No More Learning

It is characteristic of the Germans
that the question: "What is German ? " never dies
out among them. Kotzebue certainly knew his
Germans well enough: "we are known,” they cried
jubilantly to him—but Sand also thought he knew
them. Jean Paul knew what he was doing when
he declared himself incensed at Fichte's lying but
patriotic flatteries and exaggerations, but it is
C


## p. 198 (#220) ############################################

198
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
1
probable that Goethe thought differently about
Gerrhans from Jean Paul, even though he acknow-
ledged him to be right with regard to Fichte. It
is a question what Goethe really thought about the
Germans ? —But about many things around him he
never spoke explicitly, and all his life he knew how
to keep an astute silence—probably he had good
reason for it. It is certain that it was not the
“Wars of Independence" that made him look up
more joyfully, any more than it was the French
Revolution, the event on account of which he
reconstructed his "Faust," and indeed the whole
problem of “man," was the appearance of Napoleon.
There are words of Goethe in which he condemns
with impatient severity, as from a foreign land, that
which Germans take a pride in: he once defined
the famous German turn of mind as "Indulgence
towards its own and others' weaknesses. " Was he
wrong? it is characteristic of Germans that one
is seldom entirely wrong about them. The German
soul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves,
hiding-places, and dungeons therein ; its disorder
has much of the charm of the mysterious ; the
German is well acquainted with the by-paths to
chaos. And as everything loves its symbol, so the
German loves the clouds and all that is obscure,
evolving, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded: it
seems to him thateverything uncertain, undeveloped,
self-displacing, and growing is “deep. ” The German
himself does not exist : he is becoming, he is
“ developing himself. ” “Development” is therefore
the essentially German discovery and hit in the
great domain of philosophical formulas,—a ruling


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PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
199
idea, which, together with German beer and German
music, is labouring to Germanise all Europe.
Foreigners are astonished and attracted by the
riddles which the conflicting nature at the basis of
the German soul propounds to them (riddles which
Hegel systematised and Richard Wagner has in the
end set to music). “Good-natured and spiteful”
—such a juxtaposition, preposterous in the case of
every other people, is unfortunately only too often
justified in Germany: one has only to live for a
while among Swabians to know this! The clumsi-
ness of the German scholar and his social distaste-
fulness agree alarmingly well with his psychical
rope-dancing and nimble boldness, of which all the
Gods have learnt to be afraid. If any one wishes to
see the “German soul” demonstrated ad oculos, let
him only look at German taste, at German arts and
manners: what boorish indifference to "taste"! How
the noblest and the commonest stand there in juxta-
position ! How disorderly and how rich is the whole
constitution of this soul! The German drags at his
soul, he drags at everything he experiences. He
digests his events badly; he never gets “done"
with them; and German depth is often only a
difficult, hesitating "digestion. ” And just as all
chronic invalids, all dyspeptics, like what is con-
venient, so the German loves “frankness" and
"honesty"; it is so convenient to be frank and
honest! - This confidingness, this complaisance, this
showing-the-cards of German honesty, is probably
the most dangerous and most successful disguise
which the German is up to nowadays : it is his
proper Mephistophelean art; with this he can


## p. 200 (#222) ############################################

200
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
“still achieve much"! The German lets himself go,
and thereby gazes with faithful, blue, empty German
eyes—and other countries immediately confound
him with his dressing-gown ! -I meant to say that,
let “German depth " be what it will—among our-
selves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh
at it—we shall do well to continue henceforth to
honour its appearance and good name, and not
barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a
people of depth for Prussian “smartness," and
Berlin wit and sand. It is wise for a people to
pose, and let itself be regarded, as profound, clumsy,
good-natured, honest, and foolish: it might even be
-profound to do so! Finally, we should do honour
to our name-we are not called the “tiusche Volk"
(deceptive people) for nothing.
245.
The "good old” time is past, it sang itself out in
Mozart-how happy are we that his rococo still
speaks to us, that his “good company,” his tender
enthusiasm, his childish delight in the Chinese and
in flourishes, his courtesy of heart, his longing for
the elegant, the amorous, the tripping, the tearful,
and his belief in the South, can still appeal to some-
thing left in us! Ah, some time or other it will be
over with it! —but who can doubt that it will be
over still sooner with the intelligence and taste for
Beethoven! For he was only the last echo of a
break and transition in style, and not, like Mozart,
the last echo of a great European taste which had
existed for centuries. Beethoven is the inter.
mediate event between an old mellow soul that is


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PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
201
L.
constantly breaking down, and a future over-young
,
soul that is always coming ; there is spread over
his music the twilight of eternal loss and eternal
extravagant hope, the same light in which Europe
was bathed when it dreamed with Rousseau, when
it danced round the Tree of Liberty of the Revolu-
tion, and finally almost fell down in adoration
before Napoleon. But how rapidly does this very
sentiment now pale, how difficult nowadays is even
the apprehension of this sentiment, how strangely
does the language of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley,
and Byron sound to our ear, in whom collectively
the same fate of Europe was able to speak, which
knew how to sing in Beethoven ! -Whatever Ger-
man music came afterwards, belongs to Roman-
ticism, that is to say, to a movement which, histori-
cally considered, was still shorter, more fleeting, and
more superficial than that great interlude, the
transition of Europe from Rousseau to Napoleon,
and to the rise of democracy. Weber—but what do
we care nowadays for "Freischutz" and "Oberon”!
Or Marschner's “Hans Heiling" and "Vampyre"!
Or even Wagner's "Tannhäuser"! That is extinct,
although not yet forgotten music. This whole
music of Romanticism, besides, was not noble
enough, was not musical enough, to maintain its
position anywhere but in the theatre and before
the masses; from the beginning it was second-rate
music, which was little thought of by genuine
musicians. It was different with Felix Mendels-
sohn, that halcyon master, who, on account of his
lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly acquired admira-
tion, and was equally quickly forgotten : as the


## p. 202 (#224) ############################################

202
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
beautiful episode of German music. But with regard
to Robert Schumann, who took things seriously,
and has been taken seriously from the first-he was
the last that founded a school,- do we not now
regard it as a satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance,
that this very Romanticism of Schumann's has
been surmounted ? Schumann, fleeing into the
“Saxon Switzerland” of his soul, with a half
Werther-like, half Jean-Paul-like nature (assuredly
not like Beethoven! assuredly not like Byron ! )-
his Manfred music is a mistake and a misunder-
standing to the extent of injustice; Schumann,
with his taste, which was fundamentally a petty
taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity-
doubly dangerous among Germans - for quiet
lyricism and intoxication of the feelings), going
constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring,
a noble weakling who revelled in nothing but
anonymous joy and sorrow, from the beginning a
sort of girl and noli me tangere—this Schumann
was already merely a German event in music, and
no longer a European event, as Beethoven had
been, as in a still greater degree Mozart had been;
with Schumann German music was threatened with
its greatest danger, that of losing the voice for the
soul of Europe and sinking into a merely national
affair.
246.
What a torture are books written in German to
a reader who has a third ear! How indignantly
he stands beside the slowly turning swamp of sounds
without tune and rhythms without dance, which


