means whereby the burden of life can be made
lighter, that practice in this art affords presence of mind in difficult
situations and entertainment amid a wearisome environment, aye, that
maxims may be culled in the thorniest and least pleasing paths of life
and invigoration thereby obtained: this much was believed, was known--in
former centuries. Why was this forgotten in our own century, during
which, at least in Germany, yes in Europe, poverty as regards
psychological observation would have been manifest in many ways had
there been anyone to whom this poverty could have manifested itself. Not
only in the novel, in the romance, in philosophical standpoints--these
are the works of exceptional men; still more in the state of opinion
regarding public events and personages; above all in general society,
which says much about men but nothing whatever about man, there is
totally lacking the art of psychological analysis and synthesis. But why
is the richest and most harmless source of entertainment thus allowed to
run to waste? Why is the greatest master of the psychological maxim no
longer read? --for, with no exaggeration whatever be it said: the
educated person in Europe who has read La Rochefoucauld and his
intellectual and artistic affinities is very hard to find; still harder,
the person who knows them and does not disparage them. Apparently, too,
this unusual reader takes far less pleasure in them than the form
adopted by these artists should afford him: for the subtlest mind cannot
adequately appreciate the art of maxim-making unless it has had training
in it, unless it has competed in it. Without such practical
acquaintance, one is apt to look upon this making and forming as a much
easier thing than it really is; one is not keenly enough alive to the
felicity and the charm of success. Hence present day readers of maxims
have but a moderate, tempered pleasure in them, scarcely, indeed, a true
perception of their merit, so that their experiences are about the same
as those of the average beholder of cameos: people who praise because
they cannot appreciate, and are very ready to admire and still readier
to turn away.


36

=Objection. =--Or is there a counter-proposition to the dictum that
psychological observation is one of the means of consoling, lightening,
charming existence? Have enough of the unpleasant effects of this art
been experienced to justify the person striving for culture in turning
his regard away from it? In all truth, a certain blind faith in the
goodness of human nature, an implanted distaste for any disparagement of
human concerns, a sort of shamefacedness at the nakedness of the soul,
may be far more desirable things in the general happiness of a man, than
this only occasionally advantageous quality of psychological
sharpsightedness; and perhaps belief in the good, in virtuous men and
actions, in a plenitude of disinterested benevolence has been more
productive of good in the world of men in so far as it has made men less
distrustful. If Plutarch's heroes are enthusiastically imitated and a
reluctance is experienced to looking too critically into the motives of
their actions, not the knowledge but the welfare of human society is
promoted thereby: psychological error and above all obtuseness in regard
to it, help human nature forward, whereas knowledge of the truth is more
promoted by means of the stimulating strength of a hypothesis; as La
Rochefoucauld in the first edition of his "Sentences and Moral Maxims"
has expressed it: "What the world calls virtue is ordinarily but a
phantom created by the passions, and to which we give a good name in
order to do whatever we please with impunity. " La Rochefoucauld and
those other French masters of soul-searching (to the number of whom has
lately been added a German, the author of "Psychological Observations")
are like expert marksmen who again and again hit the black spot--but it
is the black spot in human nature. Their art inspires amazement, but
finally some spectator, inspired, not by the scientific spirit but by a
humanitarian feeling, execrates an art that seems to implant in the soul
a taste for belittling and impeaching mankind.


