Thanks to their
superficiality
in
ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it.
ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it.
Nietzsche - v15 - Will to Power - b
Is one in search of resistance,
or is one evading it? Is one imperfect owing to
one's precocity or to one's tardiness? Is it one's
nature to say yea, or no, or is one a peacock's tail
of garish parts? Is one proud enough not to feel
ashamed even of one's vanity? Is one still able to
feel a bite of conscience (this species is becoming
rare; formerly conscience had to bite too often: it
is as if it now no longer had enough teeth to do
so)? Is one still capable of a, “duty”? (there
are some people who would lose the whole joy of
their lives if they were deprived of their duty—this
holds good especially of feminine creatures, who
are born subjects).
.
1010.
Supposing our common comprehension of the
universe were a misunderstanding, would it be
possible to conceive of a form of perfection, within
the limits of which even such a misunderstanding
as this could be sanctioned ?
The concept of a new form of perfection: that
## p. 393 (#423) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
393
which does not correspond to our logic, to our
" beauty,” to our “good,” to our “truth,” might be
perfect in a higher sense even than our ideal is.
IOII.
"
Our most important limitation: we must not
deify the unknown; we are just beginning to know
so little. The false and wasted endeavours.
Our «
new world”: we must ascertain to what
extent we are the creators of our valuations-we
will thus be able to put “sense ” into history.
This belief in truth is reaching its final logical
conclusion in us--ye know how it reads: that if
there is anything at all that must be worshipped
it is appearance; that falsehood and not truth is-
divine.
IOI 2.
-
He who urges rational thought forward, thereby
also drives its antagonistic power—mysticism and
foolery of every kind to new feats of strength.
—
We should recognise that every movement is
(1) partly the manifestation of fatigue resulting from
a previous movement (satiety after it, the malice of
weakness towards it, and disease); and (2) partly a
newly awakened accumulation of long slumbering
forces, and therefore wanton, violent, healthy.
1013
Health and morbidness : let us be careful! The
standard is the bloom of the body, the agility,
courage, and cheerfulness of the mind—but also, of
## p. 394 (#424) ############################################
394
THE WILL TO POWER.
course, how much morbidness a man can bear and
overcome,—and convert into health. That which
would send more delicate natures to the dogs,
belongs to the stimulating means of great health.
I014.
It is only a question of power : to have all the
morbid traits of the century, but to balance them
by means of overflowing, plastic, and rejuvenating
power. The strong man.
1015.
Concerning the strength of the nineteenth century.
We are more mediæval than the eighteenth century;
not only more inquisitive or more susceptible to the
strange and to the rare. We have revolted against
the Revolution. . . . We have freed ourselves from
the fear of reason, which was the spectre of the
eighteenth century: we once more dare to be
childish, lyrical, absurd,-in a word, "we are
musicians. "
And we are just as little frightened
of the ridiculous as of the absurd. The devil finds
that he is tolerated even by God : * better still, he
has become interesting as one who has been mis-
understood and slandered for ages, we are the
saviours of the devil's honour.
We no longer separate the great from the terrible.
We reconcile good things, in all their complexity,
* This is reminiscent of Goethe's Faust. See“ Prologue in
Heaven. ”—TR.
»
## p. 395 (#425) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
395
-
with the very worst things; we have overcome the
desideratum of the past (which wanted goodness to
grow without the increase of evil). The cowardice
towards the ideal, peculiar to the Renaissance, has
diminished-we even dare to aspire to the latter's
morality. Intolerance towards priests and the
Church has at the same time come to an end ; " It
is immoral to believe in God"--but this is pre-
cisely what we regard as the best possible justifica-
tion of this belief.
On all these things we have conferred the civic
rights of our minds. We do not tremble before
the back side of "good things" (we even look
for it, we are brave and inquisitive enough for that),
of Greek antiquity, of morality, of reason, of good
taste, for instance (we reckon up the losses which
we incur with all this treasure: we almost reduce
ourselves to poverty with such a treasure).
Neither do we conceal the back side of“ evil things”
from ourselves.
1016.
That which does us honour. -If anything does us
honour, it is this: we have transferred our serious-
ness to other things; all those things which have
been despised and laid aside as base by all ages,
we regard as important-on the other hand, we
surrender “fine feelings" at a cheap rate.
Could any aberration be more dangerous than the
contempt of the body? As if all intellectuality
were not thereby condemned to become morbid,
and to take refuge in the vapeurs of “idealism"!
Nothing that has been thought out by Christians
## p. 396 (#426) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
and idealists holds water: we are more radical.
We have discovered the “smallest world” every-
where as the most decisive.
The paving-stones in the streets, good air in our
rooms, food understood according to its worth: we
value all the necessaries of life seriously, and despise
all “beautiful soulfulness” as a form of “ levity and
frivolity. ” That which has been most despised
hitherto, is now pressed into the front rank.
1017
In the place of Rousseau's "man of Nature," the
nineteenth century has discovered a much more
genuine image of “Man,"—it had the courage to
do this. . . . On the whole, the Christian concept
. . .
of man has in a way been reinstalled. What we
have not had the courage to do, was to call precisely
this “man par excellence," good, and to see the
future of mankind guaranteed in him. In the
same way, we did not dare to regard the growth
in the terrible side of man's character as an ac-
companying feature of every advance in culture;
in this sense we are still under the influence of the
Christian ideal, and side with it against paganism,
and likewise against the Renaissance concept of
virtu. But the key of culture is not to be
found in this way: and in praxi we still have
the forgeries of history in favour of the "good
man (as if he alone constituted the progress
of humanity) and the socialistic ideal (i. e. the
residue of Christianity and of Rousseau in the de-
Christianised world).
## p. 397 (#427) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
397
The fight against the eighteenth century : it meets
with its greatest conquerors in Goethe and Napoleon.
Schopenhauer, too, fights against the eighteenth
century; but he returns involuntarily to the
seventeenth—he is a modern Pascal, with Pascalian
valuations, without Christianity. Schopenhauer was
not strong enough to invent a new yea.
Napoleon : we see the necessary relationship
between the higher and the terrible man. Man
reinstalled, and her due of contempt and fear re-
stored to woman. Highest activity and health are
the signs of the great man; the straight line and
grand style rediscovered in action; the mightiest
of all instincts, that of life itself,—the lust of
dominion,-heartily welcomed
I018.
(Revue des deux mondes, 15th February 1887.
Taine concerning Napoleon) " Suddenly the
master faculty reveals itself: the artist, which was
latent in the politician, comes forth from his
scabbard; he creates dans l'idéal et l'impossible. He
is once more recognised as that which he is : the
posthumous brother of Dante and of Michelangelo;
and verily, in view of the definite contours of his
vision, the intensity, the coherence, and inner con-
sistency of his dream, the depth of his meditations,
the superhuman greatness of his conception, he is
their equal : son génie a la même taille et la même
structure ; il est un des trois esprits souverains de
la renaissance italienne. "
Nota bene. --Dante, Michelangelo, Napoleon.
»
## p. 398 (#428) ############################################
398
THE WILL TO POWER.
1019.
Concerning the pessimism of strength. In the
internal economy of the primitive man's soul, the
fear of evil preponderates. What is evil? Three
kinds of things: accident, uncertainty, the unex-
pected. How does primitive man combat evil ?
He conceives it as a thing of reason, of power, even
as a person. By this means he is enabled to make
treaties with it, and generally to operate upon it in
advance-to forestall it.
-Another expedient is to declare its evil and
harmful character to be but apparent: the conse-
quences of accidental occurrences, and of uncer-
tainty and the unexpected, are interpreted as well-
meant, as reasonable.
-A third means is to interpret evil, above all,
as merited : evil is thus justified as a punishment.
-In short, man submits to it: all religious
and moral interpretations are but forms of sub-
mission to evil. The belief that a good purpose
lies behind all evil, implies the renunciation of any
desire to combat it.
Now, the history of every culture shows a
diminution of this fear of the accidental, of the
uncertain, and of the unexpected. Culture means
precisely, to learn to reckon, to discover causes, to
acquire the power of forestalling events, to acquire a
belief in necessity. With the growth of culture,
man is able to dispense with that primitive form of
submission to evil (called religion or morality), and
that “justification of evil. ” Now he wages war
against “evil,”—he gets rid of it. Yes, a state of
## p. 399 (#429) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
399
security, of belief in law and the possibility of cal-
culation, is possible, in which consciousness regards
these things with tedium,-in which the joy of the
accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected,
actually becomes a spur,
Let us halt a moment before this symptom of
highest culture, I call it the pessimism of strength.
Man now no longer requires a "justification of
evil"; justification is precisely what he abhors:
he enjoys evil, pur, cru; he regards purposeless
evil as the most interesting kind of evil. If he
had required a God in the past, he now delights in
cosmic disorder without a God, a world of accident,
to the essence of which terror, ambiguity, and
seductiveness belong.
