No More Learning

But the nineteenth
century shows no advance whatever on the six-
teenth: and the German spirit of 1888 is an
example of a backward movement when compared
with that of 1788. • Mankind does not
advance, it does not even exist. The aspect of
the whole is much more like that of a huge experi-
menting workshop where some things in all ages
succeed, while an incalculable number of things
fail ; where all order, logic, co-ordination, and
responsibility is lacking. How dare we blink the
fact that the rise of Christianity is a decadent
movement ? —that the German Reformation was
a recrudescence of Christian barbarism - that the
Revolution destroyed the instinct for an organisa-


## p. 73 (#97) ##############################################

NIHILISM.
73
tion of society on a large scale? . . . Man is not
an example of progress as compared with animals :
the tender son of culture is an abortion compared
with the Arab or the Corsican; the Chinaman
is a more successful type-- that is to say, possess-
ing more lasting powers than the European.
(6) THE LAST CENTURIES.
91.
Gloominess and pessimistic influence necessarily
follow in the wake of enlightenment. Towards
1770 a falling-off in cheerfulness was already
noticeable; women, with that very feminine instinct
which always defends virtue, believed that immor-
ality was the cause of it. Galiani hit the bull's
eye: he quotes Voltaire's verse:
“Un monstre gai vaut mieux
Qu'un sentimental ennuyeux.
If now I maintain that I am ahead, by a
century or two of enlightenment, of Voltaire and
Galiani—who was much more profound, how
-
deeply must I have sunk into gloominess! This
is also true, and betimes I somewhat reluctantly
manifested some caution in regard to the German
and Christian narrowness and inconsistency of
Schopenhauerian or, worse still, Leopardian Pessim-
ism, and sought the most characteristic form (Asia).
But, in order to endure that extreme Pessimism
(which here and there peeps out of my Birth of
Tragedy), to live alone“ without God or morality,”


## p. 74 (#98) ##############################################

74
THE WILL TO POWER.
I was compelled to invent a counter-prop for my-
self. Perhaps I know best why man is the only
animal that laughs: he alone suffers so excruciat-
ingly that he was compelled to invent laughter,
The unhappiest and most melancholy animal is,
as might have been expected, the most cheerful.
92.
In regard to German culture, I have always had
a feeling as of decline. The fact that I learned to
know a declining form of culture has often made
me unfair towards the whole phenomenon of
European culture. The Germans always follow
at some distance behind : they always go to the
root of things, for instance :
Dependance upon foreigners; Kant-Rousseau,
the sensualists, Hume, Swedenborg.
Schopenhauer—the Indians and Romanticism,
Voltaire,
Wagner-the French cult of the ugly and of
grand opera, Paris, and the flight into primitive
barbarism (the marriage of brother and sister).
The law of the laggard (the provinces go to
Paris, Germany goes to France).
How is it that precisely Germans discovered the
Greek (the more an instinct is developed, the more
it is tempted to run for once into its opposite).
Music is the last breath of every culture.
93.
Renaissance and Reformation. -What does the
Renaissance prove ? That the reign of the


## p. 75 (#99) ##############################################

NIHILISM,
75
"
“individual” can be only a short one. The out-
put is too great; there is not even the possibility
of husbanding or of capitalising forces, and ex-
haustion sets in step by step.
These are times
when everything is squandered, when even the
strength itself with which one collects, capitalises,
and heaps riches upon riches, is squandered.
Even the opponents of such movements are driven
to preposterous extremes in the dissipation of
their strength: and they too are very soon
exhausted, used up, and completely sapped.
In the Reformation we are face to face with
a wild and plebeian counterpart of the Italian
Renaissance, generated by similar impulses, except
that the former, in the backward and still vulgar
North, had to assume a religious form—there the
concept of a higher life had not yet been divorced
from that of a religious one.
Even the Reformation was a movement for
individual liberty; "every one his own priest" is
really no more than a formula for libertinage. As a
matter of fact, the words “Evangelical freedom"
would have sufficed—and all instincts which had
reasons for remaining concealed broke out like wild
hounds, the most brutal needs suddenly acquired
the courage to show themselves, everything seemed
justified . . . men refused to specify the kind of
freedom they had aimed at, they preferred to shut
But the fact that their eyes were
closed and that their lips were moistened with
gushing orations, did not prevent their hands from
being ready to snatch at whatever there was to
snatch at, that the belly became the god of the
their eyes.


