No More Learning

You can see him,
always provided that you have eyes for such deep
work,—how he makes his way slowly, cautiously,
gently but surely, without showing signs of the
weariness that usually accompanies a long privation
of light and air. He might even be called happy,
despite his labours in the dark. Does it not seem
as if some faith were leading him on, some solace
recompensing him for his toil? Or that he himself
desires a long period of darkness, an unintelligible,
hidden, enigmatic something, knowing as he does
that he will in time have his own morning, his
own redemption, his own rosy dawn ? —Yea, verily
he will return: ask him not what he seeketh in the
depths; for he himself will tell you, this apparent
Trophonius and subterrestrial, whensoever he once
again becomes man. One easily unlearns how to
hold one's tongue when one has for so long been a
mole, and all alone, like him. —
2.
Indeed, my indulgent friends, I will tell you—
here, in this late preface,* which might easily have
* The book was first published in 1881, the preface being
added to the second edition, 1886. —Tr.
A


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2 AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
become an obituary or a funeral oration—what
I sought in the depths below: for I have come
back, and—I have escaped. Think not that I will
urge you to run the same perilous risk! or that I
will urge you on even to the same solitude! For
whoever proceeds on his own path meets nobody:
this is the feature of one's "own path. " No one
comes to help him in his task: he must face every-
thing quite alone—danger, bad luck, wickedness,
foul weather. He goes his own way; and, as is
only right, meets with bitterness and occasional
irritation because he pursues this "own way" of
his: for instance, the knowledge that not even his
friends can guess who he is and whither he is going,
and that they ask themselves now and then : " Well?
Is he really moving at all? Has he still . . . a
path before him ? "—At that time I had undertaken
something which could not have been done by
everybody: I went down into the deepest depths;
I tunnelled to the very bottom ; I started to investi-
gate and unearth an old faith which for thousands
of years we philosophers used to build on as the
safest of all foundations—which we built on again
and again although every previous structure fell
in: I began to undermine our faith in morals.
But ye do not understand me? —
3-
So far it is on Good and Evil that we have
meditated least profoundly: this was always too
dangerous a subject. Conscience, a good reputa-
tion, hell, and at times even the police, have not


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AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 3
allowed and do not allow of impartiality; in the
presence of morality, as before all authority, we
must not even think, much less speak: here we
must obey! Ever since the beginning of the world,
no authority has permitted itself to be made the
subject of criticism; and to criticise morals—to
look upon morality as a problem, as problematic—
what! was that not—is that not—immoral ? —But
morality has at its disposal not only every means
of intimidation wherewith to keep itself free from
critical hands and instruments of torture: its
security lies rather in a certain art of enchantment,
in which it is a past master—it knows how to
"enrapture. " It can often paralyse the critical
will with a single look, or even seduce it to itself:
yea, there are even cases where morality can turn
the critical will against itself; so that then, like the
scorpion, it thrusts the sting into its own body.
Morality has for ages been an expert in all kinds
of devilry in the art of convincing: even at the
present day there is no orator who would not turn
to it for assistance (only hearken to our anarchists,
for instance: how morally they speak when they
would fain convince! In the end they even call
themselves "the good and the just"). Morality
has shown herself to be the greatest mistress of
seduction ever since men began to discourse and
persuade on earth—and, what concerns us philo-
sophers even more, she is the veritable Circe of
philosophers. For, to what is it due that, from
Plato onwards, all the philosophic architects in
Europe have built in vain? that everything which
they themselves honestly believed to be aere per-


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4 AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
ennius threatens to subside or is already laid in ruins?
Oh, how wrong is the answer which, even in our own
day, rolls glibly off the tongue when this question is
asked: "Because they have all neglected the pre-
requisite, the examination of the foundation, a
critique of all reason "—that fatal answer made by
Kant, who has certainly not thereby attracted us
modern philosophers to firmer and less treacherous
ground ! (and, one may ask apropos of this, was it
not rather strange to demand that an instrument
should criticise its own value and effectiveness?
that the intellect itself should "recognise" its own
worth, power, and limits? was it not even just a
little ridiculous ? ) The right answer would rather
have been, that all philosophers, including Kant
himself, were building under the seductive influence
of morality—that they aimed at certainty and
"truth" only in appearance; but that in reality
their attention was directed towards " majestic moral
edifices" to use once more Kant's innocent mode of
expression, who deems it his "less brilliant, but
not undeserving" task and work "to level the
ground and prepare a solid foundation for the
erection of those majestic moral edifices " {Critique
of Pure Reason, ii. 257). Alas! He did not
succeed in his aim, quite the contrary—as we must
acknowledge to-day. With this exalted aim, Kant
was merely a true son of his century, which more
than any other may justly be called the century
of exaltation: and this he fortunately continued
to be in respect to the more valuable side of this
century (with that solid piece of sensuality, for
example, which he introduced into his theory of