In a state of this sort, it is precisely goodness
which requires to be justified--that is to say, it
must either have an evil and a dangerous basis, or
else it must contain a vast amount of stupidity :
in which case it still pleases. Animality no longer
awakens terror now; a very intellectual and happy
wanton spirit in favour of the animal in man, is, in
such periods, the most triumphant form of spirit-
uality. Man is now strong enough to be able to
feel ashamed of a belief in God: he may now
play the part of the devil's advocate afresh. If in
practice he pretends to uphold virtue, it will be for
those reasons which lead virtue to be associated
with subtlety, cunning, lust of gain, and a form of
the lust of power.
This pessimism of strength also ends in a theo-
dicy, i. e. in an absolute saying of yea to the world
—but the same arguments will be raised in favour of
## p. 400 (#430) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
life which formerly were raised against it: and in
this way, in a conception of this world as the highest
ideal possible, which has been effectively attained.
1020.
The principal kinds of pessimism :-
The pessimism of sensitiveness (excessive irrit-
ability with a preponderance of the feelings of pain).
The pessimism of the will that is not free (other-
wise expressed: the lack of resisting power a-
gainst stimuli).
The pessimism of doubt (shyness in regard to
everything fixed, in regard to all grasping and
touching).
The psychological conditions which belong to
these different kinds of pessimism, may all be ob-
served in a lunatic asylum, even though they are
there found in a slightly exaggerated form. The
same applies to “Nihilism” (the penetrating feeling
of “nonentity”).
What, however, is the nature of Pascal's moral
pessimism, and the metaphysical pessimism of the
Vedanta-Philosophy? What is the nature of the
social pessimism of anarchists (as of Shelley), and of
the pessimism of compassion (like that of Leo
Tolstoy and of Alfred de Vigny)?
. Are all these things not also the phenomena of
decay and sickness ? . . . And is not excessive
seriousness in regard to moral values, or in regard
to "other-world” fictions, or social calamities, or
suffering in general, of the same order? All such
exaggeration of a single and narrow standpoint is
## p. 401 (#431) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
401
I
in itself a sign of sickness. The same applies to
the preponderance of a negative over an affirma-
tive attitude !
In this respect we must not confound with the
above : the joy of saying and doing no, which is
the result of the enormous power and tenseness of
an affirmative attitude-peculiar to all rich and
mighty men and ages. It is, as it were, a luxury,
a form of courage too, which opposes the terrible,
which has sympathy with the frightful and the
questionable; because, among other things, one is
terrible and questionable: the Dionysian in will,
intellect, and taste.
1021.
My Five "Noes. ".
(1) My fight against the feeling of sin and the
introduction of the notion of punishment into the
physical and metaphysical world, likewise into
psychology and the interpretation of history. The
recognition of the fact that all philosophies and val-
uations hitherto have been saturated with morality.
(2) My identification and my discovery of the
traditional ideal, of the Christian ideal, even
where the dogmatic form of Christianity has been
wrecked. The danger of the Christian ideal resides
in its valuations, in that which can dispense with
concrete expression: my struggle against latent
Christianity (for instance, in music, in Socialism).
(3) My struggle against the eighteenth century
of Rousseau, against his“ Nature," against his “good
2C
VOL. II.
## p. 402 (#432) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
man," his belief in the dominion of feeling—against
the pampering, weakening, and moralising of man:
an ideal born of the hatred of aristocratic culture,
which in practice is the dominion of unbridled
feelings of resentment, and invented as a standard
for the purpose of war (the Christian morality of
the feeling of sin, as well as the morality of resent-
ment, is an attitude of the mob).
(4) My fight against Romanticism, in which the
ideals of Christianity and of Rousseau converge,
but which possesses at the same time a yearning
for that antiquity which knew of sacerdotal and
aristocratic culture, a yearning for virtù, and for
the “strong man”—something extremely hybrid;
a false and imitated kind of stronger humanity,
which appreciates extreme conditions in general
and sees the symptom of strength in them (“the
cult of passion”; an imitation of the most expressive
forms, furore espressivo, originating not out of pleni-
tude, but out of want). -(In the nineteenth century
there are some things which are born out of re-
lative plenitude-i. e. out of well-being; cheerful
music, etc. -among poets, for instance, Stifter and
Gottfried Keller give signs of more strength and
inner well-being than - The great strides of en-
gineering, of inventions, of the natural sciences and
of history (? ) are relative products of the strength
and self-reliance of the nineteenth century. )
(5) My struggle against the predominance of
gregarious instincts, now science makes common
cause with them; against the profound hate with
which every kind of order of rank and of aloofness
is treated.
## p. 403 (#433) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
403
1022.
From the pressure of plenitude, from the tension
of forces that are continually increasing within us
and which cannot yet discharge themselves, a con-
dition is produced which is very similar to that
which precedes a storm: we—like Nature's sky-
become overcast. That, too, is "pessimism. "
A teaching which puts an end to such a condition
by the fact that it commands something: a trans-
valuation of values by means of which the accumu-
lated forces are given a channel, a direction, so
that they explode into deeds and flashes of light-
ning — does not in the least require to be a
hedonistic teaching: in so far as it releases strength
which was compressed to an agonising degree, it
brings happiness.
1023.
Pleasure appears with the feeling of power.
Happiness means that the consciousness of
power and triumph has begun to prevail.
Progress is the strengthening of the type, the
ability to exercise great will-power: everything
else is a misunderstanding and a danger.
1024.
There comes a time when the old masquerade
and moral togging-up of the passions provokes
repugnance: naked Nature; when the quanta of
power are recognised as decidedly simple (as deter-
mining rank); when grand style appears again as
the result of great passion.
## p. 404 (#434) ############################################
404
THE WILL TO POWER.
1025.
The purpose of culture would have us enlist every-
thing terrible, step by step and experimentally, into
its service; but before it is strong enough for this it
must combat, moderate, mask, and even curse every-
thing terrible.
Wherever a culture points to anything as evil, it
betrays its fear and therefore weakness,
Thesis : everything good is the evil of yore
which has been rendered serviceable. Standard:
the more terrible and the greater the passions may
be which an age, a people, and an individual are at
liberty to possess, because they are able to use
them as a means, the higher is their culture: the
more mediocre, weak, submissive, and cowardly a
man. may be, the more things he will regard as evil:
according to him the kingdom of evil is the largest
The lowest man will see the kingdom of evil (i. e.
that which is forbidden him and which is hostile
to him) everywhere.
1026.
It is not a fact that "happiness follows virtue"
but it is the mighty man who first declares his
happy state to be virtue.
Evil actions belong to the mighty and the
virtuous: bad and base actions belong to the
subjected.
The mightiest man, the creator, would have to
be the most evil, inasmuch as he makes his ideal
prevail over all men in opposition to their ideals,
and remoulds them according to his own image.
## p. 405 (#435) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
405
Evil, in this respect, means hard, painful, en-
forced.
Such men as Napoleon must always return and
always settle our belief in the self-glory of the in-
dividual afresh: he himself, however, was corrupted
by the means he had to stoop to, and had lost
noblesse of character. If he had had to prevail
among another kind of men, he could have availed
himself of other means; and thus it would not
seem necessary that a Cæsar must become bad.
1027
Man is a combination of the beast and the super-
beast; higher man a combination of the monster
and the superman:* these opposites belong to
each other. With every degree of a man's growth
towards greatness and loftiness, he also grows down-
wards into the depths and into the terrible: we
should not desire the one without the other ;-or,
better still: the more fundamentally we desire the
one, the more completely we shall achieve the
other.
1028.
Terribleness belongs to greatness: let us not
deceive ourselves.
1029.
I have taught the knowledge of such terrible
things, that all “Epicurean contentment” is im-
* The play on the German words: “Unthier” and
“ Uberthier, ** « Unmensch” and “ Übermensch," is unfortu-
nately not translatable. —TR.
## p. 406 (#436) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
possible concerning them. Dionysian pleasure is
the only adequate kind here: I was the first to dis-
cover the tragic.
Thanks to their superficiality in
ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it. Resignation
is not the lesson of tragedy, but only the mis-
understanding of it! The yearning for nonentity
is the denial of tragic wisdom, its opposite!
1030.
A rich and powerful soul not only gets over
painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, rob-
beries, and insults: it actually leaves such dark
infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and
power; and, what is most important of all, in pos-
session of an increased blissfulness in love. I
believe that he who has divined something of the
most fundamental conditions of love, will under-
stand Dante for having written over the door of
his Inferno: “I also am the creation of eternal
love. "
IO31.
To have travelled over the whole circumference
of the modern soul, and to have sat in all its corners
-my ambition, my torment, and my happiness.
Veritably to have overcome pessimism, and, as
the result thereof, to have acquired the eyes of a
Goethe-full of love and goodwill.
2
1032.
The first question is by no means whether we
are satisfied with ourselves : but whether we are
## p. 407 (#437) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
407
satisfied with anything at all. Granting that we
should say yea to any single moment, we have then
affirmed not only ourselves, but the whole of ex-
istence. For nothing stands by itself, either in us
or in other things: and if our soul has vibrated and
rung with happiness, like a chord, once only and
only once, then all eternity was necessary in order
to bring about that one event,
and all eternity, in
this single moment of our affirmation, was called
good, was saved, justified, and blessed.