## p. 76 (#100) #############################################

76
THE WILL TO POWER.
“free gospel," and that all lusts of revenge and of
hatred were indulged with insatiable fury.
This lasted for a while: then exhaustion super-
vened, just as it had done in Southern Europe;
and again here, it was a low form of exhaustion,
a sort of general ruere in servitium. . . . Then the
. . .
disreputable century of Germany dawned.
94.
Chivalry—the position won by power : its
gradual break-up (and partial transference to
broader and more bourgeois spheres). In the case
of Larochefoucauld we find a knowledge of the
actual impulses of a noble temperament-together
with the gloomy Christian estimate of these
impulses.
The protraction of Christianity through the
French Revolution. The seducer is Rousseau ;
he once again liberates woman, who thenceforward
is always represented as ever more interesting-
suffering. Then come the slaves and Mrs. Beecher-
Stowe. Then the poor and the workmen. Then
the vicious and the sick—all this is drawn into
the foreground (even for the purpose of disposing
people in favour of the genius, it has been custom-
ary for five hundred years to press him forward as
the great sufferer! ). Then comes the cursing of
all voluptuousness (Beaudelaire and Schopen-
hauer); the most decided conviction that the lust
of power is the greatest vice; absolute certainty
that morality and disinterestedness are identical
things; that the "happiness of all” is a goal worth
1


## p. 77 (#101) #############################################

NIHILISM.
77
striving after (i. e. , Christ's Kingdom of Heaven).
We are on the best road to it: the Kingdom of
Heaven of the poor in spirit has begun. -Inter-
mediate stages: the bourgeois (as a result of the
nouveau riche) and the workman (as a result of
the machine).
Greek and French culture of the time of Louis
XIV. compared. A decided belief in oneself.
A leisured class which makes things hard for itself
and exercises a great deal of self-control. The
power of form, the will to form oneself.
“ Happi-
ness" acknowledged as a purpose.
Much strength
and
energy
behind all formality of manners.
Pleasure at the sight of a life that is seemingly so
easy. The Greeks seemed like children to the
French.
95.
The Three Centuries.
Their different kinds of sensitiveness may
perhaps be best expressed as follows:
Aristocracy: Descartes, the reign of reason,
evidence showing the sovereignty of the will.
Feminism : Rousseau, the reign of feeling,
evidence showing the sovereignty of the senses;
all lies.
Animalism: Schopenhauer, the reign of passion,
evidence showing the sovereignty of animality,
more honest, but gloomy.
The seventeenth century is aristocratic, all for
order, haughty towards everything animal, severe
in regard to the heart, " austere," and even free
from sentiment, “non-German," averse to all that


## p. 78 (#102) #############################################

78
THE WILL TO POWER.
is burlesque and natural, generalising and main-
taining an attitude of sovereignty towards the
pastº for it believes in itself. At bottom it
partakes very much of the beast of prey, and
practises asceticism in order to remain master.
It is the century of strength of will, as also that of
strong passion.
The eighteenth century is dominated by woman,
it is gushing, spiritual, and flat; but with intellect
at the service of aspirations and of the heart, it is
a libertine in the pleasures of intellect, undermining
all authorities; emotionally intoxicated, cheerful,
clear, humane, and sociable, false to itself and at
bottom very rascally. . . .
The nineteenth century is more animal, more
subterranean, hateful, realistic, plebeian, and on
that very account “better," “ more honest,” more
submissive to "reality" of what kind soever, and
truer; but weak of will, sad, obscurely exacting
and fatalistic. It has no feeling of timidity or
reverence, either in the presence of “reason”
the “heart”; thoroughly convinced of the
dominion of the desires (Schopenhauer said “Will,”
but nothing is more characteristic of his philosophy
than that it entirely lacks all actual willing). Even
morality is reduced to an instinct (“ Pity ").
Auguste Comte is the continuation of the
eighteenth century (the dominion of the heart over
the head, sensuality in the theory of knowledge,
altruistic exaltation).
The fact that science has become as sovereign
as it is to-day, proves how the nineteenth century
has emancipated itself from the dominion of ideals.
>
or
1


## p. 79 (#103) #############################################

NIHILISM.
79
)
A certain absence of“ needs "and wishes makes our
scientific curiosity and rigour possible this is
our kind of virtue.
Romanticism is the counterstroke of the
eighteenth century; a sort of accumulated longing
for its grand style of exaltation (as a matter of fact,
largely mingled with mummery and self-deception :
the desire was to represent strong nature and strong
passion).
The nineteenth century instinctively goes in
search of theories by means of which it may feel
its fatalistic submission to the empire of facts
justified. Hegel's success against sentimentality
and romantic idealism was already a sign of its
fatalistic trend of thought, in its belief that
superior reason belongs to the triumphant side,
and in its justification of the actual "state" (in
the place of“ humanity," etc. ). -Schopenhauer: we
are something foolish, and at the best self-
suppressive. The success of determinism, the
genealogical derivation of obligations which were
formerly held to be absolute, the teaching of
environment and adaptation, the reduction of will
to a process of reflex movement, the denial of the
will as
“working cause"; finally — a real
process of re-christening: so little will is observed
that the word itself becomes available for another
purpose. Further theories: the teaching of
objectivity, “will-less”
“ will-less” contemplation, as the only
road to truth, as also to beauty (also the belief
in "genius," in order to have the right to be
submissive); mechanism, the determinable rigidity
of the mechanical process; so-called " Naturalism,"
a