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AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 5
knowledge). He, too, had been bitten by the moral
tarantula, Rousseau; he, too, felt weighing on his
soul that moral fanaticism of which another disciple
of Rousseau's, Robespierre, felt and proclaimed
himself to be the executor: de fonder sur la terre
Vempire de la sagesse, de la justice, et de la vertu.
(Speech of June 4th, 1794. ) On the other hand,
with such a French fanaticism in his heart, no one
could have cultivated it in a less French, more
deep, more thorough and more German manner—
if the word German is still permissible in this
sense—than Kant did: in order to make room for
his " moral kingdom," he found himself compelled
to add to it an indemonstrable world, a logical
"beyond "—that was why he required his critique
of pure reason! In other words, he would not have
wanted it, if he had not deemed one thing to be
more important than all the others: to render his
moral kingdom unassailable by—or, better still,
invisible to, reason,—for he felt too strongly the
vulnerability of a moral order of things in the face
of reason. For, when confronted with nature and
history, when confronted with the ingrained im-
morality of nature and history, Kant was, like all
good Germans from the earliest times, a pessimist:
he believed in morality, not because it is demon-
strated through nature and history, but despite its
being steadily contradicted by them. To under-
stand this "despite," we should perhaps recall a
somewhat similar trait in Luther, that other great
pessimist, who once urged it upon his friends with
true Lutheran audacity: "If we could conceive by
reason alone how that God who shows so much


## p. 6 (#32) ###############################################

6 AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
wrath and malignity could be merciful and just,
what use should we have for faith? " For, from
the earliest times, nothing has ever made a deeper
impression upon the German soul, nothing has
ever " tempted" it more, than that deduction, the
most dangerous of all, which for every true Latin
is a sin against the intellect: credo quia absurdum
est. —With it German logic enters for the first time
into the history of Christian dogma; but even to-day,
a thousand years later, we Germans of the present,
late Germans in every way, catch the scent of truth,
a possibility of truth, at the back of the famous
fundamental principle of dialectics with which
Hegel secured the victory of the German spirit
over Europe—" contradiction moves the world; all
things contradict themselves. " We are pessimists
—even in logic.
But logical judgments are not the deepest and
most fundamental to which the daring of our
suspicion descends: the confidence in reason which
is inseparable from the validity of these judgments,
is, as confidence, a moral phenomenon . . . perhaps
German pessimism has yet to take its last step?
Perhaps it has once more to draw up its " credo"
opposite its "absurdum" in a terrible manner?
And if this book is pessimistic even in regard to
morals, even above the confidence in morals—
should it not be a German book for that very reason?
For, in fact, it represents a contradiction, and one
which it does not fear: in it confidence in morals
is retracted—but why? Out of morality! Or how


## p. 7 (#33) ###############################################

AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 7
shall we call that which takes place in it—in us?
for our taste inclines to the employment of more
modest phrases. But there is no doubt that to us
likewise there speaketh a " thou shalt"; we likewise
obey a strict law which is set above us—and this
is the last cry of morals which is still audible to us,
which we too must live: here, if anywhere, are we
still men of conscience, because, to put the matter in
plain words, we will not return to that which we look
upon as decayed, outlived, and superseded, we will
not return to something "unworthy of belief,"
whether it be called God, virtue, truth, justice, love
of one's neighbour, or what not; we will not permit
ourselves to open up a lying path to old ideals;
we are thoroughly and unalterably opposed to
anything that would intercede and mingle with us;
opposed to all forms of present-day faith and
Christianity; opposed to the lukewarmness of all
romanticism and fatherlandism ; opposed also to the
artistic sense of enjoyment and lack of principle
which would fain make us worship where we no
longer believe—for we are artists—opposed, in
short, to all this European feminism (or idealism,
if this term be thought preferable) which everlast-
ingly "draws upward," and which in consequence
everlastingly " lowers" and " degrades. " Yet, being
men of this conscience, we feel that we are related
to that German uprightness and piety which dates
back thousands of years, although we im moralists
and atheists may be the late and uncertain offspring
of these virtues—yea, we even consider ourselves,
in a certain respect, as their heirs, the executors of
their inmost will: a pessimistic will,as I have already


## p. 8 (#34) ###############################################

8 AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
pointed out, which is not afraid to deny itself,
because it denies itself with^y! In us is consum-
mated, if you desire a formula—the autosuppression
of morals.
But, after all, why must we proclaim so loudly
and with such intensity what we are, what we want,
and what we do not want? Let us look at this more
calmly and wisely; from a higher and more distant
point of view. Let us proclaim it, as if among our-
selves, in so low a tone that all the world fails to
hear it and us! Above all, however, let us say it
slowly. . . . This preface comes late,but not too late:
what, after all, do five or six years matter? Such a
book, and such a problem, are in no hurry; besides,
we are friends of the lento, I and my book. I have
not been a philologist in vain—perhaps I am one
yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to
write slowly. At present it is not only my habit,
but even my taste—a perverted taste, maybe—to
write nothing but what will drive to despair every
one who is "in a hurry. " For philology is that vener-
able art which exacts from its followers one thing
above all—to step to one side, to leave themselves
spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow—the
leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language:
an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and
attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason
philology is now more desirable than ever before;
for this very reason it is the highest attraction and
incitement in an age of " work ": that is to say, of
haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry,


## p. 9 (#35) ###############################################

AUTHOR'S PREFACE. Q
which is intent upon " getting things done " at once,
even every book, whether old or new. Philology
itself, perhaps, will not "get things done" so
hurriedly: it teaches how to read well: i. e. slowly,
profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner
thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate
fingers and eyes . . . my patient friends, this book
appeals only to perfect readers and philologists:
learn to read me well!
Ruta, near Genoa,
Autumn, 1886.