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PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
203
Germans call a "book”! And even the German
who reads books! How lazily, how reluctantly,
how badly he reads! How many Germans know,
and consider it obligatory to know, that there is art
in every good sentence-art which must be divined,
if the sentence is to be understood! If there is a
misunderstanding about its tempo, for instance, the
sentence itself is misunderstood! That one must
not be doubtful about the rhythm-determining
syllables, that one should feel the breaking of the
too-rigid symmetry as intentional and as a charm,
that one should lend a fine and patient ear to every
staccato and every rubato, that one should divine the
sense in the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs,
and how delicately and richly they can be tinted
and retinted in the order of their arrangement-
who among book-reading Germans is complaisant
enough to recognise such duties and requirements,
and to listen to so much art and intention in lan-
guage? After all, one just “has no ear for it";
and so the most marked contrasts of style are not
heard, and the most delicate artistry is as it were
squandered on the deaf. -These were my thoughts
when I noticed how clumsily and unintuitively
two masters in the art of prose-writing have been
confounded : one, whose words drop down hesi-
tatingly and coldly, as from the roof of a damp
cave-he counts on their dull sound and echo;
and another who manipulates his language like a
flexible sword, and from his arm down into his toes
feels the dangerous bliss of the quivering, over-
sharp blade, which wishes to bite, hiss, and cut.
-


## p. 204 (#226) ############################################

204
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
247.
How little the German style has to do with
harmony and with the ear, is shown by the fact
that precisely our good musicians themselves write
badly. The German does not read aloud, he does
not read for the ear, but only with his eyes; he
has put his ears away in the drawer for the time.
In antiquity when a man read—which was seldom
enough—he read something to himself, and in a
loud voice; they were surprised when any one read
silently, and sought secretly the reason of it. In a
loud voice: that is to say, with all the swellings, in-
flections, and variations of key and changes of tempo,
in which the ancient public world took delight. The
laws of the written style were then the same as those
of the spoken style; and these laws depended partly
on the surprising development and refined require-
ments of the ear and larynx; partly on the strength,
endurance, and power of the ancient lungs. In the
ancient sense, a period is above all a physiological
whole, inasmuch as it is comprised in one breath.
Such periods as occur in Demosthenes and Cicero,
swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in one
breath, were pleasures to the men of antiquity, who
knew by their own schooling how to appreciate the
virtue therein, the rareness and the difficulty in the
deliverance of such a period ;- we have really no
right to the big period, we modern men, who are
short of breath in every sense! Those ancients,
indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, con-
sequently connoisseurs, consequently critics—they
thus brought their orators to the highest pitch ; in


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PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
205
L
the same manner as in the last century, when all
Italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing, the
virtuosoship of song (and with it also the art of
melody) reached its elevation. In Germany, how-
ever (until quite recently when a kind of platform
eloquence began shyly and awkwardly enough to
flutter its young wings), there was properly speak-
ing only one kind of public and approximately
artistical discourse—that delivered from the pulpit.
The preacher was the only one in Germany who
knew the weight of a syllable or a word, in what
manner a sentence strikes, springs, rushes, flows,
and comes to a close; he alone had a conscience in
his
ears, often enough a bad conscience: for reasons
are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should
be especially seldom attained by a German, or
almost always too late. The masterpiece of Ger-
man prose
is therefore with good reason the master-
piece of its greatest preacher: the Bible has hitherto
been the best German book. Compared with
Luther's Bible, almost everything else is merely
“ literature"-something which has not grown in
Germany, and therefore has not taken and does not
take root in German hearts, as the Bible has done.
248.
There are two kinds of geniuses: one which
above all engenders and seeks to engender, and
another which willingly lets itself be fructified and
brings forth. And similarly, among the gifted
nations, there are those on whom the woman's
problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the secret
task of forming, maturing, and perfecting--the


## p. 206 (#228) ############################################

206
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
2.
Greeks, for instance, were a nation of this kind, and
so are the French; and others which have to
fructify and become the cause of new modes of
life-like the Jews, the Romans, and, in all modesty
be it asked : like the Germans --nations tortured
and enraptured by unknown fevers and irresistibly
forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for
foreign races (for such as “let themselves be
fructified”), and withal imperious, like everything
conscious of being full of generative force, and con-
sequently empowered “by the grace of God. ”
These two kinds of geniuses seek each other like
man and woman; but they also misunderstand
each other-like man and woman,
249.
Every nation has its own “Tartuffery," and
calls that its virtue. --One does not know-cannot
know, the best that is in one.
250.
What Europe owes to the Jews ? --Many things,
good and bad, and above all one thing of the
nature both of the best and the worst: the grand
style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of
infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole
Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionable-
ness—and consequently just the most attractive,
ensnaring, and exquisite element in those irides-
cences and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of
which the sky of our European culture, its evening
sky, now glows---perhaps glows out. For this, we


## p. 207 (#229) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
207
artists among the spectators and philosophers, are
-grateful to the Jews.
251.
It must be taken into the bargain, if various
clouds and disturbances-in short, slight attacks of
stupidity-pass over the spirit of a people that
suffers and wants to suffer from national nervous
fever and political ambition: for instance, among
present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-
French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish
folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian
folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just
look at those poor historians, the Sybels and Treit-
schkes, and their closely bandaged heads), and
whatever else these little obscurations of the Ger-
man spirit and conscience may be called. May it
be forgiven me that I, too, when on a short daring
sojourn on very infected ground, did not remain
wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one
else, began to entertain thoughts about matters
which did not concern me—the first symptom of
political infection. About the Jews, for instance,
listen to the following :-I have never yet met a
German who was favourably inclined to the Jews;
and however decided the repudiation of actual
anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent
and political men, this prudence and policy is not
perhaps directed against the nature of the senti-
ment itself, but only against its dangerous excess,
and especially against the distasteful and infamous
expression of this excess of sentiment;-on this
point we must not deceive ourselves. That Ger-