## p. 80 (#104) #############################################

80
THE WILL TO POWER.
»
the elimination of the choosing, directing, inter-
preting subject, on principle.
Kant, with his practical reason," with his moral
fanaticism, is quite eighteenth century style; still
completely outside the historical movement, without
any notion whatsoever of the reality of his time, for
instance, revolution; he is not affected by Greek
philosophy; he is a phantasist of the notion of duty,
a sensualist with a hidden leaning to dogmatic
pampering.
The return to Kant in our century means a return
to the eighteenth century: people desire to create
themselves a right to the old ideas and to the old
exaltation-hence a theory of knowledge which“ de-
scribes limits,” that is to say, which admits of the
option of fixing a Beyond to the domain of reason.
Hegel's way of thinking is not so very far
removed from that of Goethe: see the latter on
the subject of Spinoza, for instance. The will to
deify the All and Life, in order to find both peace
and happiness in contemplating them: Hegel
looks for reason everywhere in the presence of
reason man may be submissive and resigned. In
Goethe we find a kind of fatalism which is almost
joyous and confiding, which neither revolts nor
weakens, which strives to make a totality out of
itself, in the belief that only in totality does every-
thing seem good and justified, and find itself
resolved.
96.
The period of rationalism -- followed by a
period of sentimentality. To what extent does


## p. 81 (#105) #############################################

NIHILISM.
81
“sentimentality”?
Schopenhauer come under
(Hegel under intellectuality ? )
97.
The seventeenth century suffers from humanity
as from a host of contradictions (“l'amas de con-
tradictions ” that we are ); it endeavours to discover
man, to co-ordinate him, to excavate him: whereas
the eighteenth century tries to forget what is
known of man's nature, in order to adapt him to
its Utopia. “Superficial, soft, humane”-gushes
,
over "humanity. "
The seventeenth century tries to banish all
traces of the individual in order that the artist's
work may resemble life as much as possible.
The eighteenth century strives to create interest in
the author by means of the work. The seventeenth
century seeks art in art, a piece of culture; the
eighteenth uses art in its propaganda for political
and social reforms.
Utopia,” the “ideal man,” the deification of
Nature, the vanity of making one's own personality
the centre of interest, subordination to the propa-
ganda of social ideas, charlatanism-all this we
derive from the eighteenth century.
The style of the seventeenth century: propre
exact et libre.
The strong individual who is self-sufficient, or
who appeals ardently to God—and that obtrusive.
ness and indiscretion of modern authors-these
things are opposites. “Showing-oneself-off”—what
a contrast to the Scholars of Port-Royal !
F
»
VOL. I.


## p. 82 (#106) #############################################

82
THE WILL TO POWER.
Alfieri had a sense for the grand style.
The hate of the burlesque (that which lacks
dignity), the lack of a sense of Nature belongs to
the seventeenth century.
98.
Against Rousseau. -Alas! man is no longer
sufficiently evil ; Rousseau's opponents, who say
that “man is a beast of prey,” are unfortunately
wrong Not the corruption of man, but the
softening and moralising of him is the curse. In
the sphere which Rousseau attacked most violently,
the relatively strongest and most successful type
of man was still to be found (the type which still
possessed the great passions intact: Will to Power,
Will to Pleasure, the Will and Ability to Com-
mand). The man of the eighteenth century must
be compared with the man of the Renaissance (also
with the man of the seventeenth century in France)
if the matter is to be understood at all: Rousseau
is a symptom of self-contempt and of inflamed
vanity—both signs that the dominating will is
lacking: he moralises and seeks the cause of his
own misery after the style of a revengeful man in
the ruling classes.
99.
-
Voltaire Rousseau. A state of nature is
terrible; man is a beast of prey: our civilisation
is an extraordinary triumph over this beast of
prey in nature—this was Voltaire's conclusion.
He was conscious of the mildness, the refinements,