1033.
-
The passions which say yea. —Pride, happiness,
health, the love of the sexes, hostility and war,
reverence, beautiful attitudes, manners, strong will,
the discipline of lofty spirituality, the will to power,
and gratitude to the Earth and to Life: all that
is rich, that would fain bestow, and that refreshes,
gilds, immortalises, and deifies Life -- the whole
power of the virtues that glorify—all declaring
things good, saying yea, and doing yea.
1034.
We, many or few, who once more dare to live in
a world purged of morality, we pagans in faith,—we
are probably also the first who understand what a
pagan faith is : to be obliged to imagine higher
creatures than man, but to imagine them beyond
good and evil; to be compelled to value all higher
existence as immoral existence. We believe in
Olympus, and not in the “man on the cross. ”
## p. 408 (#438) ############################################
1
THE WILL TO POWER.
408
1035
The more modern man has exercised his ideal-
ising power in regard to a God mostly by moralis-
ing the latter ever more and more—what does that
mean ? —nothing good, a diminution in man's
strength.
As a matter of fact, the reverse would be possible:
and indications of this are not wanting. God im-
agined as emancipation from morality, comprising
the whole of the abundant assembly of Life's con-
trasts, and saving and justifying them in a divine
agony.
God as the beyond, the superior elevation,
to the wretched cul-de-sac morality of " Good and
Evil. ”
« He can-
1036.
A humanitarian God cannot be demonstrated
from the world that is known to us: so much are
ye driven and forced to conclude to-day.
But
what conclusion do ye draw from this ?
not be demonstrated to us”: the scepticism of
knowledge. You all fear the conclusion: “From
the world that is known to us quite a different
God would be demonstrable, such a one as would
certainly not be humanitarian ”—and, in a word,
you cling fast to your God, and invent a world for
Him which is unknown to us.
1037.
Let us banish the highest good from our con-
cept of God: it is unworthy of a God. Let us
## p. 409 (#439) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
409
likewise banish the highest wisdom: it is the
vanity of philosophers who have perpetrated the
absurdity of a God who is a monster of wisdom:
the idea was to make Him as like them as possible.
No! God as the highest power that is sufficient!
Everything follows from that, even — "the
world"!
1038
And how many new Gods are not still pos-
sible! I, myself, in whom the religious--that is
to say, the god-creating instinct occasionally be-
comes active at the most inappropriate moments :
how very differently the divine has revealed itself
every time to me! . . . So many strange things
have passed before me in those timeless moments,
which fall into a man's life as if they came from
the moon, and in which he absolutely no longer
knows how old he is or how young he still may
be! . . . I would not doubt that there are several
kinds of gods. . . . Some are not wanting which
one could not possibly imagine without a certain
halcyonic calm and levity. . . Light feet perhaps
belong to the concept “God. ” Is it necessary to
explain that a God knows how to hold Himself
preferably outside all Philistine and rationalist
circles ? also (between ourselves) beyond good and
evil ?
His outlook is a free one
as Goethe
would say. —And to invoke the authority of Zara-
thustra, which cannot be too highly appreciated in
this regard : Zarathustra goes as far as to confess,
“I would only believe in a God who knew how to
dance. .
21
## p. 410 (#440) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
Again I say: how many new Gods are not still
possible! Certainly Zarathustra himself is merelyan
old atheist: he believes neither in old nor in new gods.
Zarathustra says, “he would”—but Zarathustra
will not. . . . Take care to understand him well.
The type God conceived according to the type
of creative spirits, of “great men. "
1039.
And how many new ideals are not, at bottom,
still possible? Here is a little ideal that I seize
upon every five weeks, while upon a wild and lonely
walk, in the azure moment of a blasphemous joy.
To spend one's life amid delicate and absurd things;
a stranger to reality; half-artist, half-bird, half-
metaphysician; without a yea or a nay for reality,
save that from time to time one acknowledges it,
after the manner of a good dancer, with the tips of
one's toes; always tickled by some happy ray of
sunlight; relieved and encouraged even by, sorrow
--for sorrow preserves the happy man; fixing a
little tail of jokes even to the most holy thing:
this, as is clear, is the ideal of a heavy spirit, a ton
in weight--of the spirit of gravity.
1040.
From the military-school of the soul. (Dedicated
to the brave, the good-humoured, and the abstinent. )
I should not like to undervalue the amiable vir-
tues; but greatness of soul is not compatible with
## p. 411 (#441) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
411
them. Even in the arts, grand style excludes all
merely pleasing qualities.
In times of painful tension and vulnerability,
choose war. War hardens and develops muscle.
Those who have been deeply wounded have the
Olympian laughter; a man only has what he needs.
It has now already lasted ten years: no sound
any longer reaches me-a land without rain. A
man must have a vast amount of humanity at his
disposal in order not to pine away in such drought. *
1041.
My new road to an affirmative attitude. -Philo-
sophy, as I have understood it and lived it up to the
present, is the voluntary quest of the repulsive and
atrocious aspects of existence. From the long ex-
perience derived from such wandering over ice and
desert, I learnt to regard quite differently everything
that had been philosophised hitherto: the con-
cealed history of philosophy, the psychology of its
great names came into the light for me.
much truth can a spirit endure; for how much truth
is it daring enough ? ”--this for me was the real
“ How
*
For the benefit of those readers who are not acquainted
with the circumstances of Nietzsche's life, it would be as well
to point out that this is a purely personal plaint, comprehen-
sible enough in the mouth of one who, like Nietzsche, was
for years a lonely anchorite. —TR.
## p. 412 (#442) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
measure of value. Error is a piece of cowardice
. . . every victory on the part of knowledge, is the re-
sultof courage,of hardness towards one's self, of clean-
liness towards one's self. . . . The kind of experimental
philosophy which I am living, even anticipates the
possibility of the most fundamental Nihilism, on
principle: but by this I do not mean that it re-
mains standing at a negation, at a no, or at a will
to negation. It would rather attain to the
very
reverse—to a Dionysian affirmation of the world, as
it is, without subtraction, exception, or choice —
it would have eternal circular motion : the same
things, the same reasoning, and the same illogical
concatenation. The highest state to which a philo-
sopher can attain: to maintain a Dionysian attitude
to Life—my formula for this is amor fati.
To this end we must not only consider those
aspects of life which have been denied hitherto, as
necessary, but as desirable, and not only desirable
to those aspects which have been affirmed hitherto
(as complements or first prerequisites, so to speak),
but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more
terrible, and more veritable aspects of life, in which
the latter's will expresses itself most clearly.
To this end, we must also value that aspect of
existence which alone has been affirmed until now;
we must understand whence this valuation arises,
and to how slight an extent it has to do with a
Dionysian valuation of Life: I selected and under-
stood that which in this respect says "yea” (on the
one hand, the instinct of the sufferer; on the other,
the gregarious instinct; and thirdly, the instinct of
the greater number against the exceptions).
## p. 413 (#443) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
413
Thus I divined to what extent a stronger kind
of man must necessarily imagine
the elevation and
enhancement of man in another direction: higher
creatures, beyond good and evil, beyond those values
which bear the stamp of their origin in the sphere
of suffering, of the herd, and of the greater number
-I searched for the data of this topsy-turvy forma-
tion of ideals in history (the concepts “pagan,"
“classical," " noble," have been discovered afresh
and brought forward).
1042.
We should demonstrate to what extent the
religion of the Greeks was higher than Judæo-
Christianity. The latter triumphed because the
Greek religion was degenerate (and decadent).
1043
It is not surprising that a couple of centuries
have been necessary in order to link up again-a
couple of centuries are very little indeed.
1044.
There must be some people who sanctify func-
tions, not only eating and drinking: and not only
in memory of them, or in harmony with them; but
this world must be for ever glorified anew, and in
a novel fashion.
1
1045
The most intellectual men feel the ecstasy and
charm of sensual things in a way which other men
## p. 414 (#444) ############################################
414
THE WILL TO POWER.
—those with “fleshy hearts"-cannot possibly
imagine, and ought not to be able to imagine:
they are sensualists with the best possible faith,
because they grant the senses a more fundamental
value than that fine sieve, that thinning and mincing
machine, or whatever it is called, which in the
language of the people is termed "spirit. ” The
strength and power of the senses—this is the most
essential thing in a sound man who is one of
Nature's lucky strokes: the splendid beast must
first be there otherwise what is the value of all
"humanisation"?
1046.
(1) We want to hold fast to our senses, and to
the belief in them-and accept their logical con-
clusions ! The hostility to the senses in the philo-
sophy that has been written up to the present, has
been man's greatest feat of nonsense.
(2) The world now extant, on which all earthly
and living things have so built themselves, that it
now appears as it does (enduring and proceeding
slowly), we would fain continue building — not
criticise it away as false !
(3) Our valuations help in the process of build-
ing; they emphasise and accentuate. What does
it mean when whole religions say: “Everything is
bad and false and evil”? This condemnation of
the whole process can only be the judgment of the
failures !