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208
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
many has amply sufficient Jews, that the German
stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and
will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this
quantity of “ Jew"-as the Italian, the Frenchman,
and the Englishman have done by means of
a stronger digestion that is the unmistakable
declaration and language of a general instinct, to
which one must listen and according to which one
must act. “Let no more Jews come in ! And
shut the doors, especially towards the East (also
towards Austria)! ”—thus commands the instinct
of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain,
so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extin-
guished, by a stronger race. The Jews, however,
are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and
purest race at present living in Europe; they know
how to succeed even under the worst conditions
(in fact better than under favourable ones), by
means of virtues of some sort, which one would like
nowadays to label as vices—owing above all to a
resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed
before "modern ideas"; they alter only, when they
do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire
makes its conquest—as an empire that has plenty
of time and is not of yesterday-namely, according
to the principle, "as slowly as possible”! A
thinker who has the future of Europe at heart, will,
in all his perspectives concerning the future, calcu-
late upon the Jews, as he will calculate upon the
Russians, as above all the surest and likeliest
factors in the great play and battle of forces. That
which is at present called a "nation" in Europe,
and is really rather a res facta than nata (indeed,


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PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
209
1
sometimes confusingly similar to a res ficta et picta),
is in every case something evolving, young, easily
displaced, and not yet a race, much less such a
race are perennius, as the Jews are: such "nations"
should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry
and hostility! It is certain that the Jews, if they
desired—or if they were driven to it, as the anti-
Semites seem to wish-could now have the ascend-
ency, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe ;
that they are not working and planning for that
end is equally certain. Meanwhile, they rather
wish and desire, even somewhat importunately, to
be insorbed and absorbed by Europe; they long to
be finally settled, authorised, and respected some-
where, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life,
to the "wandering Jew";—and one should certainly
take account of this impulse and tendency, and
make advances to it (it possibly betokens a mitiga-
tion of the Jewish instincts): for which purpose it
would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-
Semitic bawlers out of the country. One should
make advances with all prudence, and with selec-
tion; pretty much as the English nobility do.
It stands to reason that the more powerful and
strongly marked types of new Germanism could
enter into relation with the Jews with the least
hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from
the Prussian border: it would be interesting in many
ways to see whether the genius for money and
patience (and especially some intellect and intel-
lectuality-sadly lacking in the place referred to)
could not in addition be annexed and trained to
the hereditary art of commanding and obeying-


## p. 210 (#232) ############################################

210
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
for both of which the country in question has now
a classic reputation. But here it is expedient to
break off my festal discourse and my sprightly
Teutonomania: for I have already reached my
serious topic, the “European problem,” as I under-
stand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for
Europe.
)
252.
They are not a philosophical race—the English:
Bacon represents an attack on the philosophical
spirit generally, Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, an
abasement, and a depreciation of the idea of a
“philosopher” for more than a century. It was
against Hume that Kant uprose and raised him-
self; it was Locke of whom Schelling rightly said,
“Je méprise Locke"; in the struggle against the
English mechanical stultification of the world,
Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were
of one accord; the two hostile brother-geniuses
in philosophy, who pushed in different directions
towards the opposite poles of German thought,
and thereby wronged each other as only brothers
will do. - What is lacking in England, and has
always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetori-
cian knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head,
Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate
grimaces what he knew about himself: namely,
what was lacking in Carlyle-real power of in-
tellect, real depth of intellectual perception, in
short, philosophy. It is characteristic of such
an unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to
Christianity--they need its discipline for "moral-


## p. 211 (#233) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
21I
>
ising" and humanising. The Englishman, more
gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the
German-is for that very reason, as the baser of
the two, also the most pious : he has all the more
need of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English
Christianity itself has still a characteristic English
taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for which,
owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote-
the finer poison to neutralise the coarser: a finer form
of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-
mannered people, a step towards spiritualisation.
The English coarseness and rustic demureness
is still most satisfactorily disguised by Christian
pantomime, and by praying and psalm-singing
(or, more correctly, it is thereby explained and
differently expressed); and for the herd of drunkards
and rakes who formerly learned moral grunting
under the influence of Methodism (and more re-
cently as the “Salvation Army "), a penitential fit
may really be the relatively highest manifestation
of “humanity" to which they can be elevated : so
much may reasonably be admitted. That, however,
which offends even in the humanest Englishman is
his lack of music, to speak figuratively (and also
literally): he has neither rhythm nor dance in the
movements of his soul and body; indeed, not even
the desire for rhythm and dance, for “music. "
Listen to him speaking ; look at the most beautiful
Englishwomen walking-in no country on earth
are there more beautiful doves and swans; finally,
listen to them singing! But I ask too much.
-


## p. 212 (#234) ############################################

212
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
a
253
There are truths which are best recognised by
mediocre minds, because they are best adapted for
them, there are truths which only possess charms
and seductive power for mediocre spirits :-one is
pushed to this probably unpleasant conclusion, now
that the influence of respectable but mediocre
Englishmen-I may mention Darwin, John Stuart
Mill, and Herbert Spencer-begins to gain the
ascendency in the middle-class region of Euro-
pean taste. Indeed, who could doubt that it is
a useful thing for such minds to have the ascend-
ency for a time?
It would be an error to consider
the highly developed and independently soaring
minds as specially qualified for determining and
collecting many little common facts, and deducing
conclusions from them; as exceptions, they are
rather from the first in no very favourable position
towards those who are " the rules. ” After all, they
have more to do than merely to perceive in
effect, they have to be something new, they have to
signify something new, they have to represent new
values ! The gulf between knowledge and capacity
is perhaps greater, and also more mysterious, than
one thinks: the capable man in the grand style,
the creator, will possibly have to be an ignorant
person ;-while on the other hand, for scientific
discoveries like those of Darwin, a certain narrow-
ness, aridity, and industrious carefulness (in short
something English) may not be unfavourable for
arriving at them. -Finally, let it not be forgotten
that the English, with their profound mediocrity,
(
.


## p. 213 (#235) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
213
-
brought about once before a general depression of
European intelligence. What is called "modern
ideas," or "the ideas of the eighteenth century,"
or “French ideas” – that, consequently, against
which the German mind rose up with profound
disgust—is of English origin, there is no doubt
about it. The French were only the apes and actors
of these ideas, their best soldiers, and likewise, alas !
their first and profoundest victims; for owing to
the diabolical Anglomania of "modern ideas," the
âme français has in the end become so thin and
emaciated, that at present one recalls its sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, its profound, passionate
strength, its inventive excellency, almost with dis-
belief. One must, however, maintain this verdict of
historical justice in a determined manner, and
defend it against present prejudices and appear-
ances: the European noblesse-of sentiment, taste,
and manners, taking the word in every high sense,
-is the work and invention of France; the Euro-
pean ignoblenéss, the plebeianism of modern ideas-
is England's work and invention.
254.
Even at present France is still the seat of the most
intellectual and refined culture of Europe, it is still
the high school of taste; but one must know how to
find this “France of taste. " He who belongs to it
keeps himself well concealed :-they may be a
small number in whom it lives and is embodied, be-
sides perhaps being men who do not stand upon
the strongest legs, in part fatalists, hypochondriacs,
invalids, in part persons over-indulged, over-refined,
-