## p. 10 (#36) ##############################################



## p. 11 (#37) ##############################################

THE DAWN OF DAY.
BOOK I.
Subsequent Judgment. — All things that en-
dure for a long time are little by little so greatly
permeated by reason that their origin in unreason
becomes improbable. Does not almost every exact
statement of an origin strike us as paradoxical and
sacrilegious? Indeed, does not the true historian
constantly contradict?
2.
Prejudice of the Learned. —Savants are
quite correct in maintaining the proposition that
men in all ages believed that they knew what was
good and evil, praiseworthy and blamable. But it
is a prejudice of the learned to say that we now
know it better than any other age.
3-
A Time for Everything. —When man as-
signed a sex to all things, he did not believe that he


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12 THE DAWN OF DAY.
was merely playing; but he thought, on the con-
trary, that he had acquired a profound insight:—it
was only at a much later period, and then only partly,
that he acknowledged the enormity of his error. In
the same way, man has attributed a moral relation-
ship to everything that exists, throwing the cloak of
ethical significance over the world's shoulders. One
day all that will be of just as much value, and no
more, as the amount of belief existing to-day in the
masculinity or femininity of the sun. *
4-
Against the Fanciful Disharmony of the
Spheres. —We must once more sweep out of the
world all this false grandeur, for it is contrary to
the justice that all things about us may claim.
And for this reason we must not see or wish the
world to be more disharmonic than it is!
5-'
Be ThaNKFul ! —The most important result of
the past efforts of humanity is that we need no
longer go about in continual fear of wild beasts,
barbarians, gods, and our own dreams.
6.
The Juggler and his Counterpart. —That
which is wonderful in science is contrary to that
* This refers, of course, to the different genders of the
nouns in other languages. In German, for example, the
sun is feminine, and in French masculine. —Tr.


## p. 13 (#39) ##############################################

THE DAWN OF DAY. 13
which is wonderful in the art of the juggler. For
the latter would wish to make us believe that we
see a very simple causality, where, in reality, an
exceedingly complex causality is in operation.
Science, on the other hand, forces us to give up our
belief in the simple causality exactly where every-
thing looks so easily comprehensible and we are
merely the victims of appearances. The simplest
things are very "complicated"—we can never be
sufficiently astonished at them!
Reconceiving our Feeling of Space. —Is
it real or imaginary things which have built up the
greater proportion of man's happiness? It is
certain, at all events, that the extent of the distance
between the highest point of happiness and the
lowest point of unhappiness has been established
only with the help of imaginary things. As a con-
sequence, this kind of a conception of space is
always, under the influence of science, becoming
smaller and smaller: in the same way as science
has taught us, and is still teaching us, to look upon
the earth as small—yea, to look upon the entire
solar system as a mere point.
8.
TRANSFIGUraTION. —Perplexed sufferers, con-
fused dreamers, the hysterically ecstatic—here we
have the three classes into which Raphael divided
mankind. We no longer consider the world in this


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14 THE DAWN OF DAY.
light—and Raphael himself dare not do so: his own
eyes would show him a new transfiguration.
Conception of the Morality of Custom. —
In comparison with the mode of life which prevailed
among men for thousands of years, we men of the
present day are living in a very immoral age: the
power of custom has been weakened to a remarkable
degree, and the sense of morality is so refined and
elevated that we might almost describe it as vola-
tilised. That is why we late comers experience such
difficulty in obtaining a fundamental conception of
the origin of morality: and even if we do obtain it,
our words of explanation stick in our throats, so
coarse would they sound if we uttered them! or to
so great an extent would they seem to be a slander
upon morality! Thus, for example, the funda-
mental clause: morality is nothing else (and, above
all, nothing more) than obedience to customs, of
whatsoever nature they may be. But customs are
simply the traditional way of acting and valuing.
Where there is no tradition there is no morality;
and the less life is governed by tradition, the
narrower the circle of morality. The free man is
immoral, because it is his will to depend upon him-
self and not upon tradition: in all the primitive
states of humanity "evil" is equivalent to "in-
dividual," "free," "arbitrary," "unaccustomed,"
"unforeseen," "incalculable. " In such primitive
conditions, always measured by this standard, any
action performed—not because tradition commands