(4) True, the failures might be the greatest
sufferers and therefore the most subtle! The con-
tented might be worth little !
## p. 415 (#445) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
415
(5) We must understand the fundamental artistic
phenomenon which is called “Life,"—the formative
spirit, which constructs under the most unfavourable
circumstances : and in the slowest manner pos-
sible - The proof of all its combinations must
first be given afresh: it maintains itself.
1047
Sexuality, lust of dominion, the pleasure derived
from appearance and deception, great and joyful
gratitude to Life and its typical conditions—these
things are essential to all paganism, and it has a
good conscience on its side. That which is hostile
to Nature (already in Greek antiquity) combats
paganism in the form of morality and dialectics.
1048.
An anti-metaphysical view of the world—yes,
but an artistic one.
1049.
Apollo's misapprehension : the eternity of beauti-
ful forms, the aristocratic prescription, “ Thus shall
it ever be !
Dionysus : Sensuality and cruelty. The perish-
able nature of existence might be interpreted as
the joy of procreative and destructive force, as un-
remitting creation.
1050.
The word “Dionysian" expresses : a constraint
to unity, a soaring above personality, the common.
## p. 416 (#446) ############################################
416
THE WILL TO POWER.
place, society, reality, and above the abyss of the
ephemeral; the passionately painful sensation of
superabundance, in darker, fuller, and more fluctu-
ating conditions; an ecstatic saying of yea to the
collective character of existence, as that which
remains the same, and equally mighty and blissful
throughout all change; the great pantheistic
sympathy with pleasure and pain, which declares
even the most terribleand most questionable qualities
of existence good, and sanctifies them; the eternal
will to procreation, to fruitfulness, and to recurrence;
the feeling of unity in regard to the necessity of
creating and annihilating.
The word “ Apollonian” expresses: the con-
straint to be absolutely isolated, to the typical “in-
dividual,” to everything that simplifies, distinguishes,
and makes strong, salient, definite, and typical: to
freedom within the law.
The further development of art is just as neces-
sarily bound up with the antagonism of these two
natural art-forces, as the further development of
mankind is bound up with the antagonism of the
sexes. The plenitude of power and restraint, the
highest form of self-affirmation in a cool, noble, and
reserved kind of beauty: the Apollonianism of the
Hellenic will.
This antagonism of the Dionysian and of the
Apollonian in the Greek soul, is one of the great
riddles which made me feel drawn to the essence
of Hellenism. At bottom, I troubled about nothing
save the solution of the question, why precisely
Greek Apollonianism should have been forced to
grow out of a Dionysian soil: the Dionysian Greek
## p. 417 (#447) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
417
had need of being Apollonian; that is to say,in
order to break his will to the titanic, to the com-
plex, to the uncertain, to the horrible by a will
to measure, to simplicity, and to submission to
rule and concept. Extravagance, wildness, and
Asiatic tendencies lie at the root of the Greeks.
Their courage consists in their struggle with their
Asiatic nature: they were not given beauty, any
more than they were given Logic and moral
naturalness: in them these things are victories,
they are willed and fought for—they constitute
the triumph of the Greeks.
1051.
It is clear that only the rarest and most lucky
cases of humanity can attain to the highest and
most sublime human joys in which Life celebrates
its own glorification, and this only happens when
these rare creatures themselves and their forbears
have lived a long preparatory life leading to this
goal, without, however, having done so consciously.
It is then that án overflowing wealth of multi-
farious forces and the most agile power of “free
will ” and lordly command exist together in per-
fect concord in one man; then the intellect is just
as much at ease, or at home, in the senses as the
senses are at ease or at home in it; and everything
that takes place in the latter must give rise to ex-
traordinarily subtle joys in the former. And vice
verså: just think of this vice verså for a moment
in a man like Hafiz; even Goethe, though to a
lesser degree, gives some idea of this process.
It
2 D
VOL. II.
## p. 418 (#448) ############################################
418
THE WILL TO POWER.
is probable that, in such perfect and well-constituted
men, the most sensual functions are finally trans-
figured by a symbolic elatedness of the highest
intellectuality; in themselves they feel a kind of
deification of the body and are most remote from the
ascetic philosophy of the principle "God is a Spirit":
from this principle it is clear that the ascetic is the
“ botched man” who declares only that to be good
and “God” which is absolute, and which judges and
condemns.
From that height of joy in which man feels him-
self completely and utterly a deified form and self-
justification of nature, down to the joy of healthy
peasants and healthy semi-human beasts, the whole
of this long and enormous gradation of the light
and colour of happiness was called by the Greek-
not without that grateful quivering of one who is
initiated into secret, not without much caution and
pious silence-by the godlike name: Dionysus.
What then do all modern men-the children of a
crumbling, multifarious, sick and strange age-
know of the compass of Greek happiness, how could
they know anything about it! Whence would the
slaves of "modern ideas” derive their right to
Dionysian feasts!
When the Greek body and soul were in full
"bloom," and not, as it were, in states of morbid
exaltation and madness, there arose the secret
symbol of the loftiest affirmation and transfigura-
tion of life and the world that has ever existed.
There we have a standard beside which everything
that has grown since must seem too short, too
poor, too narrow: if we but pronounce the word
-
## p. 419 (#449) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
419
" Dionysus" in the presence of the best of more
recent names and things, in the presence of Goethe,
for instance, or Beethoven, or Shakespeare, or
Raphael, in a trice we realise that our best things
and moments are condemned. Dionysus is a judge !
Am I understood ? There can be no doubt that
the Greeks sought to interpret, by means of their
Dionysian experiences, the final mysteries of the
“ destiny of the soul" and everything they knew
concerning the education and the purification of
man, and above all concerning the absolute hier-
archy and inequality of value between man and man.
There is the deepest experience of all Greeks, which
they conceal beneath great silence, we do not
know the Greeks so long as this hidden and sub-
terranean access to them remains obstructed. The
indiscreet eyes of scholars will never perceive any-
thing in these things, however much learned energy
may still have to be expended in the service of this
excavation-; even the noble zeal of such friends
of antiquity as Goethe and Winckelmann, seems to
savour somewhat of bad form and of arrogance,
precisely in this respect. To wait and to prepare
oneself; to await the appearance of new sources of
knowledge; to prepare oneself in solitude for the
sight of new faces and the sound of new voices; to
cleanse one's soul ever more and more of the dust
and noise, as of a country fair, which is peculiar to
this age; to overcome everything Christian by some-
thing super-Christian, and not only to rid oneself
of it,- for the Christian doctrine is the counter-
doctrine to the Dionysian; to rediscover the South
in oneself, and to stretch a clear, glittering, and
i
## p. 420 (#450) ############################################
420
THE WILL TO POWER.
more
more
mysterious southern sky above one; to reconquer
the southern healthiness and concealed power of the
soul, once more for oneself; to increase the com-
pass of one's soul step by step, and to become more
supernational,
European,
super-
European, more Oriental, and finally more Hellenic
-for Hellenism was, as a matter of fact, the first
great union and synthesis of everything Oriental,
and precisely on that account, the beginning of the
European soul, the discovery of our “ new world":
”
—he who lives under such imperatives, who knows
what he may not encounter some day? Possibly
a new dawn!
1052.
The two types : Dionysus and Christ on the Cross.
We should ascertain whether the typically religious
man is a decadent phenomenon (the great inno-
vators are one and all morbid and epileptic); but
do not let us forget to include that type of the
religious man who is pagan. Is the pagan cult
not a form of gratitude for, and affirmation of, Life?
Ought not its most representative type to be an
apology and deification of Life ? The type of a
well-constituted and ecstatically overflowing spirit !
The type of a spirit which absorbs the contradic-
tions and problems of existence, and which solves
them!
At this point I set up the Dionysus of the Greeks:
the religious affirmation of Life, of the whole of
Life, not of denied and partial Life (it is typical
that in this cult the sexual act awakens ideas of
depth, mystery, and reverence).
## p. 421 (#451) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
421
>
Dionysus versus "Christ"; here you have the
contrast. It is not a difference in regard to the
martyrdom, --but the latter has a different mean-
ing. Life itself-Life's eternal fruitfulness and re-
currence caused anguish, destruction, and the will
to annihilation. In the other case, the suffering of
the “ Christ as the Innocent One" stands as an ob-
jection against Life, it is the formula of Life's
condemnation. -Readers will guess that the prob-
lem concerns the meaning of suffering; whether
a Christian or a tragic meaning be given to it. In
the first case it is the road to a holy mode of
existence; in the second case existence itself
is regarded as sufficiently holy to justiſy an
enormous amount of suffering. The tragic man
says yea even to the most excruciating suffering:
he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deify-
ing, to be able to do this; the Christian denies
even the happy lots on earth: he is weak, poor,
and disinherited enough to suffer from life in any
form. God on the Cross is a curse upon Life, a
signpost directing people to deliver themselves from
it;-Dionysus cut into pieces is a promise of Life:
it will be for ever born anew, and rise afresh from
destruction
## p.
or is one evading it? Is one imperfect owing to
one's precocity or to one's tardiness? Is it one's
nature to say yea, or no, or is one a peacock's tail
of garish parts? Is one proud enough not to feel
ashamed even of one's vanity? Is one still able to
feel a bite of conscience (this species is becoming
rare; formerly conscience had to bite too often: it
is as if it now no longer had enough teeth to do
so)? Is one still capable of a, “duty”? (there
are some people who would lose the whole joy of
their lives if they were deprived of their duty—this
holds good especially of feminine creatures, who
are born subjects).