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214
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
such as have the ambition to conceal themselves.
They have all something in common : they keep
their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly
and noisy spouting of the democratic bourgeois.
In fact, a besotted and brutalised France at present
sprawls in the foreground-it recently celebrated a
veritable
orgy of bad taste, and at the same time
of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo.
There is also something else common to them:
a predilection to resist intellectual Germanising
--and a still greater inability to do so! In this
France of intellect, which is also a France of pessi-
mism, Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at
home, and more indigenous than he has ever been
in Germany; not to speak of Heinrich Heine, who
has long ago been re-incarnated in the more re-
fined and fastidious lyrists of Paris; or of Hegel,
who at present, in the form of Taine—the first of
living historians--exercises an almost tyrannical
influence. As regards Richard Wagner, however,
the more French music learns to adapt itself to the
actual needs of the âme moderne, the more will it
“Wagnerise"; one can safely predict that before-
hand,—it is already taking place sufficiently! There
are, however, three things which the French can
still boast of with pride as their heritage and pos-
session, and as indelible tokens of their ancient
intellectual superiority in Europe, in spite of all
voluntary or involuntary Germanising and vulgar-
ising of taste. Firstly, the capacity for artistic
emotion, for devotion to "form," for which the
expression, l'art pour l'art, along with numerous
others, has been invented :-such capacity has


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PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
215
not been lacking in France for three centuries; and
owing to its reverence for the "small number," it
has again and again made a sort of chamber music
of literature possible, which is sought for in vain
elsewhere in Europe. —The second thing whereby
the French can lay claim to a superiority over
Europe is their ancient, many-sided, moralistic
culture, owing to which one finds on an average,
even in the petty romanciers of the newspapers and
chance boulevardiers de Paris, a psychological sensi-
tiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one
has no conception (to say nothing of the thing
itself! ) in Germany. The Germans lack a couple
of centuries of the moralistic work requisite thereto,
which, as we have said, France has not grudged:
those who call the Germans “naïve "on that account
give them commendation for a defect. (As the
opposite of the German inexperience and inno-
cence in voluptate psychologica, which is not too
remotely associated with the tediousness of German
intercourse, and as the most successful expression
of genuine French curiosity and inventive talent
in this domain of delicate thrills, Henri Beyle may
be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and fore-
running man, who, with a Napoleonic tempo,
traversed his Europe, in fact, several centuries of
the European soul, as a surveyor and discoverer
thereof:-it has required two generations to over-
take him one way or other, to divine long afterwards
some of the riddles that perplexed and enraptured
him—this strange Epicurean and man of interroga-
tion, the last great psychologist of France). -There
is yet a third claim to superiority : in the French


## p. 216 (#238) ############################################

216
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
character there is a successful half-way synthesis
of the North and South, which makes them compre-
hend many things, and enjoins upon them other
things, which an Englishman can never compre-
hend. Their temperament, turned alternately to
and from the South, in which from time to time the
Provençal and Ligurian blood froths over, preserves
them from the dreadful, northern gray-in-gray,
from sunless conceptual-spectrism and from poverty
of blood-our German infirmity of taste, for the
excessive prevalence of which at the present
moment, blood and iron, that is to say “high
politics," has with great resolution been prescribed
(according to a dangerous healing art, which bids
me wait and wait, but not yet hope). —There is
also still in France a pre-understanding and ready
welcome for those rarer and rarely gratified men,
who are too comprehensive to find satisfaction in
any kind of fatherlandism, and know how to love
the South when in the North and the North when
in the South-the. born Midlanders, the “good
Europeans. " For them Bizet has made music,
this latest genius, who has seen a new beauty and
seduction, -- who has discovered a piece of the
South in music.
255.
I hold that many precautions should be taken
against German music. Suppose a person loves
the South as I love it—as a great school of recovery
for the most spiritual and the most sensuous ills,
as a boundless solar profusion and effulgence which
o'erspreads a sovereign existence believing in itself


## p. 217 (#239) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
217
a
-well, such a person will learn to be somewhat on
his guard against German music, because, in injuring
his taste anew, it will also injure his health anew.
Such a Southerner, a Southerner not by origin but
by belief, if he should dream of the future of music,
must also dream of it being freed from the influence
of the North ; and must have in his ears the pre-
lude to a deeper, mightier, and perhaps more per-
verse and mysterious music, a super-German music,
which does not fade, pale, and die away, as all
German music does, at the sight of the blue, wanton
sea and the Mediterranean clearness of sky-a
super-European music, which holds its own even in
presence of the brown sunsets of the desert, whose
soul is akin to the palm-tree, and can be at home
and can roam with big, beautiful, lonely beasts
of prey. . . . I could imagine a music of which the
rarest charm would be that it knew nothing more
of good and evil; only that here and there perhaps
some sailor's home-sickness, some golden shadows
and tender weaknesses might sweep lightly over
it; an art which, from the far distance, would see
the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehen-
sible moral world fleeing towards it, and would be
hospitable enough and profound enough to receive
such belated fugitives.
256.
Owing to the morbid estrangement which the
nationality-craze has induced and still induces
among the nations of Europe, owing also to the
short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who
,
with the help of this craze, are at present in power,


## p. 218 (#240) ############################################

218
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
and do not suspect to what extent the disinte-
grating policy they pursue must necessarily be only
an interlude policy---owing to all this, and much
else that is altogether unmentionable at present,
the most unmistakable signs that Europe wishes to
be one, are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely
misinterpreted. With all the more profound and
large-minded men of this century, the real general
tendency of the mysterious labour of their souls
was to prepare the way for that new synthesis,
and tentatively to anticipate the European of the
future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker
moments, in old age perhaps, did they belong to
the "fatherlands ”—they only rested from them-
selves when they became “patriots. " I think of such
men as Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal,
Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer : it must not be
taken amiss if I also count Richard Wagner among
them, about whom one must not let oneself be de-
ceived by his own misunderstandings (geniuses like
him have seldom the right to understand them-
selves), still less, of course, by the unseemly noise
with which he is now resisted and opposed in
France: the fact remains, nevertheless, that Richard
Wagner and the later French Romanticism of the
forties, are most closely and intimately related to
one another. They are akin, fundamentally akin,
in all the heights and depths of their requirements;
it is Europe, the one Europe, whose soul presses
urgently and longingly, outwards and upwards, in
their multifarious and boisterous art-whither?
into a new light? towards a new sun? But who
would attempt to express accurately what all these