## p. 83 (#107) #############################################

NIHILISM.
83
the intellectual joys of the civilised state; he
despised obtuseness, even in the form of virtue,
and the lack of delicacy even in ascetics and
monks.
The moral depravity of man seemed to pre-
occupy Rousseau ; the words “ unjust,” “ cruel," are
the best possible for the purpose of exciting the
instincts of the oppressed, who otherwise find
themselves under the ban of the vetitum and of
disgrace; so that their conscience is opposed to their
indulging any insurrectional desires. These
emancipators seek one thing above all: to give
their party the great accents and attitudes of
higher Nature
100.
hall and
Rousseau : the rule founded on sentiment;
Nature as the source of justice; man perfects
himself in proportion as he approaches Nature
(according to Voltaire, in proportion as he leaves
Nature behind). The very same periods seem to
the one to demonstrate the progress of humanity
and, to the other, the increase of injustice and
inequality.
Voltaire, who still understood umanità in the
sense of the Renaissance, as also virtù (as “higher
culture"), fights for the cause of the "honnêtes
gens," "la bonne compagnie," taste, science, arts,
and even for the cause of progress and civilisation.
The flare-up occurred towards 1760: On the
one hand the citizen of Geneva, on the other le
seigneur de Ferney. It is only from that moment
and henceforward that Voltaire was the man of


## p. 84 (#108) #############################################

84
THE WILL TO POWER.
his age, the philosopher, the representative of
Toleration and of Disbelief (theretofore he had
been merely un bel esprit). His envy and hatred
of Rousseau's success forced him upwards.
“ Pour la canaille' un dieu rémunérateur et
vengeur”- Voltaire,
.
The criticism of both standpoints in regard to
the value of civilisation. To Voltaire nothing
seems finer than the social invention : there is
no higher goal than to uphold and perfect it.
L'honnêteté consists precisely in respecting social
usage; virtue in a certain obedience towards
various necessary "prejudices” which favour the
maintenance of society. Missionary of Culture,
aristocrat, representative of the triumphant and
ruling classes and their values. But Rousseau
remained a plebeian, even as hommes de lettres, this
was preposterous; his shameless contempt for
everything that was not himself.
The morbid feature in Rousseau is the one
which happens to have been most admired and
imitated. (Lord Byron resembled him somewhat,
he too screwed himself up to sublime attitudes
and to revengeful rage—a sign of vulgarity ; later
;
on, when Venice restored his equilibrium, he under-
stood what was more alleviating and did more
good . . . l'insouciance. )
In spite of his antecedents, Rousseau is proud
of himself; but he is incensed if he is reminded of
his origin. :
In Rousseau there was undoubtedly some brain
trouble; in Voltaire-rare health and lightsome-
The revengefulness of the sick ; his periods
ness


## p. 85 (#109) #############################################

NIHILISM.
85
>>
of insanity as also those of his contempt of man,
and of his mistrust.
Rousseau's defence of Providence (against Vol-
taire's Pessimism): he had need of God in order
to be able to curse society and civilisation; every-
thing must be good per se, because God had
created it; man alone has corrupted man. The
good man as a man of Nature was pure fantasy ;
but with the dogma of God's authorship he became
something probable and even not devoid of found-
ation.
Romanticism à la Rousseau : passion (“the
sovereign right of passion "); "naturalness"; the
fascination of madness (foolishness reckoned as
greatness); the senseless vanity of the weak; the
revengefulness of the masses elevated to the posi-
tion of justice (“in politics, for one hundred years,
the leader has been an invalid").
IOI.
Kant: makes the scepticism of Englishmen, in
regard to the theory of knowledge, possible for
Germans.
(1) By enlisting in its cause the interest of the
German's religious and moral needs : just as the
new academicians used scepticism for the same
reasons, as a preparation for Platonism (vide
Augustine); just as
just as Pascal even used moral
scepticism in order to provoke (to justify) thel
need of belief;
(2) By complicating and entangling it with
scholastic flourishes in view of making it more


## p. 86 (#110) #############################################

86
THE WILL TO POWER.
acceptable to the German's scientific taste in form
(for Locke and Hume, alone, were too illuminating,
too clear--that is to say, judged according to the
German valuing instinct, "too superficial ”).
Kant: a poor psychologist and mediocre judge
of human nature, made hopeless mistakes in
regard to great historical values (the French
Revolution); a moral fanatic à la Rousseau ; with
a subterranean current of Christian values; a
thorough dogmatist, but bored to extinction by
this tendency, to the extent of wishing to tyrannise
over it, but quickly tired, even of scepticism; and
not yet affected by any cosmopolitan thought or
antique beauty . . . a dawdler and a go-between,
not at all original (like Leibnitz, something between
mechanism and spiritualism ; like Goethe, something
between the taste of the eighteenth century and
that of the “historical sense" (which is essentially
a sense of exoticism); like German music, between
French and Italian music; like Charles the Great,
who mediated and built bridges between the
Roman Empire and Nationalism-a dawdler par
excellence).
102.
In what respect have the Christian centuries
with their Pessimism been stronger centuries than
the eighteenth-and how do they correspond
with the tragic age of the Greeks?
The nineteenth century versus the eighteenth.
How was it an heir ? -how was it a step backwards
from the latter ? (more lacking in "spirit” and