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 15
it, but for other reasons (e. g. on account of its in-
dividual utility), even for the same reasons as had
been formerly established by custom—is termed
immoral, and is felt to be so even by the very man
who performs it, for it has not been done out of
obedience to the tradition.
What is tradition? A higher authority, which
is obeyed, not because it commands what is
useful to us, but merely because it commands.
And in what way can this feeling for tradition
be distinguished from a general feeling of fear?
It is the fear of a higher intelligence which com-
mands, the fear of an incomprehensible power,
of something that is more than personal—there
is superstition in this fear. In primitive times
the domain of morality included education and
hygienics, marriage, medicine, agriculture, war,
speech and silence, the relationship between man
and man, and between man and the gods—morality
required that a man should observe her prescrip-
tions without thinking of himself as individual.
Everything, therefore, was originally custom, and
whoever wished to raise himself above it, had first
of all to make himself a kind of lawgiver and
medicine-man, a sort of demi-god—in other words,
he had to create customs, a dangerous and fearful
thing to do! —Who is the most moral man? On
the one hand, he who most frequently obeys the
law: e. g. he who, like the Brahmins, carries a con-
sciousness of the law about with him wherever he
may go, and introduces it into the smallest divisions
of time, continually exercising his mind in finding
opportunities for obeying the law. On the other


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16 THE DAWN OF DAY.
hand, he who obeys the law in the most difficult
cases. The most moral man is he who makes the
greatest sacrifices to morality; but what are the
greatest sacrifices? In answering this question
several different kinds of morality will be de-
veloped: but the distinction between the morality
of the most frequent obedience and the morality of
the most difficult obedience is of the greatest import-
ance. Let us not be deceived as to the motives of
that moral law which requires, as an indication of
morality, obedience to custom in the most difficult
cases! Self-conquest is required, not by reason
of its useful consequences for the individual; but
that custom and tradition may appear to be domin-
ant, in spite of all individual counter desires and
advantages. The individual shall sacrifice himself
—so demands the morality of custom.
On the other hand, those moralists who, like the
followers of Socrates, recommend self-control and
sobriety to the individual as his greatest possible
advantage and the key to his greatest personal
happiness, are exceptions—and if we ourselves do
not think so, this is simply due to our having been
brought up under their influence. They all take a
new path, and thereby bring down upon themselves
the utmost disapproval of all the representatives of
the morality of custom. They sever their connec-
tion with the community, as immoralists, and are,
in the fullest sense of the word, evil ones. In the
same way, every Christian who " sought, above all
things, his own salvation," must have seemed evil
to a virtuous Roman of the old school. Wherever
a community exists, and consequently also a


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 17
morality of custom, the feeling prevails that any
punishment for the violation of a custom is inflicted,
above all, on the community: this punishment is
a supernatural punishment, the manifestations
and limits of which are so difficult to understand,
and are investigated with such superstitious fear.
The community can compel any one member of it
to make good, either to an individual or to the
community itself, any ill consequences which may
have followed upon such a member's action. It can
also call down a sort of vengeance upon the head of
the individual by endeavouring to show that, as the
result of his action, a storm of divine anger has burst
over the community,—but, above all, it regards the
guilt of the individual more particularly as its own
guilt, and bears the punishment of the isolated indi-
vidual as its own punishment—" Morals," they be-
wail in their innermost heart, " morals have grown
lax, if such deeds as these are possible. " And every
individual action, every individual mode of think-
ing, causes dread. It is impossible to determine
how much the more select, rare, and original minds
must have suffered in the course of time by being
considered as evil and dangerous, yea, because they
even looked upon themselves as such. Under the
dominating influence of the morality of custom,
originality of every kind came to acquire a bad
conscience; and even now the sky of the best minds
seems to be more overcast by this thought than it
need be.
10.
Counter-motion between the Sense of
Morality and the Sense of Causality. —As
B


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18 THE DAWN OF DAY.
the sense of causality increases, so does the extent
of the domain of morality decrease: for every time
one has been able to grasp the necessary effects, and
to conceive them as distinct from all incidentals and
chance possibilities {post hoc), one has, at the same
time, destroyed an enormous number of imaginary
causalities, which had hitherto been believed in
as the basis of morals—the real world is much
smaller than the world of our imagination—and
each time also one casts away a certain amount
of one's anxiousness and coercion, and some of
our reverence for the authority of custom is lost:
morality in general undergoes a diminution. He
who, on the other hand, wishes to increase it must
know how to prevent results from becoming con-
trollable.
11.
Morals and Medicines of the People. —
Every one is continuously occupied in bringing
more or less influence to bear upon the morals which
prevail in a community: most of the people bring
forward example after example to show the alleged
relationship between cause and effect, guilt and
punishment, thus upholding it as well founded and
adding to the belief in it. A few make new ob-
servations upon the actions and their consequences,
drawing conclusions therefrom and laying down
laws; a smaller number raise objections and allow
belief in these things to become weakened. —But
they are all alike in the crude and unscientific
manner in which they set about their work: if it is
a question of objections to a law, or examples or


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THE DAWN OF DAY.
19
observations of it, or of its proof, confirmation, ex-
pression or refutation, we always find the material
and method entirely valueless, as valueless as the
material and form of all popular medicine. Popular
medicines and popular morals are closely related,
and should not be considered and valued, as is still
customary, in so different a way: both are most
dangerous and make-believe sciences.
1 2.
Consequence as Adjuvant Cause. —
Formerly the consequences of an action were con-
sidered, not as the result of that action, but a volun-
tary adjuvant—i. e. on the part of God. Can a
greater confusion be imagined? Entirely different
practices and means have to be brought into use for
actions and effects!
13-
Towards the New Education of Mankind.
—Help us, all ye who are well-disposed and willing
to assist, lend your aid in the endeavour to do away
with that conception of punishment which has swept
over the whole world! No weed more harmful than
this! It is not only to the consequences of our
actions that this conception has been applied—and
how horrible and senseless it is to confuse cause and
effect with cause and punishment! —but worse has
followed: the pure accidentally of events has been
robbed of its innocence by this execrable manner
of interpreting the conception of punishment. Yea,
they have even pushed their folly to such extremes