.
1010.
Supposing our common comprehension of the
universe were a misunderstanding, would it be
possible to conceive of a form of perfection, within
the limits of which even such a misunderstanding
as this could be sanctioned ?
The concept of a new form of perfection: that
## p. 393 (#423) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
393
which does not correspond to our logic, to our
" beauty,” to our “good,” to our “truth,” might be
perfect in a higher sense even than our ideal is.
IOII.
"
Our most important limitation: we must not
deify the unknown; we are just beginning to know
so little. The false and wasted endeavours.
Our «
new world”: we must ascertain to what
extent we are the creators of our valuations-we
will thus be able to put “sense ” into history.
This belief in truth is reaching its final logical
conclusion in us--ye know how it reads: that if
there is anything at all that must be worshipped
it is appearance; that falsehood and not truth is-
divine.
IOI 2.
-
He who urges rational thought forward, thereby
also drives its antagonistic power—mysticism and
foolery of every kind to new feats of strength.
—
We should recognise that every movement is
(1) partly the manifestation of fatigue resulting from
a previous movement (satiety after it, the malice of
weakness towards it, and disease); and (2) partly a
newly awakened accumulation of long slumbering
forces, and therefore wanton, violent, healthy.
1013
Health and morbidness : let us be careful! The
standard is the bloom of the body, the agility,
courage, and cheerfulness of the mind—but also, of
## p. 394 (#424) ############################################
394
THE WILL TO POWER.
course, how much morbidness a man can bear and
overcome,—and convert into health. That which
would send more delicate natures to the dogs,
belongs to the stimulating means of great health.
I014.
It is only a question of power : to have all the
morbid traits of the century, but to balance them
by means of overflowing, plastic, and rejuvenating
power. The strong man.
1015.
Concerning the strength of the nineteenth century.
We are more mediæval than the eighteenth century;
not only more inquisitive or more susceptible to the
strange and to the rare. We have revolted against
the Revolution. . . . We have freed ourselves from
the fear of reason, which was the spectre of the
eighteenth century: we once more dare to be
childish, lyrical, absurd,-in a word, "we are
musicians. "
And we are just as little frightened
of the ridiculous as of the absurd. The devil finds
that he is tolerated even by God : * better still, he
has become interesting as one who has been mis-
understood and slandered for ages, we are the
saviours of the devil's honour.
We no longer separate the great from the terrible.
We reconcile good things, in all their complexity,
* This is reminiscent of Goethe's Faust. See“ Prologue in
Heaven. ”—TR.
»
## p. 395 (#425) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
395
-
with the very worst things; we have overcome the
desideratum of the past (which wanted goodness to
grow without the increase of evil). The cowardice
towards the ideal, peculiar to the Renaissance, has
diminished-we even dare to aspire to the latter's
morality. Intolerance towards priests and the
Church has at the same time come to an end ; " It
is immoral to believe in God"--but this is pre-
cisely what we regard as the best possible justifica-
tion of this belief.
On all these things we have conferred the civic
rights of our minds. We do not tremble before
the back side of "good things" (we even look
for it, we are brave and inquisitive enough for that),
of Greek antiquity, of morality, of reason, of good
taste, for instance (we reckon up the losses which
we incur with all this treasure: we almost reduce
ourselves to poverty with such a treasure).
Neither do we conceal the back side of“ evil things”
from ourselves.
1016.
That which does us honour. -If anything does us
honour, it is this: we have transferred our serious-
ness to other things; all those things which have
been despised and laid aside as base by all ages,
we regard as important-on the other hand, we
surrender “fine feelings" at a cheap rate.
Could any aberration be more dangerous than the
contempt of the body? As if all intellectuality
were not thereby condemned to become morbid,
and to take refuge in the vapeurs of “idealism"!
Nothing that has been thought out by Christians
## p. 396 (#426) ############################################
396
THE WILL TO POWER.
and idealists holds water: we are more radical.
We have discovered the “smallest world” every-
where as the most decisive.
The paving-stones in the streets, good air in our
rooms, food understood according to its worth: we
value all the necessaries of life seriously, and despise
all “beautiful soulfulness” as a form of “ levity and
frivolity. ” That which has been most despised
hitherto, is now pressed into the front rank.
1017
In the place of Rousseau's "man of Nature," the
nineteenth century has discovered a much more
genuine image of “Man,"—it had the courage to
do this. . . . On the whole, the Christian concept
. . .
of man has in a way been reinstalled. What we
have not had the courage to do, was to call precisely
this “man par excellence," good, and to see the
future of mankind guaranteed in him. In the
same way, we did not dare to regard the growth
in the terrible side of man's character as an ac-
companying feature of every advance in culture;
in this sense we are still under the influence of the
Christian ideal, and side with it against paganism,
and likewise against the Renaissance concept of
virtu. But the key of culture is not to be
found in this way: and in praxi we still have
the forgeries of history in favour of the "good
man (as if he alone constituted the progress
of humanity) and the socialistic ideal (i. e. the
residue of Christianity and of Rousseau in the de-
Christianised world).
## p. 397 (#427) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
397
The fight against the eighteenth century : it meets
with its greatest conquerors in Goethe and Napoleon.
Schopenhauer, too, fights against the eighteenth
century; but he returns involuntarily to the
seventeenth—he is a modern Pascal, with Pascalian
valuations, without Christianity. Schopenhauer was
not strong enough to invent a new yea.
Napoleon : we see the necessary relationship
between the higher and the terrible man. Man
reinstalled, and her due of contempt and fear re-
stored to woman. Highest activity and health are
the signs of the great man; the straight line and
grand style rediscovered in action; the mightiest
of all instincts, that of life itself,—the lust of
dominion,-heartily welcomed
I018.
(Revue des deux mondes, 15th February 1887.
Taine concerning Napoleon) " Suddenly the
master faculty reveals itself: the artist, which was
latent in the politician, comes forth from his
scabbard; he creates dans l'idéal et l'impossible. He
is once more recognised as that which he is : the
posthumous brother of Dante and of Michelangelo;
and verily, in view of the definite contours of his
vision, the intensity, the coherence, and inner con-
sistency of his dream, the depth of his meditations,
the superhuman greatness of his conception, he is
their equal : son génie a la même taille et la même
structure ; il est un des trois esprits souverains de
la renaissance italienne. "
Nota bene. --Dante, Michelangelo, Napoleon.
»
## p. 398 (#428) ############################################
398
THE WILL TO POWER.
1019.
Concerning the pessimism of strength. In the
internal economy of the primitive man's soul, the
fear of evil preponderates. What is evil? Three
kinds of things: accident, uncertainty, the unex-
pected. How does primitive man combat evil ?
He conceives it as a thing of reason, of power, even
as a person. By this means he is enabled to make
treaties with it, and generally to operate upon it in
advance-to forestall it.
-Another expedient is to declare its evil and
harmful character to be but apparent: the conse-
quences of accidental occurrences, and of uncer-
tainty and the unexpected, are interpreted as well-
meant, as reasonable.
-A third means is to interpret evil, above all,
as merited : evil is thus justified as a punishment.
-In short, man submits to it: all religious
and moral interpretations are but forms of sub-
mission to evil. The belief that a good purpose
lies behind all evil, implies the renunciation of any
desire to combat it.
Now, the history of every culture shows a
diminution of this fear of the accidental, of the
uncertain, and of the unexpected. Culture means
precisely, to learn to reckon, to discover causes, to
acquire the power of forestalling events, to acquire a
belief in necessity. With the growth of culture,
man is able to dispense with that primitive form of
submission to evil (called religion or morality), and
that “justification of evil. ” Now he wages war
against “evil,”—he gets rid of it. Yes, a state of
## p. 399 (#429) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
399
security, of belief in law and the possibility of cal-
culation, is possible, in which consciousness regards
these things with tedium,-in which the joy of the
accidental, of the uncertain, and of the unexpected,
actually becomes a spur,
Let us halt a moment before this symptom of
highest culture, I call it the pessimism of strength.
Man now no longer requires a "justification of
evil"; justification is precisely what he abhors:
he enjoys evil, pur, cru; he regards purposeless
evil as the most interesting kind of evil. If he
had required a God in the past, he now delights in
cosmic disorder without a God, a world of accident,
to the essence of which terror, ambiguity, and
seductiveness belong.
In a state of this sort, it is precisely goodness
which requires to be justified--that is to say, it
must either have an evil and a dangerous basis, or
else it must contain a vast amount of stupidity :
in which case it still pleases. Animality no longer
awakens terror now; a very intellectual and happy
wanton spirit in favour of the animal in man, is, in
such periods, the most triumphant form of spirit-
uality. Man is now strong enough to be able to
feel ashamed of a belief in God: he may now
play the part of the devil's advocate afresh. If in
practice he pretends to uphold virtue, it will be for
those reasons which lead virtue to be associated
with subtlety, cunning, lust of gain, and a form of
the lust of power.