## p. 87 (#111) #############################################

NIHILISM.
87
in taste)—how did it show an advance on the
latter ? (more gloomy, more realistic, stronger).
103.
How can we explain the fact that we feel
something in common with the Campagna romana?
And the high mountain chain ?
Chateaubriand in a letter to M. de Fontanes
in 1803 writes his first impression of the Campagna
romana.
The President de Brosses says of the Campagna
romana : Il fallait
que
Romulus fût ivre quand il
songea à bâtir une ville dans un terrain aussi laid. ”
Even Delacroix would have nothing to do with
Rome, it frightened him. He loved Venice, just
as Shakespeare, Byron, and Georges Sand did.
Théophile Gautier's and Richard Wagner's dislike
of Rome must not be forgotten.
Lamartine has the language for Sorrento and
Posilippo.
Victor Hugo raves about Spain,"parce que
aucune autre nation n'a moins emprunté à
l'antiquité, parce qu'elle n'a subi aucune influence
classique. "
(
104. )
The two great attempts that were made to
overcome the eighteenth century:
Napoleon, in that he called man, the soldier,
and the great struggle for power, to life again,
and conceived Europe as a united political power.
Goethe, in that he imagined a European culture


## p. 88 (#112) #############################################

88
THE WILL TO POWER.
which would consist of the whole heritage of what
humanity had attained to up to his time.
German culture in this century inspires mistrust
-the music of the period lacks that complete
element which liberates and binds as well, to
wit-Goethe.
The pre-eminence of music in the romanticists
of 1830 and 1840. Delacroix. Ingresma
passionate musician (admired Gluck, Haydn,
Beethoven, Mozart), said to his pupils in Rome:
“Si je pouvais vous rendre tous musiciens, vous y
gagneriez comme peintres "-likewise Horace
Vernet, who was particularly fond of Don Juan (as
Mendelssohn assures us, 1831); Stendhal, too, who
says of himself: “Combien de lieues ne ferais-je
pas à pied, et à combien de jours de prison ne me
soumetterais-je pas pour entendre Don Juan ou le
Matrimonio segreto; et je ne sais pour quelle autre
chose je ferais cet effort. ” He was then fifty-six
years old.
The borrowed forms, for instance: Brahms as
a typical “ Epigone,” likewise Mendelssohn's cul-
tured Protestantism (a former “soul" is turned
into poetry posthumously . . . )
--the moral and poetical substitutions in
Wagner, who used one art as a stop-gap to make
up for what another lacked.
—the "historical sense,” inspiration derived
from poems, sagas.
-that characteristic transformation of which
G. Flaubert is the most striking example among
Frenchmen, and Richard Wagner the most strik-
ing example among Germans, shows how the


## p. 89 (#113) #############################################

NIHILISM.
89
romantic belief in love and the future changes
into a longing for nonentity in 1830-50.
10б.
How is it that German music reaches its head
culminating point in the age of German romanti- wdon stock
cism? How is it that German music lacks
Goethe ? On the other hand, how much Schiller,
or more exactly, how much “ Thekla " * is there
not in Beethoven !
Schumann has Eichendorff, Uhland, Heine,
Hoffman, Tieck, in him. Richard Wagner has
Freischütz, Hoffmann, Grimm, the romantic Saga,
the mystic catholicism of instinct, symbolism,
“the free-spiritedness of passion' (Rousseau's
intention). The Flying Dutchman savours of.
France, where le ténébreux (1830) was the type
of the seducer.
The cult of music, the revolutionary romanticism
of form. Wagner synthesises German and French
romanticism.
107.
From the point of view only of his value to
Germany and to German culture, Richard Wagner
is still a great problem, perhaps a German mis-
fortune: in any case, however, a fatality. But
what does it matter ? Is he not very much
more than a German event ? It also seems to
me that to no country on earth is he less related
than to Germany; nothing was prepared there for
* Thekla is the sentimental heroine in Schiller's Wallen-
stein. --TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.