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20 THE DAWN OF DAY.
that they would have us look upon existence itself
as a punishment—from which it would appear that
the education of mankind had hitherto been con-
fided to cranky gaolers and hangmen.
14.
The Signification of Madness in the
History of Morality. —If, despite that formid-
able pressure of the " morality of custom," under
which all human communities lived—thousands of
years before our own era, and during our own era
up to the present day (we ourselves are dwelling in
the small world of exceptions, and, as it were, in an
evil zone) :—if, I say, in spite of all this, new and
divergent ideas, valuations, and impulses have made
their appearance time after time, this state of things
has been brought about only with the assistance of
a dreadful associate: it was insanity almost every-
where that paved the way for the new thought and
cast off the spell of an old custom and superstition.
Do ye understand why this had to be done through
insanity? by something which is in both voice and
appearance as horrifying and incalculable as the
demoniac whims of wind and sea, and consequently
calling for like dread and respect? by something
bearing upon it the signs of entire lack of conscious-
ness as clearly as the convulsions and foam of the
epileptic, which appeared to typify the insane
person as the mask and speaking-trumpet of some
divine being? by something that inspired even the
bearer of the new thought with awe and fear of
himself, and that, suppressing all remorse, drove


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 21
him on to become its prophet and martyr ? —Well,
in our own time, we continually hear the statement
reiterated that genius is tinctured with madness
instead of good sense. Men of earlier ages were
far more inclined to believe that, wherever traces
of insanity showed themselves, a certain proportion
of genius and wisdom was likewise present—some-
thing " divine," as they whispered to one another.
More than this, they expressed their opinions on
the point with sufficient emphasis. "All the great-
est benefits of Greece have sprung from madness,"
said Plato, setting on record the opinion of the
entire ancient world. Let us take a step further: all
those superior men, who felt themselves irresistibly
urged on to throw off the yoke of some morality
or other, had no other resource—if they -were not
really mad—than to feign madness, or actually to
become insane. And this holds good for innovators
in every department of life, and not only in religion
and politics. Even the reformer of the poetic metre
was forced to justify himself by means of madness.
(Thus even down to gentler ages madness remained
a kind of convention in poets, of which Solon, for in-
stance, took advantage when urging the Athenians
to reconquer Salamis. )—"How can one make one's
self mad when one is not mad and dare not feigri to
be so? " Almost all the eminent men of antiquity
have given themselves up to this dreadful mode of
reasoning: a secret doctrine of artifices and dietetic
jugglery grew up around this subject and was
handed down from generation to generation,together
with the feeling of the innocence, even sanctity, of
such plans and meditations. The means of be-


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22 THE DAWN OF DAY.
coming a medicine-man among the Indians, a saint
among Christians of the Middle Ages, an angecok
among Greenlanders, a Pagee among Brazilians,
are the same in essence: senseless fasting, con-
tinual abstention from sexual intercourse, isolation
in a wilderness, ascending a mountain or a pillar,
"sitting on an aged willow that looks out upon a
lake," and thinking of absolutely nothing but what
may give rise to ecstasy or mental derangements.
Who would dare to glance at the desert of the
bitterest and most superfluous agonies of spirit, in
which probably the most productive men of all ages
have pined away? Who could listen to the sighs of
those lonely and troubled minds: "O ye heavenly
powers, grant me madness! Madness, that I at
length may believe in myself! Vouchsafe delirium
and convulsions, sudden flashes of light and periods
of darkness; frighten me with such shivering and
feverishness as no mortal ever experienced before,
with clanging noises and haunting spectres; let me
growl and whine and creep about like a beast, if
only I can come to believe in myself! I am de-
voured by doubt. I have slain the law, and I now
dread the law as a living person dreads a corpse.
If I am not above the law, I am the most abandoned
of wretches. Whence cometh this new spirit that
dwelleth within me but from you? Prove to me,
then, that I am one of you—nothing but madness
will prove it to me. " And only too often does
such a fervour attain its object: at the very time
when Christianity was giving the greatest proof of
its fertility in the production of saints and martyrs,
believing that it was thus proving itself, Jerusalem


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 23
contained large lunatic asylums for shipwrecked
saints, for those whose last spark of good sense
had been quenched by the floods of insanity.
IS-
The most Ancient Means of Solace. —
First stage: In every misfortune or discomfort
man sees something for which he must make some-
body else suffer, no matter who—in this way he
finds out the amount of power still remaining to
him; and this consoles him. Second stage: In
every misfortune or discomfort, man sees a punish-
ment, i. e. an expiation of guilt and the means by
which he may get rid of the malicious enchantment
of a real or apparent wrong. When he perceives
the advantage which misfortune brings with it, he
believes he need no longer make another person
suffer for it—he gives up this kind of satisfaction,
because he now has another.
16.
First Principle of Civilisation. —Among
savage tribes there is a certain category of customs
which appear to aim at nothing but custom. They
therefore lay down strict, and, on the whole, super-
fluous regulations {e. g. the rules of the Kamcha-
dales, which forbid snow to be scraped off the boots
with a knife, coal to be stuck on the point of a
knife, or a piece of iron to be put into the fire—
and death to be the portion of every one who shall
act contrariwise! ) Yet these laws serve to keep
people continually reminded of the custom, and