This pessimism of strength also ends in a theo-
dicy, i. e. in an absolute saying of yea to the world
—but the same arguments will be raised in favour of
## p. 400 (#430) ############################################
400
THE WILL TO POWER.
life which formerly were raised against it: and in
this way, in a conception of this world as the highest
ideal possible, which has been effectively attained.
1020.
The principal kinds of pessimism :-
The pessimism of sensitiveness (excessive irrit-
ability with a preponderance of the feelings of pain).
The pessimism of the will that is not free (other-
wise expressed: the lack of resisting power a-
gainst stimuli).
The pessimism of doubt (shyness in regard to
everything fixed, in regard to all grasping and
touching).
The psychological conditions which belong to
these different kinds of pessimism, may all be ob-
served in a lunatic asylum, even though they are
there found in a slightly exaggerated form. The
same applies to “Nihilism” (the penetrating feeling
of “nonentity”).
What, however, is the nature of Pascal's moral
pessimism, and the metaphysical pessimism of the
Vedanta-Philosophy? What is the nature of the
social pessimism of anarchists (as of Shelley), and of
the pessimism of compassion (like that of Leo
Tolstoy and of Alfred de Vigny)?
. Are all these things not also the phenomena of
decay and sickness ? . . . And is not excessive
seriousness in regard to moral values, or in regard
to "other-world” fictions, or social calamities, or
suffering in general, of the same order? All such
exaggeration of a single and narrow standpoint is
## p. 401 (#431) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
401
I
in itself a sign of sickness. The same applies to
the preponderance of a negative over an affirma-
tive attitude !
In this respect we must not confound with the
above : the joy of saying and doing no, which is
the result of the enormous power and tenseness of
an affirmative attitude-peculiar to all rich and
mighty men and ages. It is, as it were, a luxury,
a form of courage too, which opposes the terrible,
which has sympathy with the frightful and the
questionable; because, among other things, one is
terrible and questionable: the Dionysian in will,
intellect, and taste.
1021.
My Five "Noes. ".
(1) My fight against the feeling of sin and the
introduction of the notion of punishment into the
physical and metaphysical world, likewise into
psychology and the interpretation of history. The
recognition of the fact that all philosophies and val-
uations hitherto have been saturated with morality.
(2) My identification and my discovery of the
traditional ideal, of the Christian ideal, even
where the dogmatic form of Christianity has been
wrecked. The danger of the Christian ideal resides
in its valuations, in that which can dispense with
concrete expression: my struggle against latent
Christianity (for instance, in music, in Socialism).
(3) My struggle against the eighteenth century
of Rousseau, against his“ Nature," against his “good
2C
VOL. II.
## p. 402 (#432) ############################################
402
THE WILL TO POWER.
man," his belief in the dominion of feeling—against
the pampering, weakening, and moralising of man:
an ideal born of the hatred of aristocratic culture,
which in practice is the dominion of unbridled
feelings of resentment, and invented as a standard
for the purpose of war (the Christian morality of
the feeling of sin, as well as the morality of resent-
ment, is an attitude of the mob).
(4) My fight against Romanticism, in which the
ideals of Christianity and of Rousseau converge,
but which possesses at the same time a yearning
for that antiquity which knew of sacerdotal and
aristocratic culture, a yearning for virtù, and for
the “strong man”—something extremely hybrid;
a false and imitated kind of stronger humanity,
which appreciates extreme conditions in general
and sees the symptom of strength in them (“the
cult of passion”; an imitation of the most expressive
forms, furore espressivo, originating not out of pleni-
tude, but out of want). -(In the nineteenth century
there are some things which are born out of re-
lative plenitude-i. e. out of well-being; cheerful
music, etc. -among poets, for instance, Stifter and
Gottfried Keller give signs of more strength and
inner well-being than - The great strides of en-
gineering, of inventions, of the natural sciences and
of history (? ) are relative products of the strength
and self-reliance of the nineteenth century. )
(5) My struggle against the predominance of
gregarious instincts, now science makes common
cause with them; against the profound hate with
which every kind of order of rank and of aloofness
is treated.
## p. 403 (#433) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
403
1022.
From the pressure of plenitude, from the tension
of forces that are continually increasing within us
and which cannot yet discharge themselves, a con-
dition is produced which is very similar to that
which precedes a storm: we—like Nature's sky-
become overcast. That, too, is "pessimism. "
A teaching which puts an end to such a condition
by the fact that it commands something: a trans-
valuation of values by means of which the accumu-
lated forces are given a channel, a direction, so
that they explode into deeds and flashes of light-
ning — does not in the least require to be a
hedonistic teaching: in so far as it releases strength
which was compressed to an agonising degree, it
brings happiness.
1023.
Pleasure appears with the feeling of power.
Happiness means that the consciousness of
power and triumph has begun to prevail.
Progress is the strengthening of the type, the
ability to exercise great will-power: everything
else is a misunderstanding and a danger.
1024.
There comes a time when the old masquerade
and moral togging-up of the passions provokes
repugnance: naked Nature; when the quanta of
power are recognised as decidedly simple (as deter-
mining rank); when grand style appears again as
the result of great passion.
## p. 404 (#434) ############################################
404
THE WILL TO POWER.
1025.
The purpose of culture would have us enlist every-
thing terrible, step by step and experimentally, into
its service; but before it is strong enough for this it
must combat, moderate, mask, and even curse every-
thing terrible.
Wherever a culture points to anything as evil, it
betrays its fear and therefore weakness,
Thesis : everything good is the evil of yore
which has been rendered serviceable. Standard:
the more terrible and the greater the passions may
be which an age, a people, and an individual are at
liberty to possess, because they are able to use
them as a means, the higher is their culture: the
more mediocre, weak, submissive, and cowardly a
man. may be, the more things he will regard as evil:
according to him the kingdom of evil is the largest
The lowest man will see the kingdom of evil (i. e.
that which is forbidden him and which is hostile
to him) everywhere.
1026.
It is not a fact that "happiness follows virtue"
but it is the mighty man who first declares his
happy state to be virtue.
Evil actions belong to the mighty and the
virtuous: bad and base actions belong to the
subjected.
The mightiest man, the creator, would have to
be the most evil, inasmuch as he makes his ideal
prevail over all men in opposition to their ideals,
and remoulds them according to his own image.
## p. 405 (#435) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
405
Evil, in this respect, means hard, painful, en-
forced.
Such men as Napoleon must always return and
always settle our belief in the self-glory of the in-
dividual afresh: he himself, however, was corrupted
by the means he had to stoop to, and had lost
noblesse of character. If he had had to prevail
among another kind of men, he could have availed
himself of other means; and thus it would not
seem necessary that a Cæsar must become bad.
1027
Man is a combination of the beast and the super-
beast; higher man a combination of the monster
and the superman:* these opposites belong to
each other. With every degree of a man's growth
towards greatness and loftiness, he also grows down-
wards into the depths and into the terrible: we
should not desire the one without the other ;-or,
better still: the more fundamentally we desire the
one, the more completely we shall achieve the
other.
1028.
Terribleness belongs to greatness: let us not
deceive ourselves.
1029.
I have taught the knowledge of such terrible
things, that all “Epicurean contentment” is im-
* The play on the German words: “Unthier” and
“ Uberthier, ** « Unmensch” and “ Übermensch," is unfortu-
nately not translatable. —TR.
## p. 406 (#436) ############################################
406
THE WILL TO POWER.
possible concerning them. Dionysian pleasure is
the only adequate kind here: I was the first to dis-
cover the tragic.
Thanks to their superficiality in
ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it. Resignation
is not the lesson of tragedy, but only the mis-
understanding of it! The yearning for nonentity
is the denial of tragic wisdom, its opposite!
1030.
A rich and powerful soul not only gets over
painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, rob-
beries, and insults: it actually leaves such dark
infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and
power; and, what is most important of all, in pos-
session of an increased blissfulness in love. I
believe that he who has divined something of the
most fundamental conditions of love, will under-
stand Dante for having written over the door of
his Inferno: “I also am the creation of eternal
love. "
IO31.
To have travelled over the whole circumference
of the modern soul, and to have sat in all its corners
-my ambition, my torment, and my happiness.
Veritably to have overcome pessimism, and, as
the result thereof, to have acquired the eyes of a
Goethe-full of love and goodwill.
2
1032.
The first question is by no means whether we
are satisfied with ourselves : but whether we are
## p. 407 (#437) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
407
satisfied with anything at all. Granting that we
should say yea to any single moment, we have then
affirmed not only ourselves, but the whole of ex-
istence. For nothing stands by itself, either in us
or in other things: and if our soul has vibrated and
rung with happiness, like a chord, once only and
only once, then all eternity was necessary in order
to bring about that one event,
and all eternity, in
this single moment of our affirmation, was called
good, was saved, justified, and blessed.