## p. 90 (#114) #############################################

90
THE WILL TO POWER.
his advent; his whole type is simply strange
amongst Germans; there he stands in their midst,
wonderful, misunderstood, incomprehensible. But
people carefully avoid acknowledging this : they are
too kind, too square-headed—too German for that.
“Credo quia absurdus est”: thus did the German
spirit wish it to be, in this case too-hence it is
content meanwhile to believe everything Richard
Wagner wanted to have believed about himself. In
all ages the spirit of Germany has been deficient in
subtlety and divining powers concerning psycho-
1 logical matters. Now that it happens to be under the
high pressure of patrioticnonsense and self-adoration,
it is visibly growing thicker and coarser : how could
it therefore be equal to the problem of Wagner !
108.
Cathemat
* *32***
byl
mozaims
d ut?
The Germans are not yet anything, but they
are becoming something; that is why they have
not yet any culture ;—that is why they cannot
yet have any culture ! —They are not yet anything:
that means they are all kinds of things. They
are becoming something: that means that they will
one day cease from being all kinds of things. The
latter is at bottom only a wish, scarcely a hope
yet. Fortunately it is a wish with which one
can live, a question of will, of work, of discipline,
a question of training, as also of resentment, of
longing, of privation, of discomfort,-yea, even
of bitterness,-in short, we Germans will get
something out of ourselves, something that has not
yet been wanted of us we want something more!


## p. 91 (#115) #############################################

NIHILISM.
91
That this "German, as he is not as yet”—
has a right to something better than the present
German “culture”; that all who wish to become
something better, must wax angry when they
perceive a sort of contentment, an impudent
“setting-oneself-at-ease,” or “a process of self-
censing," in this quarter: that is my second
principle, in regard to which my opinions have
not yet changed.
(*) SIGNS OF INCREASING STRENGTH.
109.
First Principle: everything that characterises
modern men savours of decay: but side by side
with the prevailing sickness there are signs of a
strength and powerfulness of soul which are still
untried. The same causes which tend to promote
the belittling of men, also force the stronger and
rarer individuals upwards to greatness.
I1O.
General survey : the ambiguous character of our
modern world precisely the same symptoms
might at the same time be indicative of either
decline or strength. And the signs of strength
and of emancipation dearly bought, might in view
of traditional (or hereditary) appreciations con-
cerned with the feelings, be misunderstood as in-
dications of weakness. In short, feeling, as
means of fixing valuations, is not on a level with
the times.
a


## p. 92 (#116) #############################################

92
THE WILL TO POWER.
Generalised: Every valuation is always back-
ward; it is merely the expression of the con-
ditions which favoured survival and growth in
a much earlier age: it struggles against new
conditions of existence out of which it did not
arise, and which it therefore necessarily misunder-
stands : it hinders, and excites suspicion against,
all that is new.
III.
The problem of the nineteenth century. To dis-
cover whether its strong and weak side belong to
each other.
Whether they have been cut from
one and the same piece. Whether the variety of
its ideals and their contradictions are conditioned
by a higher purpose: whether they are something
higher. For it might be the prerequisite of great-
ness, that growth should take place amid such
violent tension. Dissatisfaction, Nihilism, might
be a good sign.
I 12.
General survey. --As a matter of fact, all
abundant growth involves a concomitant process
of crumbling to bits and decay: suffering and the
symptoms of decline belong to ages of enormous
progress; every fruitful and powerful movement
of mankind has always brought about a concurrent
Nihilistic movement. Under certain circumstances,
the appearance of the extremest form of Pessimism
and actual Nihilism might be the sign of a process
of incisive and most essential growth, and of man-
kind's transit into completely new conditions of
existence. This is what I have understood.


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NIHILISM,
93
II 3.
A.
Starting out with a thoroughly courageous
appreciation of our men of to-day we must not
: :
allow ourselves to be deceived by appearance:
this mankind is much less effective, but it gives
quite different pledges of lasting strength, its
tempo is slower, but the rhythm itself is richer.
Healthiness is increasing, the real conditions of a
healthy body are on the point of being known,
and will gradually be created, “ asceticism” is
regarded with irony. The fear of extremes, a fim
certain confidence in the "right way,” no raving :
a periodical self-habituation to narrower values
(such as “mother-land," "science," etc. ).
This whole picture, however, would still be AM Wed
ambiguous: it might be a movement either of
increase or decline in Life.
124
B.
The belief in “progress"-in lower spheres of
intelligence, appears as increasing life: but this is
self-deception;
in higher spheres of intelligence it is a sign
of declining life.
Description of the symptoms.
The unity of the aspect: uncertainty in regard
to the standard of valuation.
Fear of a general “ in vain. "
Nihilism,