37

=Nevertheless. =--The matter therefore, as regards pro and con, stands
thus: in the present state of philosophy an awakening of the moral
observation is essential. The repulsive aspect of psychological
dissection, with the knife and tweezers entailed by the process, can no
longer be spared humanity. Such is the imperative duty of any science
that investigates the origin and history of the so-called moral feelings
and which, in its progress, is called upon to posit and to solve
advanced social problems:--The older philosophy does not recognize the
newer at all and, through paltry evasions, has always gone astray in the
investigation of the origin and history of human estimates
(Werthschatzungen). With what results may now be very clearly perceived,
since it has been shown by many examples, how the errors of the greatest
philosophers have their origin in a false explanation of certain human
actions and feelings; how upon the foundation of an erroneous analysis
(for example, of the so called disinterested actions), a false ethic is
reared, to support which religion and like mythological monstrosities
are called in, until finally the shades of these troubled spirits
collapse in physics and in the comprehensive world point of view. But if
it be established that superficiality of psychological observation has
heretofore set the most dangerous snares for human judgment and
deduction, and will continue to do so, all the greater need is there of
that steady continuance of labor that never wearies putting stone upon
stone, little stone upon little stone; all the greater need is there of
a courage that is not ashamed of such humble labor and that will oppose
persistence, to all contempt. It is, finally, also true that countless
single observations concerning the human, all-too-human, have been
first made and uttered in circles accustomed, not to furnish matter for
scientific knowledge, but for intellectual pleasure-seeking; and the
original home atmosphere--a very seductive atmosphere--of the moral
maxim has almost inextricably interpenetrated the entire species, so
that the scientific man involuntarily manifests a sort of mistrust of
this species and of its seriousness. But it is sufficient to point to
the consequences: for already it is becoming evident that events of the
most portentous nature are developing in the domain of psychological
observation. What is the leading conclusion arrived at by one of the
subtlest and calmest of thinkers, the author of the work "Concerning the
Origin of the Moral Feelings", as a result of his thorough and incisive
analysis of human conduct? "The moral man," he says, "stands no nearer
the knowable (metaphysical) world than the physical man. "[19] This
dictum, grown hard and cutting beneath the hammer-blow of historical
knowledge, can some day, perhaps, in some future or other, serve as the
axe that will be laid to the root of the "metaphysical necessities" of
men--whether more to the blessing than to the banning of universal well
being who can say? --but in any event a dictum fraught with the most
momentous consequences, fruitful and fearful at once, and confronting
the world in the two faced way characteristic of all great facts.

[19] "Der moralische Mensch, sagt er, steht der intelligiblen
(metaphysischen) Welt nicht naher, als der physische Mensch. "


38

=To What Extent Useful. =--Therefore, whether psychological observation
is more an advantage than a disadvantage to mankind may always remain
undetermined: but there is no doubt that it is necessary, because
science can no longer dispense with it. Science, however, recognizes no
considerations of ultimate goals or ends any more than nature does; but
as the latter duly matures things of the highest fitness for certain
ends without any intention of doing it, so will true science, doing with
ideas what nature does with matter,[20] promote the purposes and the
welfare of humanity, (as occasion may afford, and in many ways) and
attain fitness [to ends]--but likewise without having intended it.

[20] als die Nachahmung der Natur in Begriffen, literally: "as the
counterfeit of nature in (regard to) ideas. "

He to whom the atmospheric conditions of such a prospect are too wintry,
has too little fire in him: let him look about him, and he will become
sensible of maladies requiring an icy air, and of people who are so
"kneaded together" out of ardor and intellect that they can scarcely
find anywhere an atmosphere too cold and cutting for them. Moreover: as
too serious individuals and nations stand in need of trivial
relaxations; as others, too volatile and excitable require onerous,
weighty ordeals to render them entirely healthy: should not we, the more
intellectual men of this age, which is swept more and more by
conflagrations, catch up every cooling and extinguishing appliance we
can find that we may always remain as self contained, steady and calm as
we are now, and thereby perhaps serve this age as its mirror and self
reflector, when the occasion arises?