## p. 219 (#241) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
219
masters of new modes of speech could not express
distinctly? It is certain that the same storm and
stress tormented them, that they sought in the
same manner, these last great seekers!
All of
them steeped in literature to their eyes and ears
-the first artists of universal literary culture--for
the most part even themselves writers, poets, inter-
mediaries and blenders of the arts and the senses
(Wagner, as musician is reckoned among painters,
as poet among musicians, as artist generally among
actors); all of them fanatics for expression “at any
cost”-I specially mention Delacroix, the nearest
related to Wagner; all of them great discoverers
in the realm of the sublime, also of the loathsome
and dreadful, still greater discoverers in effect, in
display, in the art of the show-shop; all of them
talented far beyond their genius, out and out virtuosi,
with mysterious accesses to all that seduces, allures,
constrains, and upsets; born enemies of logic and
of the straight line, hankering after the strange,
the exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, and the
self-contradictory; as men, Tantaluses of the will,
plebeian parvenus, who knew themselves to be
incapable of a noble tempo or of a lento in life and
action—think of Balzac, for instance,-unrestrained
workers, almost destroying themselves by work;
antinomians and rebels in manners, ambitious and
insatiable, without equilibrium and enjoyment; all
of them finally shattering and sinking down at the
Christian cross (and with right and reason, for who
of them would have been sufficiently profound and
sufficiently original for an Antichristian philo-
sophy ? );-on the whole, a boldly daring, splendidly


## p. 220 (#242) ############################################

220
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
overbearing, high-flying, and aloft-up-dragging
class of higher men, who had first to teach their
century-and it is the century of the masses—the
conception “higher man. ” . . . Let the German
friends of Richard Wagner advise together as to
whether there is anything purely German in the
Wagnerian art, or whether its distinction does not
consist precisely in coming from super-German
sources and impulses : in which connection it may
not be underrated how indispensable Paris was to
the development of his type, which the strength of
his instincts made him long to visit at the most
decisive time--and how the whole style of his pro-
ceedings, of his self-apostolate, could only perfect
itself in sight of the French socialistic original. On
a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be found,
to the honour of Richard Wagner's German nature,
that he has acted in everything with more strength,
daring, severity, and elevation than a nineteenth-
century Frenchman could have done—owing to
the circumstance that we Germans are as yet
nearer to barbarism than the French ;—perhaps
even the most remarkable creation of Richard
Wagner is not only at present, but for ever inac-
cessible, incomprehensible, and inimitable to the
whole latter-day Latin race: the figure of Sieg-
fried, that very free man, who is probably far too
free, too hard, too cheerful, too healthy, too anti-
Catholic for the taste of old and mellow civilised
nations. He may even have been a sin against
Romanticism, this anti-Latin Siegfried: well,
Wagner atoned amply for this sin in his old sad
days, when-anticipating a taste which has mean-


## p. 221 (#243) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
221
while passed into politics—he began, with the
religious vehemence peculiar to him, to preach, at
least, the way to Rome, if not to walk therein. -
That these last words may not be misunderstood,
I will call to my aid a few powerful rhymes, which
will even betray to less delicate ears what I mean
-what I mean counter to the “last Wagner” and
his Parsifal music :-
-Is this our mode ? -
From German heart came this vexed ululating?
From German body, this self-lacerating?
Is ours this priestly hand-dilation,
This incense-fuming exaltation ?
Is ours this faltering, falling, shambling,
This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling?
This sly nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing,
This wholly false enraptured heaven-o'erspringing ?
-Is this our modę ? -
Think well ! —ye still wait for admission-
For what ye hear is Rome-Rome's faith by in-
tuition !
po


## p. 222 (#244) ############################################

>
>
1


## p. 223 (#245) ############################################

NINTH CHAPTER.
WHAT IS NOBLE?
257
EVERY elevation of the type "man," has hitherto
been the work of an aristocratic society—and so
will it always be-a society believing in a long
scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth
among human beings, and requiring slavery in
some form or other. Without the pathos of distance,
such as grows out of the incarnated difference of
classes, out of the constant outlooking and down-
looking of the ruling caste on subordinates and
instruments, and out of their equally constant
practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping
down and keeping at a distance—that other more
mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the
longing for an ever new widening of distance within
the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer,
further, more extended, more comprehensive states,
in short, just the elevation of the type “man,” the
continued. "self-surmounting of man,” to use a
moral formula in a supermoral sense. To be sure,
one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian
illusions about the history of the origin of an aristo-
cratic society (that is to say, of the preliminary
5


## p. 224 (#246) ############################################

224
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
condition for the elevation of the type “man"):
the truth is hard. Let us acknowledge un-
prejudicedly how every higher civilisation hitherto
has originated! Men with a still natural nature,
barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, men
of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of
will and desire for power, threw themselves upon
weaker, more moral, more peaceful races (perhaps
trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon old
mellow civilisations in which the final vital force
was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and
depravity. At the commencement, the noble caste
was always the barbarian caste: their superiority
did not consist first of all in their physical, but in
their psychical power—they were more complete
men (which at every point also implies the same
as “more complete beasts ").
258.
Corruption --- as the indication that anarchy
threatens to break out among the instincts, and
that the foundation of the emotions, called "life,"
is convulsed—is something radically different ac-
cording to the organisation in which it manifests
itself. When, for instance, an aristocracy like that
of France at the beginning of the Revolution, flung
away its privileges with sublime disgust and
sacrificed itself to an excess of its moral sentiments,
it was corruption :-it was really only the closing
act of the corruption which had existed for cen-
turies, by virtue of which that aristocracy had
abdicated step by step its lordly prerogatives and
lowered itself to a function of royalty (in the end


## p. 225 (#247) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
225
even to its decoration and parade-dress). The
essential thing, however, in a good and healthy
aristocracy is that it should not regard itself as a
function either of the kingship or the commonwealth,
but as the significance and highest justification
thereof-that it should therefore accept with a good
conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals,
who, for its sake, must be suppressed and reduced
to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its
fundamental belief must be precisely that society is
not allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a
foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a
select class of beings may be able to elevate them-
selves to their higher duties, and in general to a
higher existence : like those sun-seeking climbing
plants in Java—they are called Sipo Matador,-
which encircle an oak so long and so often with
their arms, until at last, high above it, but supported
by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light,
and exhibit their happiness.
259.
To refrain mutually from injury, from violence,
from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with
that of others: this may result in a certain rough
sense in good conduct among individuals when the
necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual
similarity of the individuals in amount of force and
degree of worth, and their co-relation within one
organisation). As soon, however, as one wished to
take this principle more generally, and if possible
even as the fundamental
principle of society, it would
immediately disclose what it really is-namely, a
P