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94
THE WILL TO POWER.
114.
As a matter of fact, we are no longer so urgently
in need of an antidote against the first Nihilism :
Life is no longer so uncertain, accidental, and
senseless in modern Europe. All such tremendous
exaggeration of the value of men, of the value of
evil, etc. , are not so necessary now; we can endure
a considerable diminution of this value, we may
grant a great deal of nonsense and accident: the
power man has acquired now allows of a lowering
of the means of discipline, of which the strongest
was the moral interpretation of the universe. The
hypothesis “God” is much too extreme,
115.
no
If anything shows that our humanisation is a
genuine sign of progress, it is the fact that we no
longer require excessive contraries, that we
longer require contraries at all. . . .
We may love the senses; for we have spirit-
ualised them in every way and made them artistic;
We have a right to all things which hitherto
have been most calumniated.
116.
The reversal of the order of rank. —Those pious
counterfeiters—thepriests—are becoming Chandala
in our midst they occupy the position of the
charlatan, of the quack, of the counterfeiter, of the
sorcerer: we regard them as corrupters of the will,


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NIHILISM.
95
as the great slanderers and vindictive enemies of
Life, and as the rebels among the bungled and the
botched. We have made our middle class out of
our servant-caste--the Sudra—that is to say, our
people or the body which wields the political
power.
On the other hand, the Chandala of former
times is paramount: the blasphemers, the im-
moralists, the independents of all kinds, the artists,
the Jews, the minstrels—and, at bottom, all dis-
reputable classes are in the van.
We have elevated ourselves to honourable
thoughts,-even more, we determine what honour
is on earth,—"nobility. ” . . . All of us to-day
are advocates of life. —We Immoralists are to-day
the strongest power : the other great powers are
in need of us we re-create the world in our
own image.
We have transferred the label Chandala to
the priests, the backworldsmen, and to the deformed
Christian society which has become associated with
these people, together with creatures of like origin,
the pessimists, Nihilists, romanticists of pity,
criminals, and men of vicious habits--the whole
sphere in which the idea of “God” is that of
Saviour.
We are proud of being no longer obliged to be seen heel en met
liars, slanderers, and detractors of Life. . . .
" ༔་ ༣ ༤
>
117.
The advance of the nineteenth century upon
the eighteenth (at bottom we good Europeans


## p. 96 (#120) #############################################

96
THE WILL TO POWER.
are carrying on a war against the eighteenth
century):
(1) “The return to Nature” is getting to be
understood, ever more definitely, in a way which
is quite the reverse of that in which Rousseau used
the phrase-away from idylls and operas !
(2) Ever more decided, more anti-idealistic,
more objective, more fearless, more industrious,
more temperate, more suspicious of sudden changes,
anti-revolutionary;
(3) The question of bodily health is being pressed
ever more decidedly in front of the health of "the
soul”: the latter is regarded as a condition brought
about by the former, and bodily health is believed
to be, at least, the prerequisite to spiritual health.
I 18.
If anything at all has been achieved, it is a more
innocent attitude towards the senses, a happier,
more favourable demeanour in regard to sensuality,
resembling rather the position taken up by Goethe;
a prouder feeling has also been developed in know-
ledge, and the “reine Thor"* meets with little
faith.
119.
We "objective people. ”—It is not "pity” that
opens up the way for us to all that is most remote
and most strange in life and culture; but our
a
* This is a reference to Wagner's Parsifal. The character
as is well known, is written to represent a son of heart's
affliction, and a child of wisdom-humble, guileless, loving,
pure, and a fool. -TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.


## p. 97 (#121) #############################################

NIHILISM.
97
nenesteness hist, suplestarstuera
accessibility and ingenuousness, which precisely
does not "pity," but rather takes pleasure in hun-
dreds of things which formerly caused pain (which
in former days either outraged or moved us, or in
the presence of which we were either hostile or
indifferent). Pain in all its various phases is now
interesting to us : on that account we are certainly
not the more pitiful, even though the sight of pain
may shake us to our foundations and move us to
tears : and we are absolutely not inclined to be
more helpful in view thereof.
In this deliberate desire to look on at all pain
and error, we have grown stronger and more
powerful than in the eighteenth century; it is a
proof of our increase of strength (we have drawn
closer to the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries).
But it is a profound mistake to regard our "roman-
ticism” as a proof of our “ beautified souls. ”
“
We
want stronger sensations than all coarser ages and
classes have wanted. (This fact must not be con-
founded with the needs of neurotics and decadents;
in their case, of course, there is a craving for pepper
-even for cruelty. )
We are all seeking conditions which are eman-
cipated from the bourgeois, and to a greater degree
from the priestly, notion of morality (every book
which savours at all of priestdom and theology
gives us the impression of pitiful niaiserie and
mental indigence). “Good company,” in fact, finds
"
everything insipid which is not forbidden and con-
sidered compromising in bourgeois circles; and the
case is the same with books, music, politics, and
opinions on women.
G
VOL. I.