39

=The Fable of Discretionary Freedom. =--The history of the feelings, on
the basis of which we make everyone responsible, hence, the so-called
moral feelings, is traceable in the following leading phases. At first
single actions are termed good or bad without any reference to their
motive, but solely because of the utilitarian or prejudicial
consequences they have for the community. In time, however, the origin
of these designations is forgotten [but] it is imagined that action in
itself, without reference to its consequences, contains the property
"good" or "bad": with the same error according to which language
designates the stone itself as hard[ness] the tree itself as
green[ness]--for the reason, therefore, that what is a consequence is
comprehended as a cause. Accordingly, the good[ness] or bad[ness] is
incorporated into the motive and [any] deed by itself is regarded as
morally ambiguous. A step further is taken, and the predication good or
bad is no longer made of the particular motives but of the entire nature
of a man, out of which motive grows as grow the plants out of the soil.
Thus man is successively made responsible for his [particular] acts,
then for his [course of] conduct, then for his motives and finally for
his nature. Now, at last, is it discovered that this nature, even,
cannot be responsible, inasmuch as it is only and wholly a necessary
consequence and is synthesised out of the elements and influence of past
and present things: therefore, that man is to be made responsible for
nothing, neither for his nature, nor his motives, nor his [course of]
conduct nor his [particular] acts. By this [process] is gained the
knowledge that the history of moral estimates is the history of error,
of the error of responsibility: as is whatever rests upon the error of
the freedom of the will. Schopenhauer concluded just the other way,
thus: since certain actions bring depression ("consciousness of guilt")
in their train, there must, then, exist responsibility, for there would
be no basis for this depression at hand if all man's affairs did not
follow their course of necessity--as they do, indeed, according to the
opinion of this philosopher, follow their course--but man himself,
subject to the same necessity, would be just the man that he is--which
Schopenhauer denies. From the fact of such depression Schopenhauer
believes himself able to prove a freedom which man in some way must have
had, not indeed in regard to his actions but in regard to his nature:
freedom, therefore, to be thus and so, not to act thus and so. Out of
the _esse_, the sphere of freedom and responsibility, follows, according
to his opinion, the _operari_, the spheres of invariable causation,
necessity and irresponsibility. This depression, indeed, is due
apparently to the _operari_--in so far as it be delusive--but in truth
to whatever _esse_ be the deed of a free will, the basic cause of the
existence of an individual: [in order to] let man become whatever he
wills to become, his [to] will (Wollen) must precede his
existence. --Here, apart from the absurdity of the statement just made,
there is drawn the wrong inference that the fact of the depression
explains its character, the rational admissibility of it: from such a
wrong inference does Schopenhauer first come to his fantastic consequent
of the so called discretionary freedom (intelligibeln Freiheit). (For
the origin of this fabulous entity Plato and Kant are equally
responsible). But depression after the act does not need to be rational:
indeed, it is certainly not so at all, for it rests upon the erroneous
assumption that the act need not necessarily have come to pass.
Therefore: only because man deems himself free, but not because
he is free, does he experience remorse and the stings of
conscience. --Moreover, this depression is something that can be grown
out of; in many men it is not present at all as a consequence of acts
which inspire it in many other men. It is a very varying thing and one
closely connected with the development of custom and civilization, and
perhaps manifest only during a relatively brief period of the world's
history. --No one is responsible for his acts, no one for his nature; to
judge is tantamount to being unjust. This applies as well when the
individual judges himself. The proposition is as clear as sunlight, and
yet here everyone prefers to go back to darkness and untruth: for fear
of the consequences.


40

=Above Animal. =--The beast in us must be wheedled: ethic is necessary,
that we may not be torn to pieces. Without the errors involved in the
assumptions of ethics, man would have remained an animal. Thus has he
taken himself as something higher and imposed rigid laws upon himself.
He feels hatred, consequently, for states approximating the animal:
whence the former contempt for the slave as a not-yet-man, as a thing,
is to be explained.


41

=Unalterable Character. =--That character is unalterable is not, in the
strict sense, true; rather is this favorite proposition valid only to
the extent that during the brief life period of a man the potent new
motives can not, usually, press down hard enough to obliterate the lines
imprinted by ages. Could we conceive of a man eighty thousand years old,
we should have in him an absolutely alterable character; so that the
maturities of successive, varying individuals would develop in him. The
shortness of human life leads to many erroneous assertions concerning
the qualities of man.


42

=Classification of Enjoyments and Ethic. =--The once accepted comparative
classification of enjoyments, according to which an inferior, higher,
highest egoism may crave one or another enjoyment, now decides as to
ethical status or unethical status. A lower enjoyment (for example,
sensual pleasure) preferred to a more highly esteemed one (for example,
health) rates as unethical, as does welfare preferred to freedom. The
comparative classification of enjoyments is not, however, alike or the
same at all periods; when anyone demands satisfaction of the law, he is,
from the point of view of an earlier civilization, moral, from that of
the present, non-moral. "Unethical" indicates, therefore, that a man is
not sufficiently sensible to the higher, finer impulses which the
present civilization has brought with it, or is not sensible to them at
all; it indicates backwardness, but only from the point of view of the
contemporary degree of distinction. --The comparative classification of
enjoyments itself is not determined according to absolute ethics; but
after each new ethical adjustment, it is then decided whether conduct be
ethical or the reverse.