## p. 226 (#248) ############################################

226
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution
and decay. Here one must think profoundly to
the
very
basis and resist all sentimental weakness :
life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, con-
quest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity,
obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at
the least, putting it mildest, exploitation ;—but
why should one for ever use precisely these words
on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been
stamped ? Even the organisation within which, as
was previously supposed, the individuals treat each
other as equal—it takes place in every healthy
aristocracy-must itself, if it be a living and not a
dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies,
which the individuals within it refrain from doing
to each other: it will have to be the incarnated
Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain
ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendency-
not owing to any morality or immorality, but
because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to
Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary
consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be
corrected than on this matter; people now rave
everywhere, even under the guise of science, about
coming conditions of society in which " the exploit-
ing character" is to be absent :--that sounds to my
ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life
which should refrain from all organic functions.
" Exploitation” does not belong to a depraved, or
imperfect and primitive society; it belongs to the
nature of the living being as a primary organic
function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will
to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life. -


## p. 227 (#249) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
227
L.
Granting that as a theory this is a novelty—as a
reality it is the fundamental fact of all history: let
us be so far honest towards ourselves !
260.
In a tour through the many finer and coarser
moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still
prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring
regularly together. and connected with one another,
until finally two primary types revealed themselves
to me, and a radical distinction was brought to
light. There is master-morality and slave-morality;
- I would at once add, however, that in all higher
and mixed civilisations, there are also attempts at
the reconciliation of the two moralities; but one
finds still oftener the confusion and mutual mis-
understanding of them, indeed, sometimes their
close juxtaposition-even in the same man, within
one soul. The distinctions of moral values have
either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly con-
scious of being different from the ruled-or among
the ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts.
In the first case, when it is the rulers who deter-
mine the conception “good,” it is the exalted,
proud disposition which is regarded as the distin-
guishing feature, and that which determines the
order of rank. The noble type of man separates
from himself the beings in whom the opposite of
this exalted, proud disposition displays itself: he
despises them. Let it at once be noted that in
his first kind of morality the antithesis “good” and
"bad" means practically the same as “noble” and
despicable";—the antithesis "good" and "evil”
6


## p. 228 (#250) ############################################

228
BEYOND GOOD AND, EVIL.
de pesed
»
is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid,
the insignificant, and those thinking merely of
narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the
distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-
abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let them-
selves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and
above all the liars :-it is a fundamental belief of
all aristocrats that the common people are untruth-
ful. "We truthful ones ”--the nobility in ancient
Greece called themselves. It is obvious that every-
where the designations of moral value were at first
applied to men, and were only derivatively and at
a later period applied to actions ; it is a gross mis-
take, therefore, when historians of morals start with
questions like, “Why have sympathetic actions
been praised ? " The noble type of man regards
himself as a determiner of values; he does not
require to be approved of; he passes the judgment:
“What is injurious to me is injurious in itself”; he
knows that it is he himself only who confers
honour on things; he is a creator of values. He
honours whatever he recognises in himself: such
morality is self-glorification. In the foreground
there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which
seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension,
the consciousness of a wealth which would fain
give and bestow :—the noble man also helps the
unfortunate, but not--or scarcely-out of pity, but
rather from an impulse generated by the super-
abundance of power. The noble man honours in
himself the powerful one, him also who has power
over himself, who knows how to speak and how
to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting
A


## p. 229 (#251) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
229
>
himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence
for all that is severe and hard. “Wotan placed a
hard heart in my breast,” says an old Scandinavian
Saga: it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of
a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud
of not being made for sympathy; the hero of the
Saga therefore adds warningly: "He who has not
a hard heart when young, will never have one. "
The noble and brave who think thus are the furthest
removed from the morality which sees precisely in
sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in
désintéressement, the characteristic of the moral;
faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity
and irony towards “selflessness,” belong as definitely
to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and pre-
caution in presence of sympathy and the “warm
heart. ”—It is the powerful who know how to
honour, it is their art, their domain for invention.
The profound reverence for age and for tradition-
all law rests on this double reverence, the belief
and prejudice in favour of ancestors and unfavour-
able to newcomers, is typical in the morality of the
powerful; and if, reversely, men of “modern ideas”
believe almost instinctively in “progress" and the
“future," and are more and more lacking in respect
for old age, the ignoble origin of these "ideas " has
complacently betrayed itself thereby. A morality
of the ruling class, however, is more especially
foreign and irritating to present-day taste in the
sternness of its principle that one has duties only
to one's equals; that one may act towards beings
of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as
seems good to one, or “as the heart desires,” and
"
")


## p. 230 (#252) ############################################

230
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
in any case “beyond good and evil”: it is here
that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a
place. The ability and obligation to exercise pro-
longed gratitude and prolonged revenge — both
-
only within the circle of equals,-artfulness in
retaliation, raffinement of the idea in friendship, a
certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the
emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance-in
fact, in order to be a good friend): all these are
typical characteristics of the noble morality, which,
as has been pointed out, is not the morality of
་ “modern ideas," and is therefore at present difficult
to realise, and also to unearth and disclose. --It is
otherwise with the second type of morality, slave-
morality. Supposing that the abused, the op-
pressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary,
and those uncertain of themselves, should moralise,
what will be the common element in their moral
estimates? Probably a pessimistic suspicion with
regard to the entire situation of man will find
expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, to-
gether with his situation. The slave has an un-
favourable eye for the virtues of the powerfut; he
has a scepticism and distrust, a refinement of distrust
of everything “good” that is there honoured_he
would fain persuade himself that the very happi-
ness there is not genuine. On the other hand, those
qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of
sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded
with light; it is here that sympathy, the kind,
helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence,
humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for
here these are the most useful qualities, and almost


## p. 231 (#253) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
231
4
the only means of supporting the burden of exist-
ence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of
.
utility. Here is the seat of the origin of the famous
antithesis "good" and "evil" :-power and danger-
ousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain
dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not
admit of being despised. According to slave-
morality, therefore, the "evil” man arouses fear. . .
according to master-morality, it is precisely the
“good” man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse
it, while the bad man is regarded as the despicable
being. The contrast attains its maximum when,
,
in accordance with the logical consequences of
slave-morality, a shade of depreciation—it may be
slight and well-intentioned-at last attaches itself
even to the “good” man of this morality ;;because,
according to the servile mode of thought, the good
man must in any case be the safe man: he is good-
natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un
bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-morality gains
the ascendency, language shows a tendency to
approximate the significations of the words “good
and “stupid. "-A last fundamental difference: the
desire for freedom, the instinct for happiness and
the refinements of the feeling of liberty belong as
necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artifice
and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the
regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode of think-
ing and estimating:-Hence we can understand
without further detail why love as a passion—it is
ir European speciality-must absolutely be of
noble origin; as is well known, its invention is
due to the Provençal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant


## p. 232 (#254) ############################################

232
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe
owes so much, and almost owes itself.
261.
Vanity is one of the things which are perhaps
most difficult for a noble man to understand: he
will be tempted to deny it, where another kind of
man thinks he sees it self-evidently. The problem
for him is to represent to his mind beings who seek
to arouse a good opinion of themselves which they
themselves do not possess—and consequently also
do not "deserve,”—and who yet believe in this good
opinion afterwards. This seems to him on the one
hand such bad taste and so self-disrespectful, and
on the ether hand so grotesquely unreasonable,
that he would like to consider vanity an excep-
tion, and is doubtful about it in most cases when
it is spoken of. He will say, for instance: “I
may be mistaken about my value, and on the
other hand may nevertheless demand that my value
should be acknowledged by others precisely as
I rate it :-- that, however, is not vanity (but
self-conceit, or, in most cases, that which is called
'humility,' and also modesty'). ” Or he will
even say: "For many reasons I can delight in
the good opinion of others, perhaps because I
love and honour them, and rejoice in all their joys,
perhaps also because their good opinion endorses
and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion,
perhaps because the good opinion of others, even
in cases where I do not share it, is useful to me,
or gives promise of usefulness :-all this, however,
is not vanity. " The man of noble character must
V
C


## p. 233 (#255) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
233
first bring it home forcibly to his mind, especially
with the aid of history, that, from time immemorial,
in all social strata in any way dependent, the
ordinary man was only that which he passed for :-
not being at all accustomed to fix values, he did
not assign even to himself any other value than
that which his master assigned to him (it is the
peculiar right of masters to create values). It may
be looked upon as the result of an extraordinary
atavism, that the ordinary man, even at present, is
still always waiting for an opinion about himself,
and then instinctively submitting himself to it;
yet by no means only to a “good” opinion, but
also to a bad and unjust one (think, for instance,
of the greater part of the self-appreciations and
self-depreciations which believing women learn
from their confessors, and which in general the
believing Christian learns from his Church). In
fact, conformably to the slow rise of the democratic
social order (and its cause, the blending of the
blood of masters and slaves), the originally noble
and rare impulse of the masters to assign a value
to themselves and to "think well" of themselves,
will now be more and more encouraged and ex- .
tended; but it has at all times an older, ampler,
and more radically ingrained propensity opposed
to it and in the phenomenon of "vanity" this
older propensity overmasters the younger. The
vain person rejoices over every good opinion which
he hears about himself (quite apart from the point
of view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of
its truth or falsehood), just as he suffers from every
bad opinion : for he subjects himself to both, he
1


## p. 234 (#256) ############################################

234
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
»
feels himself subjected to both, by that oldest in-
stinct of subjection which breaks forth in him. -
It is "the slave" in the vain man's blood, the re-
mains of the slave's craftiness—and how much of
the "slave" is still left in woman, for instance !
which seeks to seduce to good opinions of itself;
it is the slave, too, who immediately afterwards
falls prostrate himself before these opinions, as
though he had not called them forth. -And to
repeat it again : vanity is an atavism.
/
262,
A species originates, and a type becomes estab-
lished and strong in the long struggle with essen-
tially constant unfavourable conditions. On the
other hand, it is known by the experience of
breeders that species which receive superabundant
nourishment, and in general a surplus of protection
and care, immediately tend in the most marked
way to develop variations, and are fertile in pro-
digies and monstrosities (also in monstrous vices).
Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say
an ancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a voluntary
or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of rear-
ing human beings; there are there men beside
one another, thrown upon their own resources,
who want to make their species prevail, chiefly
because they must prevail, or else run the terrible
danger of being exterminated. The favour, the
superabundance, the protection are there lacking
under which variations are fostered; the species
needs itself as species, as something which, pre-
cisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and


## p. 235 (#257) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
235
simplicity of structure, can in general prevail and
make itself permanent in constant struggle with
its neighbours, or with rebellious or rebellion-
threatening vassals. The most varied experience
teaches it what are the qualities to which it princi-
pally owes the fact that it still exists, in spite of
all Gods and men, and has hitherto been victorious :
these qualities it calls virtues, and these virtues
alone it develops to maturity. It does so with
severity, indeed it desires severity ; every aristo-
cratic morality is intolerant in the education of
youth, in the control of women, in the marriage
customs, in the relations of old and young, in the
penal laws (which have an eye only for the de-
generating): it counts intolerance itself among the
virtues, under the name of "justice. ” A type with
few, but very marked features, a species of severe,
warlike, wisely silent, reserved and reticent men
(and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for
the charm and nuances of society) is thus estab-
lished, unaffected by the vicissitudes of generations;
the constant struggle with uniform unfavourable
conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a
type becoming stable and hard. Finally, however,
a happy state of things results, the enormous
tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no more
enemies among the neighbouring peoples, and the
means of life, even of the enjoyment of life, are
present in superabundance. With one stroke the
bond and constraint of the old discipline severs :
it is no longer regarded as necessary, as a condition
of existence-if it would continue, it can only do so
as a form of luxury, as an archaïsing taste. Varia-


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236
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
-
tions, whether they be deviations into the higher,
finer, and rarer), or deteriorations and monstrosities,
appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest exuber-
ance and splendour; the individual dares to be
individual and detach himself. At this turning-
point of history there manifest themselves, side
by side, and often mixed and entangled together,
a magnificent, manifold, virgin - forest - like up-
growth and up-striving, a kind of tropical tempo in
the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary decay
and self-destruction, owing to the savagely oppos-
ing and seemingly exploding egoisms, which strive
with one another “for sun and light," and can no
longer assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance
for themselves by means of the hitherto existing
morality. It was this morality itself which piled
up the strength so enormously, which bent the bow
in so threatening a manner :-it is now out of
date,” it is getting "out of date. ” The dan-
gerous and disquieting point has been reached
when the greater, more manifold, more compre-
hensive life is lived beyond the old morality; the
“individual” stands out, and is obliged to have
recourse to his own law-giving, his own arts and
artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and
self-deliverance. Nothing but new “Whys,” nothing
but new “Hows,” no common formulas any longer,
misunderstanding and disregard in league with
each other, decay, deterioration, and the loftiest
desires frightfully entangled, the genius of the race
overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and
bad, a portentous simultaneousness of Spring and
Autumn, full of new charms and mysteries peculiar