## p. 98 (#122) #############################################

98
THE WILL TO POWER,
I 20.
4
The simplification of man in the nineteenth cen-
tury (The eighteenth century was that of elegance,
subtlety, and generous feeling). —Not "return to
nature”; for no natural humanity has ever existed
yet. Scholastic, unnatural, and antinatural values
are the rule and the beginning; man only reaches
Nature after a long struggle -- he never turns
“back” to her. . . . To be natural means, to dare
to be as immoral as Nature is.
We are coarser, more direct, richer in irony
towards generous feelings, even when we are be-
neath them.
Our haute volée, the society consisting of our
rich and leisured men, is more natural : people hunt
each other, the love of the sexes is a kind of sport
in which marriage is both a charm and an obstacle;
people entertain each other and live for the sake of
pleasure; bodily advantages stand in the first rank,
and curiosity and daring are the rule.
Our attitude towards knowledge is more natural;
we are innocent in our absolute spiritual debauchery,
we hate pathetic and hieratic manners, we delight
in that which is most strictly prohibited, we should
scarcely recognise any interest in knowledge if we
were bored in acquiring it.
Our attitude to morality is also more natural.
Principles have become a laughing-stock; no one
dares to speak of his “duty," unless in irony. But
a helpful, benevolent disposition is highly valued.
(Morality is located in instinct and the rest is
a


## p. 99 (#123) #############################################

NIHILISM,
99
despised. Besides this there are few points of
honour. )
Our attitude to politics is more natural: we see
problems of power, of the quantum of power, against
another quantum.
We do not believe in a right
that does not proceed from a power which is able
to uphold it. We regard all rights as conquests.
Our valuation of great men and things is more
natural: we regard passion as a privilege; we can
conceive of nothing great which does not involve a
great crime ; all greatness is associated in our minds
;
with a certain standing-beyond-the-pale in morality.
Our attitude to Nature is more natural: we no
longer love her for her "innocence," her “reason,"
her“ beauty,” we have made her beautifully devilish
and “ foolish. ” But instead of despising her on
that account, since then we have felt more closely
related to her and more familiar in her presence.
She does not aspire to virtue: we therefore respect
her.
Our attitude towards Art is more natural : we
do not exact beautiful, empty lies, etc. , from her ;
brutal positivism reigns supreme, and it ascer-
tains things with perfect calm.
In short: there are signs showing that the
European of the nineteenth century is less ashamed
of his instincts; he has gone a long way towards
acknowledging his unconditional naturalness and
immorality, without bitterness: on the contrary, he
is strong enough to endure this point of view alone.
To some ears this will sound as though corruption
had made strides: and certain it is that man has
not drawn nearer to the “ Nature” which Rousseau


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100
THE WILL TO POWER.
speaks about, but has gone one step farther in the
civilisation before which Rousseau stood in horror.
We have grown stronger, we have drawn nearer to
the seventeenth century, more particularly to the
taste which reigned towards its close (Dancourt,
Le Sage, Regnard).
I21.
Culture versus Civilisation. The culminating
stages of culture and civilisation lie apart: one
must not be led astray as regards the fundamental
antagonism existing between culture and civilisa-
tion. From the moral standpoint, great periods
in the history of culture have always been periods
of corruption; while on the other hand, those periods
in which man was deliberately and compulsorily
tamed (“civilisation ") have always been periods
of intolerance towards the most intellectual and
most audacious natures. Civilisation desires some-
thing different from what culture strives after :
their aims may perhaps be opposed.
I 22.
What I warn people against : confounding the
instincts of decadence with those of humanity;
Confounding the dissolving means of civilisa-
tion and those which necessarily promote decadence,
with culture;
Confounding debauchery, and the principle,
“ laisser aller," with the Will to Power (the
latter is the exact reverse of the former).
1


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NIHILISM.
1οΙ
I 23.
The unsolved problems which I set anew : the
problem of civilisation, the struggle between Rous-
seau and Voltaire about the year 1760. Man
becomes deeper, more mistrustful, more “immoral,"
stronger, more self-confident—and therefore " more
natural"; that is "progress. ” In this way, by a
process of division of labour, the more evil strata
and the milder and tamer strata of society get
separated : so that the general facts are not visible
at first sight. . . . It is a sign of strength, and of
the self-control and fascination of the strong, that
these stronger strata possess the arts in order to
make their greater powers for evil felt as something
higher. ” As soon as there is a progress” there is
a transvaluation of the strengthened factors into
the “good.