43

=Inhuman Men as Survivals. =--Men who are now inhuman must serve us as
surviving specimens of earlier civilizations. The mountain height of
humanity here reveals its lower formations, which might otherwise remain
hidden from view. There are surviving specimens of humanity whose brains
through the vicissitudes of heredity, have escaped proper development.
They show us what we all were and thus appal us; but they are as little
responsible on this account as is a piece of granite for being granite.
In our own brains there must be courses and windings corresponding to
such characters, just as in the forms of some human organs there survive
traces of fishhood. But these courses and windings are no longer the bed
in which flows the stream of our feeling.


44

=Gratitude and Revenge. =--The reason the powerful man is grateful is
this. His benefactor has, through his benefaction, invaded the domain of
the powerful man and established himself on an equal footing: the
powerful man in turn invades the domain of the benefactor and gets
satisfaction through the act of gratitude. It is a mild form of revenge.
By not obtaining the satisfaction of gratitude the powerful would have
shown himself powerless and have ranked as such thenceforward. Hence
every society of the good, that is to say, of the powerful originally,
places gratitude among the first of duties. --Swift has added the dictum
that man is grateful in the same degree that he is revengeful.


45

=Two-fold Historical Origin of Good and Evil. =--The notion of good and
bad has a two-fold historical origin: namely, first, in the spirit of
ruling races and castes. Whoever has power to requite good with good and
evil with evil and actually brings requital, (that is, is grateful and
revengeful) acquires the name of being good; whoever is powerless and
cannot requite is called bad. A man belongs, as a good individual, to
the "good" of a community, who have a feeling in common, because all the
individuals are allied with one another through the requiting sentiment.
A man belongs, as a bad individual, to the "bad," to a mass of
subjugated, powerless men who have no feeling in common. The good are a
caste, the bad are a quantity, like dust. Good and bad is, for a
considerable period, tantamount to noble and servile, master and slave.
On the other hand an enemy is not looked upon as bad: he can requite.
The Trojan and the Greek are in Homer both good. Not he, who does no
harm, but he who is despised, is deemed bad. In the community of the
good individuals [the quality of] good[ness] is inherited; it is
impossible for a bad individual to grow from such a rich soil. If,
notwithstanding, one of the good individuals does something unworthy of
his goodness, recourse is had to exorcism; thus the guilt is ascribed to
a deity, the while it is declared that this deity bewitched the good man
into madness and blindness. --Second, in the spirit of the subjugated,
the powerless. Here every other man is, to the individual, hostile,
inconsiderate, greedy, inhuman, avaricious, be he noble or servile; bad
is the characteristic term for man, for every living being, indeed, that
is recognized at all, even for a god: human, divine, these notions are
tantamount to devilish, bad. Manifestations of goodness, sympathy,
helpfulness, are regarded with anxiety as trickiness, preludes to an
evil end, deception, subtlety, in short, as refined badness. With such a
predisposition in individuals, a feeling in common can scarcely arise at
all, at most only the rudest form of it: so that everywhere that this
conception of good and evil prevails, the destruction of the
individuals, their race and nation, is imminent. --Our existing morality
has developed upon the foundation laid by ruling races and castes.


46

=Sympathy Greater than Suffering. =--There are circumstances in which
sympathy is stronger than the suffering itself. We feel more pain, for
instance, when one of our friends becomes guilty of a reprehensible
action than if we had done the deed ourselves. We once, that is, had
more faith in the purity of his character than he had himself. Hence our
love for him, (apparently because of this very faith) is stronger than
is his own love for himself. If, indeed, his egoism really suffers more,
as a result, than our egoism, inasmuch as he must take the consequences
of his fault to a greater extent than ourselves, nevertheless, the
unegoistic--this word is not to be taken too strictly, but simply as a
modified form of expression--in us is more affected by his guilt than
the unegoistic in him.


47

=Hypochondria. =--There are people who, from sympathy and anxiety for
others become hypochondriacal. The resulting form of compassion is
nothing else than sickness. So, also, is there a Christian hypochondria,
from which those singular, religiously agitated people suffer who place
always before their eyes the suffering and death of Christ.


48

=Economy of Blessings. =--The advantageous and the pleasing, as the
healthiest growths and powers in the intercourse of men, are such
precious treasures that it is much to be wished the use made of these
balsamic means were as economical as possible: but this is impossible.
Economy in the use of blessings is the dream of the craziest of
Utopians.