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24 THE DAWN OF DAY.
the imperative necessity on their parts to conform
to it: and all this in support of the great principle
which stands at the beginning of all civilisation:
any custom is better than none.
17-
Goodness and Malignity. —At first men im-
posed their own personalities on Nature: every-
where they saw themselves and their like, i. e. their
own evil and capricious temperaments, hidden, as
it were, behind clouds, thunder-storms, wild beasts,
trees, and plants: it was then that they declared
Nature was evil Afterwards there came a time,
that of Rousseau, when they sought to distin-
guish themselves from Nature: they were so
tired of each other that they wished to have
separate little hiding-places where man and his
misery could not penetrate: then they invented
"nature is good. "
18.
The Morality of Voluntary Suffering. —
What is the highest enjoyment for men living in
a state of war in a small community, the existence
of which is continually threatened, and the morality
of which is the strictest possible? i. e. for souls which
are vigorous, vindictive, malicious, full of suspicion,
ready to face the direst events, hardened by priva-
tion and morality? The enjoyment of cruelty:
just as, in such souls and in such circumstances, it
would be regarded as a virtue to be ingenious and
insatiable in cruelty. Such a community would


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 25
find its delight in performing cruel deeds, casting
aside, for once, the gloom of constant anxiety and
precaution. Cruelty is one of the most ancient
enjoyments at their festivities. As a consequence
it is believed that the gods likewise are pleased by
the sight of cruelty and rejoice at it—and in this
way the belief is spread that voluntary suffering,
self-chosen martyrdom, has a high signification
and value of its own. In the community custom
gradually brings about a practice in conformity
with this belief: henceforward people become more
suspicious of all exuberant well-being, and more
confident as they find themselves in a state of great
pain; they think that the gods may be unfavour-
able to them on account of happiness, and favour-
able on account of pain—not compassionate! For
compassion is looked upon with contempt, and un-
worthy of a strong and awe-inspiring soul—but
agreeable to them, because the sight of human
suffering put these gods into good humour and
makes them feel powerful, and a cruel mind revels
in the sensation of power. It was thus that the
"most moral man" of the community was con-
sidered as such by virtue of his frequent suffering,
privation, laborious existence, and cruel mortifica-
tion—not, to repeat it again and again, as a means
of discipline or self-control or a desire for indi-
vidual happiness—but as a virtue which renders
the evil gods well-disposed towards the community,
a virtue which continually wafts up to them the
odour of an expiatory sacrifice. All those intel-
lectual leaders of the nations who reached the
point of being able to stir up the sluggish though


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26 THE DAWN OF DAY.
prolific mire of their customs had to possess this
factor of voluntary martyrdom as well as insanity
in order to obtain belief—especially, and above all,
as is always the case, belief in themselves! The
more their minds followed new paths, and were
consequently tormented by pricks of conscience,
the more cruelly they battled against their own flesh,
their own desires, and their own health—as if they
were offering the gods a compensation in pleasure,
lest these gods should wax wroth at the neglect of
ancient customs and the setting up of new aims.
Let no one be too hasty in thinking that we have
now entirely freed ourselves from such a logic of
feeling! Let the most heroic souls among us
question themselves on this very point. The least
step forward in the domain of free thought and
individual life has been achieved in all ages to the
accompanimentof physical and intellectual tortures:
and not only the mere step forward, no! but every
form of movement and change has rendered neces-
sary innumerable martyrs, throughout the entire
course of thousands of years which sought their
paths and laid down their foundation-stones, years,
however, which we do not think of when we speak
about "world-history," that ridiculously small
division of mankind's existence. And even in this
so-called world-history, which in the main is merely
a great deal of noise about the latest novelties,
there is no more important theme than the old,
old tragedy of the martyrs who tried to move the
mire. Nothing has been more dearly bought than
the minute portion of human reason and feeling of
liberty upon which we now pride ourselves. But


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 2J
it is this very pride which makes it almost im-
possible for us to-day to be conscious of that
enormous lapse of time, preceding the period of
"world-history" when "morality of custom " held
the field, and to consider this lapse of time as the
real and decisive epoch that established the character
of mankind: an epoch when suffering was con-
sidered as a virtue, cruelty as a virtue, hypocrisy
as a virtue, revenge as a virtue, and the denial of
the reason as a virtue, whereas, on the other hand,
well-being was regarded as a danger, longing for
knowledge as a danger, peace as a danger, com-
passion as a danger: an epoch when being pitied
was looked upon as an insult, work as an insult,
madness as a divine attribute, and every kind of
change as immoral and pregnant with ruin! You
imagine that all this has changed, and that
humanity must likewise have changed its character?
Oh, ye poor psychologists, learn to know yourselves
better!
19-
Morality and Stupefaction. —Custom re-
presents the experiences of men of earlier times in
regard to what they considered as useful and harm-
ful; but the feeling of custom (morality) does not
relate to these feelings as such, but to the age, the
sanctity, and the unquestioned authority of the
custom. Hence this feeling hinders our acquiring
new experiences and amending morals: i. e. mor-
ality is opposed to the formation of new and better
morals: it stupefies.