1033.
-
The passions which say yea. —Pride, happiness,
health, the love of the sexes, hostility and war,
reverence, beautiful attitudes, manners, strong will,
the discipline of lofty spirituality, the will to power,
and gratitude to the Earth and to Life: all that
is rich, that would fain bestow, and that refreshes,
gilds, immortalises, and deifies Life -- the whole
power of the virtues that glorify—all declaring
things good, saying yea, and doing yea.
1034.
We, many or few, who once more dare to live in
a world purged of morality, we pagans in faith,—we
are probably also the first who understand what a
pagan faith is : to be obliged to imagine higher
creatures than man, but to imagine them beyond
good and evil; to be compelled to value all higher
existence as immoral existence. We believe in
Olympus, and not in the “man on the cross. ”
## p. 408 (#438) ############################################
1
THE WILL TO POWER.
408
1035
The more modern man has exercised his ideal-
ising power in regard to a God mostly by moralis-
ing the latter ever more and more—what does that
mean ? —nothing good, a diminution in man's
strength.
As a matter of fact, the reverse would be possible:
and indications of this are not wanting. God im-
agined as emancipation from morality, comprising
the whole of the abundant assembly of Life's con-
trasts, and saving and justifying them in a divine
agony.
God as the beyond, the superior elevation,
to the wretched cul-de-sac morality of " Good and
Evil. ”
« He can-
1036.
A humanitarian God cannot be demonstrated
from the world that is known to us: so much are
ye driven and forced to conclude to-day.
But
what conclusion do ye draw from this ?
not be demonstrated to us”: the scepticism of
knowledge. You all fear the conclusion: “From
the world that is known to us quite a different
God would be demonstrable, such a one as would
certainly not be humanitarian ”—and, in a word,
you cling fast to your God, and invent a world for
Him which is unknown to us.
1037.
Let us banish the highest good from our con-
cept of God: it is unworthy of a God. Let us
## p. 409 (#439) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
409
likewise banish the highest wisdom: it is the
vanity of philosophers who have perpetrated the
absurdity of a God who is a monster of wisdom:
the idea was to make Him as like them as possible.
No! God as the highest power that is sufficient!
Everything follows from that, even — "the
world"!
1038
And how many new Gods are not still pos-
sible! I, myself, in whom the religious--that is
to say, the god-creating instinct occasionally be-
comes active at the most inappropriate moments :
how very differently the divine has revealed itself
every time to me! . . . So many strange things
have passed before me in those timeless moments,
which fall into a man's life as if they came from
the moon, and in which he absolutely no longer
knows how old he is or how young he still may
be! . . . I would not doubt that there are several
kinds of gods. . . . Some are not wanting which
one could not possibly imagine without a certain
halcyonic calm and levity. . . Light feet perhaps
belong to the concept “God. ” Is it necessary to
explain that a God knows how to hold Himself
preferably outside all Philistine and rationalist
circles ? also (between ourselves) beyond good and
evil ?
His outlook is a free one
as Goethe
would say. —And to invoke the authority of Zara-
thustra, which cannot be too highly appreciated in
this regard : Zarathustra goes as far as to confess,
“I would only believe in a God who knew how to
dance. .
21
## p. 410 (#440) ############################################
410
THE WILL TO POWER.
Again I say: how many new Gods are not still
possible! Certainly Zarathustra himself is merelyan
old atheist: he believes neither in old nor in new gods.
Zarathustra says, “he would”—but Zarathustra
will not. . . . Take care to understand him well.
The type God conceived according to the type
of creative spirits, of “great men. "
1039.
And how many new ideals are not, at bottom,
still possible? Here is a little ideal that I seize
upon every five weeks, while upon a wild and lonely
walk, in the azure moment of a blasphemous joy.
To spend one's life amid delicate and absurd things;
a stranger to reality; half-artist, half-bird, half-
metaphysician; without a yea or a nay for reality,
save that from time to time one acknowledges it,
after the manner of a good dancer, with the tips of
one's toes; always tickled by some happy ray of
sunlight; relieved and encouraged even by, sorrow
--for sorrow preserves the happy man; fixing a
little tail of jokes even to the most holy thing:
this, as is clear, is the ideal of a heavy spirit, a ton
in weight--of the spirit of gravity.
1040.
From the military-school of the soul. (Dedicated
to the brave, the good-humoured, and the abstinent. )
I should not like to undervalue the amiable vir-
tues; but greatness of soul is not compatible with
## p. 411 (#441) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
411
them. Even in the arts, grand style excludes all
merely pleasing qualities.
In times of painful tension and vulnerability,
choose war. War hardens and develops muscle.
Those who have been deeply wounded have the
Olympian laughter; a man only has what he needs.
It has now already lasted ten years: no sound
any longer reaches me-a land without rain. A
man must have a vast amount of humanity at his
disposal in order not to pine away in such drought. *
1041.
My new road to an affirmative attitude. -Philo-
sophy, as I have understood it and lived it up to the
present, is the voluntary quest of the repulsive and
atrocious aspects of existence. From the long ex-
perience derived from such wandering over ice and
desert, I learnt to regard quite differently everything
that had been philosophised hitherto: the con-
cealed history of philosophy, the psychology of its
great names came into the light for me.
much truth can a spirit endure; for how much truth
is it daring enough ? ”--this for me was the real
“ How
*
For the benefit of those readers who are not acquainted
with the circumstances of Nietzsche's life, it would be as well
to point out that this is a purely personal plaint, comprehen-
sible enough in the mouth of one who, like Nietzsche, was
for years a lonely anchorite. —TR.
## p. 412 (#442) ############################################
412
THE WILL TO POWER.
measure of value. Error is a piece of cowardice
. . . every victory on the part of knowledge, is the re-
sultof courage,of hardness towards one's self, of clean-
liness towards one's self. . . . The kind of experimental
philosophy which I am living, even anticipates the
possibility of the most fundamental Nihilism, on
principle: but by this I do not mean that it re-
mains standing at a negation, at a no, or at a will
to negation. It would rather attain to the
very
reverse—to a Dionysian affirmation of the world, as
it is, without subtraction, exception, or choice —
it would have eternal circular motion : the same
things, the same reasoning, and the same illogical
concatenation. The highest state to which a philo-
sopher can attain: to maintain a Dionysian attitude
to Life—my formula for this is amor fati.
To this end we must not only consider those
aspects of life which have been denied hitherto, as
necessary, but as desirable, and not only desirable
to those aspects which have been affirmed hitherto
(as complements or first prerequisites, so to speak),
but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more
terrible, and more veritable aspects of life, in which
the latter's will expresses itself most clearly.
To this end, we must also value that aspect of
existence which alone has been affirmed until now;
we must understand whence this valuation arises,
and to how slight an extent it has to do with a
Dionysian valuation of Life: I selected and under-
stood that which in this respect says "yea” (on the
one hand, the instinct of the sufferer; on the other,
the gregarious instinct; and thirdly, the instinct of
the greater number against the exceptions).
## p. 413 (#443) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
413
Thus I divined to what extent a stronger kind
of man must necessarily imagine
the elevation and
enhancement of man in another direction: higher
creatures, beyond good and evil, beyond those values
which bear the stamp of their origin in the sphere
of suffering, of the herd, and of the greater number
-I searched for the data of this topsy-turvy forma-
tion of ideals in history (the concepts “pagan,"
“classical," " noble," have been discovered afresh
and brought forward).
1042.
We should demonstrate to what extent the
religion of the Greeks was higher than Judæo-
Christianity. The latter triumphed because the
Greek religion was degenerate (and decadent).
1043
It is not surprising that a couple of centuries
have been necessary in order to link up again-a
couple of centuries are very little indeed.
1044.
There must be some people who sanctify func-
tions, not only eating and drinking: and not only
in memory of them, or in harmony with them; but
this world must be for ever glorified anew, and in
a novel fashion.
1
1045
The most intellectual men feel the ecstasy and
charm of sensual things in a way which other men
## p. 414 (#444) ############################################
414
THE WILL TO POWER.
—those with “fleshy hearts"-cannot possibly
imagine, and ought not to be able to imagine:
they are sensualists with the best possible faith,
because they grant the senses a more fundamental
value than that fine sieve, that thinning and mincing
machine, or whatever it is called, which in the
language of the people is termed "spirit. ” The
strength and power of the senses—this is the most
essential thing in a sound man who is one of
Nature's lucky strokes: the splendid beast must
first be there otherwise what is the value of all
"humanisation"?
1046.
(1) We want to hold fast to our senses, and to
the belief in them-and accept their logical con-
clusions ! The hostility to the senses in the philo-
sophy that has been written up to the present, has
been man's greatest feat of nonsense.
(2) The world now extant, on which all earthly
and living things have so built themselves, that it
now appears as it does (enduring and proceeding
slowly), we would fain continue building — not
criticise it away as false !
(3) Our valuations help in the process of build-
ing; they emphasise and accentuate. What does
it mean when whole religions say: “Everything is
bad and false and evil”? This condemnation of
the whole process can only be the judgment of the
failures !