49

=Well-Wishing. =--Among the small, but infinitely plentiful and therefore
very potent things to which science must pay more attention than to the
great, uncommon things, well-wishing[21] must be reckoned; I mean those
manifestations of friendly disposition in intercourse, that laughter of
the eye, every hand pressure, every courtesy from which, in general,
every human act gets its quality. Every teacher, every functionary adds
this element as a gratuity to whatever he does as a duty; it is the
perpetual well spring of humanity, like the waves of light in which
everything grows; thus, in the narrowest circles, within the family,
life blooms and flowers only through this kind feeling. The
cheerfulness, friendliness and kindness of a heart are unfailing
sources of unegoistic impulse and have made far more for civilization
than those other more noised manifestations of it that are styled
sympathy, benevolence and sacrifice. But it is customary to depreciate
these little tokens of kindly feeling, and, indeed, there is not much of
the unegoistic in them. The sum of these little doses is very great,
nevertheless; their combined strength is of the greatest of
strengths. --Thus, too, much more happiness is to be found in the world
than gloomy eyes discover: that is, if the calculation be just, and all
these pleasing moments in which every day, even the meanest human life,
is rich, be not forgotten.

[21] Wohl-wollen, kind feeling. It stands here for benevolence but not
benevolence in the restricted sense of the word now prevailing.


50

=The Desire to Inspire Compassion. =--La Rochefoucauld, in the most
notable part of his self portraiture (first printed 1658) reaches the
vital spot of truth when he warns all those endowed with reason to be on
their guard against compassion, when he advises that this sentiment be
left to men of the masses who stand in need of the promptings of the
emotions (since they are not guided by reason) to induce them to give
aid to the suffering and to be of service in misfortune: whereas
compassion, in his (and Plato's) view, deprives the heart of strength.
To be sure, sympathy should be manifested but men should take care not
to feel it; for the unfortunate are rendered so dull that the
manifestation of sympathy affords them the greatest happiness in the
world. --Perhaps a more effectual warning against this compassion can be
given if this need of the unfortunate be considered not simply as
stupidity and intellectual weakness, not as a sort of distraction of the
spirit entailed by misfortune itself (and thus, indeed, does La
Rochefoucauld seem to view it) but as something quite different and more
momentous. Let note be taken of children who cry and scream in order to
be compassionated and who, therefore, await the moment when their
condition will be observed; come into contact with the sick and the
oppressed in spirit and try to ascertain if the wailing and sighing, the
posturing and posing of misfortune do not have as end and aim the
causing of pain to the beholder: the sympathy which each beholder
manifests is a consolation to the weak and suffering only in as much as
they are made to perceive that at least they have the power,
notwithstanding all their weakness, to inflict pain. The unfortunate
experiences a species of joy in the sense of superiority which the
manifestation of sympathy entails; his imagination is exalted; he is
always strong enough, then, to cause the world pain. Thus is the thirst
for sympathy a thirst for self enjoyment and at the expense of one's
fellow creatures: it shows man in the whole ruthlessness of his own dear
self: not in his mere "dullness" as La Rochefoucauld thinks. --In social
conversation three fourths of all the questions are asked, and three
fourths of all the replies are made in order to inflict some little
pain; that is why so many people crave social intercourse: it gives them
a sense of their power. In these countless but very small doses in which
the quality of badness is administered it proves a potent stimulant of
life: to the same extent that well wishing--(Wohl-wollen) distributed
through the world in like manner, is one of the ever ready
restoratives. --But will many honorable people be found to admit that
there is any pleasure in administering pain? that entertainment--and
rare entertainment--is not seldom found in causing others, at least in
thought, some pain, and in raking them with the small shot of
wickedness? The majority are too ignoble and a few are too good to know
anything of this pudendum: the latter may, consequently, be prompt to
deny that Prosper Merimee is right when he says: "Know, also, that
nothing is more common than to do wrong for the pleasure of doing it. "


51

=How Appearance Becomes Reality. =--The actor cannot, at last, refrain,
even in moments of the deepest pain, from thinking of the effect
produced by his deportment and by his surroundings--for example, even at
the funeral of his own child: he will weep at his own sorrow and its
manifestations as though he were his own audience. The hypocrite who
always plays one and the same part, finally ceases to be a hypocrite; as
in the case of priests who, when young men, are always, either
consciously or unconsciously, hypocrites, and finally become naturally
and then really, without affectation, mere priests: or if the father
does not carry it to this extent, the son, who inherits his father's
calling and gets the advantage of the paternal progress, does. When
anyone, during a long period, and persistently, wishes to appear
something, it will at last prove difficult for him to be anything else.
The calling of almost every man, even of the artist, begins with
hypocrisy, with an imitation of deportment, with a copying of the
effective in manner. He who always wears the mask of a friendly man must
at last gain a power over friendliness of disposition, without which the
expression itself of friendliness is not to be gained--and finally
friendliness of disposition gains the ascendancy over him--he _is_
benevolent.