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WHAT IS NOBLE?
237
to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied cor-
ruption. Danger is again present, the mother of
morality, great danger; this time shifted into the
individual, into the neighbour and friend, into the
street, into their own child, into their own heart,
into all the most personal and secret recesses of
their desires and volitions. What will the moral
philosophers who appear at this time have to
preach? They discover, these sharp onlookers and
loafers, that the end is quickly approaching, that
everything around them decays and produces
decay, that nothing will endure until the day after
to-morrow, except one species of man, the incur-
ably mediocre. The mediocre alone have a pro-
spect of continuing and propagating themselves-
they will be the men of the future, the sole sur-
vivors; "be like them! become mediocre ! ” is now
the only morality which has still a significance,
which still obtains a hearing. -But it is difficult to
preach this morality of mediocrity! it can never
avow what it is and what it desires ! it has to talk
of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly
love-it will have difficulty in concealing its
irony !
263.
There is an instinct for rank, which more than
anything else is already the sign of a high rank;
there is a delight in the nuances of reverence which
leads one to infer noble origin and habits. The
refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are
put to a perilous test when something passes by
that is of the highest rank, but is not yet pro-


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238
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
tected by the awe of authority from obtrusive
touches and incivilities : something that goes its
way like a living touchstone, undistinguished, un-
discovered, and tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiled
and disguised. He whose task and practice it is
to investigate souls, will avail himself of many
varieties of this very art to determine the ultimate
value of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank
to which it belongs : he will test it by its instinct for
reverence. Différence engendre haine : the vulgarity
of many a nature spurts up suddenly like dirty
water, when any holy vessel, any jewel from closed
shrines, any book bearing the marks of great
destiny, is brought before it; while on the other
hand, there is an involuntary silence, a hesitation of
the eye, a cessation of all gestures, by which it is
indicated that a soul feels the nearness of what is
worthiest of respect. The way in which, on the
whole, the reverence for the Bible has hitherto been
maintained in Europe, is perhaps the best example
of discipline and refinement of manners which
Europe owes to Christianity: books of such pro-
foundness and supreme significance require for
their protection an external tyranny of authority,
in order to acquire the period of thousands of years
which is necessary to exhaust and unriddle them.
Much has been achieved when the sentiment has
been at last instilled into the masses (the shallow-
pates and the boobies of every kind) that they are
not allowed to touch everything, that there are
holy experiences before which they must take off
their shoes and keep away the unclean hand-it is
almost their highest advance towards humanity


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WHAT IS NOBLE?
239
On the contrary, in the so-called cultured classes,
the believers in “modern ideas,” nothing is perhaps
so repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy inso-
lence of eye and hand with which they touch,
taste, and finger everything; and it is possible that
even yet there is more relative nobility of taste, and
more tact for reverence among the people, among
the lower classes of the people, especially among
peasants, than among the newspaper-reading demi-
monde of intellect, the cultured class.
264.
It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his
ancestors have preferably and most constantly
done : whether they were perhaps diligent econo-
misers attached to a desk and a cash-box, modest
and citizen-like in their desires, modest also in their
virtues; or whether they were accustomed to com-
manding from morning till night, fond of rude
pleasures and probably of still ruder duties and
responsibilities; or whether, finally, at one time or
another, they have sacrificed oid privileges of
birth and possession, in order to live wholly for
their faith—for their “God,”—as men of an inexor-
able and sensitive conscience, which blushes at
every compromise. It is quite impossible for a
man not to have the qualities and predilections of
his parents and ancestors in his constitution, what-
ever appearances may suggest to the contrary.
This is the problem of race. Granted that one
knows something of the parents, it is admissible
to draw a conclusion about the child : any kind of
offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or
a


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240
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
of clumsy self-vaunting—the three things which
together have constituted the genuine plebeian
type in all times—such must pass over to the
child, as surely as bad blood; and with the help of
the best education and culture one will only suc-
ceed in deceiving with regard to such heredity.
And what else does education and culture try to
do nowadays! In our very democratic, or rather,
very plebeian age, “education” and “culture ” must
be essentially the art of deceiving—deceiving with
regard to origin, with regard to the inherited
plebeianism in body and soul. An educator who
nowadays preached truthfulness above everything
else, and called out constantly to his pupils : "Be
true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you are! "-
even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in
a short time to have recourse to the furca of Horace,
naturam expellere: with what results? "Plebeianism”
usque recurret. *
265.
At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I sub-
mit that egoism belongs to the essence of a noble
soul, I mean the unalterable belief that to a being
such as "we," other beings must naturally be in
subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. The
noble soul accepts the fact of his egoism without
question, and also without consciousness of harsh-
ness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather
as something that may have its basis in the primary
law of things :-if he sought a designation for it
* Horace's “Epistles," I. X. 24.


## p. 241 (#263) ############################################

WHAT IS NOBLE?
241
а
he would say: "It is justice itself. ”
He ac-
knowledges under certain circumstances, which
made him hesitate at first, that there are other
equally privileged ones; as soon as he has settled
this question of rank, he moves among those equals
and equally privileged ones with the same assur-
ance, as regards modesty and delicate respect,
which he enjoys in intercourse with himself-in
accordance with an innate heavenly mechanism
which all the stars understand. It is an additional
.
instance of his egoism, this artfulness and self-
limitation in intercourse with his equals—every
star is a similar egoist; he honours himself in them,
and in the rights which he concedes to them, he
has no doubt that the exchange of honours and
rights, as the essence of all intercourse, belongs also
to the natural condition of things. The noble
soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionate
and sensitive instinct of requital, which is at the
root of his nature. The notion of "favour” has,
inter pares, neither significance nor good repute ;
there may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it
were light upon one from above, and of drinking
them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those arts
and displays the noble soul has no aptitude. His
egoism hinders him here: in general, he looks
"aloft” unwillingly - he looks either forward,
horizontally and deliberately, or downwards-he
knows that he is on a height.
266.
“One can only truly esteem him who does not
look out for himself. ”—Goethe to Rath Schlosser.
Q


## p. 242 (#264) ############################################

242
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
:
267.
The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even
teach their children : “Siao-sin” (“make thy heart
small”). This is the essentially fundamental
tendency in latter-day civilisations. I have no
doubt that an ancient Greek, also, would first of
all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans of to-
day-in this respect alone we should immediately
be " distasteful” to him.
>
268.
What, after all, is ignobleness ? —Words are
vocal symbols for ideas ; ideas, however, are more
or less definite mental symbols for frequently re-
turning and concurring sensations, for groups of
sensations. It is not sufficient to use the same
words in order to understand one another: we must
also employ the same words for the same kind of
internal experiences, we must in the end have ex-
periences in common. On this account the people
of one nation understand one another better than
those belonging to different nations, even when
they use the same language; or rather, when people
have lived long together under similar conditions
(of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) there
originates therefrom an entity that “understands
itself”-namely, a nation. In all souls a like
number of frequently recurring experiences have
gained the upper hand over those occurring more
rarely: about these matters people understand one
another rapidly and always more rapidly-the
history of language is the history of a process of


## p.