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28 THE DAWN OF DAY.
20.
Free-doers and Free-thinkers. — Com-
pared with free-thinkers, free-doers are at a dis-
advantage, because it is evident that men suffer
more from the consequences of actions than of
thoughts. If we remember, however, that both
seek their own satisfaction, and that free-thinkers
have already found their satisfaction in reflection
upon and utterance of forbidden things, there is
no difference in the motives; but in respect of
the consequences the issue will be decided against
the free-thinker, provided that it be not judged
from the most superficial and vulgar external
appearance, i. e. not as every one would judge it.
We must make up for a good deal of the calumny
with which men have covered all those who have,
by their actions, broken away from the authority of
some custom—they are generally called criminals.
Every one who has hitherto overthrown a law of
established morality has always at first been con-
sidered as a wicked man: but when it was after-
wards found impossible to re-establish the law, and
people gradually became accustomed to the change,
the epithet was changed by slow degrees. History
deals almost exclusively with these wicked men,
who later on came to be recognised as good men.
21.
"Fulfilment of the Law. "—In cases where
the observance of a moral precept has led to
different consequence from that expected and


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 29
promised, and does not bestow upon the moral man
the happiness he had hoped for, but leads rather to
misfortune and misery, the conscientious and timid
man has always his excuse ready: "Something
was lacking in the proper carrying out of the law. "
If the worst comes to the worst, a deeply-suffering
and down-trodden humanity will even decree: "It
is impossible to carry out the precept faithfully:
we are too weak and sinful, and, in the depths of
our soul, incapable of morality: consequently we
have no claim to happiness and success. Moral
precepts and promises have been given for better
beings than ourselves. "
22.
Works and Faith. —Protestant teachers are
still spreading the fundamental error that faith
only is of consequence, and that works must follow
naturally upon faith. This doctrine is certainly
not true, but it is so seductive in appearance that
it has succeeded in fascinating quite other intellects
than that of Luther {eg. the minds of Socrates and
Plato): though the plain evidence and experience
of our daily life prove the contrary. The most
assured knowledge and faith cannot give us either
the strength or the dexterity required for action,
or the practice in that subtle and complicated
mechanism which is a prerequisite for anything to
be changed from an idea into action. Then, I say,
let us first and foremost have works! and this
means practice! practice! practice! The neces-
sary faith will come later—be certain of that!


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30 THE DAWN OF DAY.
23-
In what Respect we are most Subtle. —
By the fact that, for thousands of years, things
(nature, tools, property of all kinds) were thought
to be alive and to possess souls, and able to hinder
and interfere with the designs of man, the feeling
of impotence among men has become greater and
more frequent than it need have been: for one
had to secure one's things like men and beasts,
by means of force, compulsion, flattery, treaties,
sacrifices—and it is here that we may find the
origin of the greater number of superstitious
customs, i. e. of an important, perhaps paramount,
and nevertheless wasted and useless division of
mankind's activity ! —But since the feeling of im-
potence and fear was so strong, and for such a
length of time in a state of constant stimulation,
the feeling of power in man has been developed in
so subtle a manner that, in this respect, he can
compare favourably with the most delicately-
adjusted balance. This feeling has become his
strongest propensity: and the means he discovered
for creating it form almost the entire history of
culture.
24.
The Proof of a Precept. —The worth or
worthlessness of a recipe—that for baking bread,
for example—is proved, generally speaking, by
the result expected coming to pass or not, provided,
of course, that the directions given have been care-


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 31
fully followed. The case is different, however,
when we come to deal with moral precepts, for
here the results cannot be ascertained, interpreted,
and divined. These precepts, indeed, are based
upon hypotheses of but little scientific value, the
proof or refutation of which by means of results is
impossible:—but in former ages, when all science
was crude and primitive, and when a matter was
taken for granted on the smallest evidence, then
the worth or worthlessness of a moral recipe was
determined as we now determine any other precept:
by reference to the results. I f the natives of Alaska
believe in a command which says: " Thou shalt not
throw a bone into the fire or give it to a dog," this
will be proved by the warning: " If thou dost thou
wilt have no luck when hunting. " Yet, in one
sense or another, it almost invariably happens that
one has " no luck when hunting. " It is no easy
matter to refute the worth of the precept in this
way, the more so as it is the community, and not
the individual, which is regarded as the bearer of
the punishment; and, again, some occurrence is
almost certain to happen which seems to prove the
rule.
25-
Customs and Beauty. —In justice to custom
it must not be overlooked that, in the case of all
those who conform to it whole-heartedly from the
very start, the organs of attack and defence, both
physical and intellectual, begin to waste away; i. e.
these individuals gradually become more beautiful!
For it is the exercise of these organs and their corre-