52

=The Point of Honor in Deception. =--In all great deceivers one
characteristic is prominent, to which they owe their power. In the very
act of deception, amid all the accompaniments, the agitation in the
voice, the expression, the bearing, in the crisis of the scene, there
comes over them a belief in themselves; this it is that acts so
effectively and irresistibly upon the beholders. Founders of religions
differ from such great deceivers in that they never come out of this
state of self deception, or else they have, very rarely, a few moments
of enlightenment in which they are overcome by doubt; generally,
however, they soothe themselves by ascribing such moments of
enlightenment to the evil adversary. Self deception must exist that both
classes of deceivers may attain far reaching results. For men believe in
the truth of all that is manifestly believed with due implicitness by
others.


53

=Presumed Degrees of Truth. =--One of the most usual errors of deduction
is: because someone truly and openly is against us, therefore he speaks
the truth. Hence the child has faith in the judgments of its elders, the
Christian in the assertions of the founder of the church. So, too, it
will not be admitted that all for which men sacrificed life and
happiness in former centuries was nothing but delusion: perhaps it is
alleged these things were degrees of truth. But what is really meant is
that, if a person sincerely believes a thing and has fought and died for
his faith, it would be too _unjust_ if only delusion had inspired him.
Such a state of affairs seems to contradict eternal justice. For that
reason the heart of a sensitive man pronounces against his head the
judgment: between moral conduct and intellectual insight there must
always exist an inherent connection. It is, unfortunately, otherwise:
for there is no eternal justice.


54

=Falsehood. =--Why do men, as a rule, speak the truth in the ordinary
affairs of life? Certainly not for the reason that a god has forbidden
lying. But because first: it is more convenient, as falsehood entails
invention, make-believe and recollection (wherefore Swift says that
whoever invents a lie seldom realises the heavy burden he takes up: he
must, namely, for every lie that he tells, insert twenty more).
Therefore, because in plain ordinary relations of life it is expedient
to say without circumlocution: I want this, I have done this, and the
like; therefore, because the way of freedom and certainty is surer than
that of ruse. --But if it happens that a child is brought up in sinister
domestic circumstances, it will then indulge in falsehood as matter of
course, and involuntarily say anything its own interests may prompt: an
inclination for truth, an aversion to falsehood, is quite foreign and
uncongenial to it, and hence it lies in all innocence.


55

=Ethic Discredited for Faith's Sake. =--No power can sustain itself when
it is represented by mere humbugs: the Catholic Church may possess ever
so many "worldly" sources of strength, but its true might is comprised
in those still numberless priestly natures who make their lives stern
and strenuous and whose looks and emaciated bodies are eloquent of night
vigils, fasts, ardent prayer, perhaps even of whip lashes: these things
make men tremble and cause them anxiety: what, if it be really
imperative to live thus? This is the dreadful question which their
aspect occasions. As they spread this doubt, they lay anew the prop of
their power: even the free thinkers dare not oppose such
disinterestedness with severe truth and cry: "Thou deceived one,
deceive not! "--Only the difference of standpoint separates them from
him: no difference in goodness or badness. But things we cannot
accomplish ourselves, we are apt to criticise unfairly. Thus we are told
of the cunning and perverted acts of the Jesuits, but we overlook the
self mastery that each Jesuit imposes upon himself and also the fact
that the easy life which the Jesuit manuals advocate is for the benefit,
not of the Jesuits but the laity. Indeed, it may be questioned whether
we enlightened ones would become equally competent workers as the result
of similar tactics and organization, and equally worthy of admiration as
the result of self mastery, indefatigable industry and devotion.


56

=Victory of Knowledge over Radical Evil. =--It proves a material gain to
him who would attain knowledge to have had during a considerable period
the idea that mankind is a radically bad and perverted thing: it is a
false idea, as is its opposite, but it long held sway and its roots have
reached down even to ourselves and our present world. In order to
understand _ourselves_ we must understand _it_; but in order to attain a
loftier height we must step above it.