(4) True, the failures might be the greatest
sufferers and therefore the most subtle! The con-
tented might be worth little !
## p. 415 (#445) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
415
(5) We must understand the fundamental artistic
phenomenon which is called “Life,"—the formative
spirit, which constructs under the most unfavourable
circumstances : and in the slowest manner pos-
sible - The proof of all its combinations must
first be given afresh: it maintains itself.
1047
Sexuality, lust of dominion, the pleasure derived
from appearance and deception, great and joyful
gratitude to Life and its typical conditions—these
things are essential to all paganism, and it has a
good conscience on its side. That which is hostile
to Nature (already in Greek antiquity) combats
paganism in the form of morality and dialectics.
1048.
An anti-metaphysical view of the world—yes,
but an artistic one.
1049.
Apollo's misapprehension : the eternity of beauti-
ful forms, the aristocratic prescription, “ Thus shall
it ever be !
Dionysus : Sensuality and cruelty. The perish-
able nature of existence might be interpreted as
the joy of procreative and destructive force, as un-
remitting creation.
1050.
The word “Dionysian" expresses : a constraint
to unity, a soaring above personality, the common.
## p. 416 (#446) ############################################
416
THE WILL TO POWER.
place, society, reality, and above the abyss of the
ephemeral; the passionately painful sensation of
superabundance, in darker, fuller, and more fluctu-
ating conditions; an ecstatic saying of yea to the
collective character of existence, as that which
remains the same, and equally mighty and blissful
throughout all change; the great pantheistic
sympathy with pleasure and pain, which declares
even the most terribleand most questionable qualities
of existence good, and sanctifies them; the eternal
will to procreation, to fruitfulness, and to recurrence;
the feeling of unity in regard to the necessity of
creating and annihilating.
The word “ Apollonian” expresses: the con-
straint to be absolutely isolated, to the typical “in-
dividual,” to everything that simplifies, distinguishes,
and makes strong, salient, definite, and typical: to
freedom within the law.
The further development of art is just as neces-
sarily bound up with the antagonism of these two
natural art-forces, as the further development of
mankind is bound up with the antagonism of the
sexes. The plenitude of power and restraint, the
highest form of self-affirmation in a cool, noble, and
reserved kind of beauty: the Apollonianism of the
Hellenic will.
This antagonism of the Dionysian and of the
Apollonian in the Greek soul, is one of the great
riddles which made me feel drawn to the essence
of Hellenism. At bottom, I troubled about nothing
save the solution of the question, why precisely
Greek Apollonianism should have been forced to
grow out of a Dionysian soil: the Dionysian Greek
## p. 417 (#447) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
417
had need of being Apollonian; that is to say,in
order to break his will to the titanic, to the com-
plex, to the uncertain, to the horrible by a will
to measure, to simplicity, and to submission to
rule and concept. Extravagance, wildness, and
Asiatic tendencies lie at the root of the Greeks.
Their courage consists in their struggle with their
Asiatic nature: they were not given beauty, any
more than they were given Logic and moral
naturalness: in them these things are victories,
they are willed and fought for—they constitute
the triumph of the Greeks.
1051.
It is clear that only the rarest and most lucky
cases of humanity can attain to the highest and
most sublime human joys in which Life celebrates
its own glorification, and this only happens when
these rare creatures themselves and their forbears
have lived a long preparatory life leading to this
goal, without, however, having done so consciously.
It is then that án overflowing wealth of multi-
farious forces and the most agile power of “free
will ” and lordly command exist together in per-
fect concord in one man; then the intellect is just
as much at ease, or at home, in the senses as the
senses are at ease or at home in it; and everything
that takes place in the latter must give rise to ex-
traordinarily subtle joys in the former. And vice
verså: just think of this vice verså for a moment
in a man like Hafiz; even Goethe, though to a
lesser degree, gives some idea of this process.
It
2 D
VOL. II.
## p. 418 (#448) ############################################
418
THE WILL TO POWER.
is probable that, in such perfect and well-constituted
men, the most sensual functions are finally trans-
figured by a symbolic elatedness of the highest
intellectuality; in themselves they feel a kind of
deification of the body and are most remote from the
ascetic philosophy of the principle "God is a Spirit":
from this principle it is clear that the ascetic is the
“ botched man” who declares only that to be good
and “God” which is absolute, and which judges and
condemns.
From that height of joy in which man feels him-
self completely and utterly a deified form and self-
justification of nature, down to the joy of healthy
peasants and healthy semi-human beasts, the whole
of this long and enormous gradation of the light
and colour of happiness was called by the Greek-
not without that grateful quivering of one who is
initiated into secret, not without much caution and
pious silence-by the godlike name: Dionysus.
What then do all modern men-the children of a
crumbling, multifarious, sick and strange age-
know of the compass of Greek happiness, how could
they know anything about it! Whence would the
slaves of "modern ideas” derive their right to
Dionysian feasts!
When the Greek body and soul were in full
"bloom," and not, as it were, in states of morbid
exaltation and madness, there arose the secret
symbol of the loftiest affirmation and transfigura-
tion of life and the world that has ever existed.
There we have a standard beside which everything
that has grown since must seem too short, too
poor, too narrow: if we but pronounce the word
-
## p. 419 (#449) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
419
" Dionysus" in the presence of the best of more
recent names and things, in the presence of Goethe,
for instance, or Beethoven, or Shakespeare, or
Raphael, in a trice we realise that our best things
and moments are condemned. Dionysus is a judge !
Am I understood ? There can be no doubt that
the Greeks sought to interpret, by means of their
Dionysian experiences, the final mysteries of the
“ destiny of the soul" and everything they knew
concerning the education and the purification of
man, and above all concerning the absolute hier-
archy and inequality of value between man and man.
There is the deepest experience of all Greeks, which
they conceal beneath great silence, we do not
know the Greeks so long as this hidden and sub-
terranean access to them remains obstructed. The
indiscreet eyes of scholars will never perceive any-
thing in these things, however much learned energy
may still have to be expended in the service of this
excavation-; even the noble zeal of such friends
of antiquity as Goethe and Winckelmann, seems to
savour somewhat of bad form and of arrogance,
precisely in this respect. To wait and to prepare
oneself; to await the appearance of new sources of
knowledge; to prepare oneself in solitude for the
sight of new faces and the sound of new voices; to
cleanse one's soul ever more and more of the dust
and noise, as of a country fair, which is peculiar to
this age; to overcome everything Christian by some-
thing super-Christian, and not only to rid oneself
of it,- for the Christian doctrine is the counter-
doctrine to the Dionysian; to rediscover the South
in oneself, and to stretch a clear, glittering, and
i
## p. 420 (#450) ############################################
420
THE WILL TO POWER.
more
more
mysterious southern sky above one; to reconquer
the southern healthiness and concealed power of the
soul, once more for oneself; to increase the com-
pass of one's soul step by step, and to become more
supernational,
European,
super-
European, more Oriental, and finally more Hellenic
-for Hellenism was, as a matter of fact, the first
great union and synthesis of everything Oriental,
and precisely on that account, the beginning of the
European soul, the discovery of our “ new world":
”
—he who lives under such imperatives, who knows
what he may not encounter some day? Possibly
a new dawn!
1052.
The two types : Dionysus and Christ on the Cross.
We should ascertain whether the typically religious
man is a decadent phenomenon (the great inno-
vators are one and all morbid and epileptic); but
do not let us forget to include that type of the
religious man who is pagan. Is the pagan cult
not a form of gratitude for, and affirmation of, Life?
Ought not its most representative type to be an
apology and deification of Life ? The type of a
well-constituted and ecstatically overflowing spirit !
The type of a spirit which absorbs the contradic-
tions and problems of existence, and which solves
them!
At this point I set up the Dionysus of the Greeks:
the religious affirmation of Life, of the whole of
Life, not of denied and partial Life (it is typical
that in this cult the sexual act awakens ideas of
depth, mystery, and reverence).
## p. 421 (#451) ############################################
DIONYSUS.
421
>
Dionysus versus "Christ"; here you have the
contrast. It is not a difference in regard to the
martyrdom, --but the latter has a different mean-
ing. Life itself-Life's eternal fruitfulness and re-
currence caused anguish, destruction, and the will
to annihilation. In the other case, the suffering of
the “ Christ as the Innocent One" stands as an ob-
jection against Life, it is the formula of Life's
condemnation. -Readers will guess that the prob-
lem concerns the meaning of suffering; whether
a Christian or a tragic meaning be given to it. In
the first case it is the road to a holy mode of
existence; in the second case existence itself
is regarded as sufficiently holy to justiſy an
enormous amount of suffering. The tragic man
says yea even to the most excruciating suffering:
he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deify-
ing, to be able to do this; the Christian denies
even the happy lots on earth: he is weak, poor,
and disinherited enough to suffer from life in any
form. God on the Cross is a curse upon Life, a
signpost directing people to deliver themselves from
it;-Dionysus cut into pieces is a promise of Life:
it will be for ever born anew, and rise afresh from
destruction
## p.