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32 THE DAWN OF DAY.
sponding feelings that brings about ugliness and
helps to preserve it. It is for this reason that the
old baboon is uglier than the young one, and that
the young female baboon most closely resembles
man, and is hence the most handsome. —Let us
draw from this our own conclusions as to the origin
of female beauty!
26.
Animals and Morals. —The rules insisted
upon in polite society, such, for example, as the
avoidance of everything ridiculous, fantastic, pre-
sumptuous; the suppression of one's virtues just as
much as of one's most violent desires, the instant
bringing of one's self down to the general level, sub-
mitting one's self to etiquette and self-depreciation:
all this, generally speaking, is to be found, as a
social morality, even in the lowest scale of the
animal world—and it is only in this low scale that
we see the innermost plan of all these amiable pre-
cautionary regulations: one wishes to escape from
one's pursuers and to be aided in the search for
plunder. Hence animals learn to control and to
disguise themselves to such an extent that some
of them can even adapt the colour of their
bodies to that of their surroundings (by means
of what is known as the "chromatic function ").
Others can simulate death, or adopt the forms
and colours of other animals, or of sand, leaves,
moss, or fungi (known to English naturalists as
"mimicry ").
It is in this way that an individual conceals him-
self behind the universality of the generic term


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 33
"man" or "society," or adapts and attaches him-
self to princes, castes, political parties, current
opinions of the time, or his surroundings: and we
may easily find the animal equivalent of all those
subtle means of making ourselves happy, thankful,
powerful, and fascinating. Even that sense of truth,
which is at bottom merely the sense of security, is
possessed by man in common with the animals: we
do not wish to be deceived by others or by our-
selves; we hear with some suspicion the promptings
of our own passions, we control ourselves and
remain on the watch against ourselves. Now, the
animal does all this as well as man; and in the
animal likewise self-control originates in the sense
of reality (prudence). In the same way, the animal
observes the effects it exercises on the imagination
of other beasts: it thus learns to view itself from
their position, to consider itself " objectively "; it
has its own degree of self-knowledge. The animal
judges the movements of its friends and foes, it
learns their peculiarities by heart and acts accord-
ingly: it gives up, once and for all, the struggle
against individual animals of certain species, and it
likewise recognises, in the approach of certain
varieties, whether their intentions are agreeable and
peaceful. The beginnings of justice, like those of
wisdom—in short, everything which we know as
the Socratic virtues—are of an animal nature: a
consequence of those instincts which teach us to
search for food and to avoid our enemies. If we
remember that the higher man has merely raised
and refined himself in the quality of his food and in
the conception of what is contrary to his nature, it
C


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34 THE DAWN OF DAY.
may not be going too far to describe the entire
moral phenomenon as of an animal origin.
27.
The Value of the Belief in Superhuman
PAssIONs. —The institution of marriage stubbornly
upholds the belief that love, although a passion, is
nevertheless capable of duration as such, yea, that
lasting, lifelong love may be taken as a general
rule. By means of the tenacity of a noble belief,
in spite of such frequent and almost customary
refutations — thereby becoming a pia fraus —
marriage has elevated love to a higher rank.
Every institution which has conceded to a passion
the belief in the duration of the latter, and responsi-
bility for this duration, in spite of the nature of
the passion itself, has raised the passion to a higher
level: and he who is thenceforth seized with such
a passion does not, as formerly, think himself
lowered in the estimation of others or brought into
danger on that account, but on the contrary believes
himself to be raised, both in the opinion of himself
and of his equals. Let us recall institutions and
customs which, out of the fiery devotion of a
moment, have created eternal fidelity; out of the
pleasure of anger, eternal vengeance; out of despair,
eternal mourning; out of a single hasty word,
eternal obligation. A great deal of hypocrisy and
falsehood came into the world as the result of such
transformations; but each time, too, at the cost of
such disadvantages, a new and superhuman concep-
tion which elevates mankind.


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 35
2 8.
State of Mind as Argument. — Whence
arises within us a cheerful readiness for action ? —
such is the question which has greatly occupied the
attention of men. The most ancient answer, and
one which we still hear, is: God is the cause; in
this way He gives us to understand that He ap-
proves of our actions. When, in former ages, people
consulted the oracles, they did so that they might
return home strengthened by this cheerful readi-
ness; and every one answered the doubts which
came to him, if alternative actions suggested them-
selves, by saying: "I shall do whatever brings
about that feeling. " They did not decide, in other
words, for what was most reasonable, but upon some
plan the conception of which imbued the soul with
courage and hope. A cheerful outlook was placed
in the scales as an argument and proved to be
heavier than reasonableness; for the state of mind
was interpreted in a superstitious manner as the
action of a god who promises success; and who,
by this argument, lets his reason speak as the
highest reasonableness. Now, let the consequences
of such a prejudice be considered when shrewd men,
thirsting for power, availed themselves of it—and
still do so ! " Bring about the right state of mind! "
—in this way you can do without all arguments and
overcome every objection!
29.
Actors of Virtue and Sin. —Among the
ancients who became celebrated for their virtue


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36 THE DAWN OF DAY.