" It is difficult and painful for the ear to
listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly.
listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly.
Niezsche - Beyond Good and Evil
They feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it--or
worse still! under their dress and finery.
128. The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you
allure the senses to it.
129. The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on that
account he keeps so far away from him:--the devil, in effect, as the
oldest friend of knowledge.
130. What a person IS begins to betray itself when his talent
decreases,--when he ceases to show what he CAN do. Talent is also an
adornment; an adornment is also a concealment.
131. The sexes deceive themselves about each other: the reason is that
in reality they honour and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to
express it more agreeably). Thus man wishes woman to be peaceable: but
in fact woman is ESSENTIALLY unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she
may have assumed the peaceable demeanour.
132. One is punished best for one's virtues.
133. He who cannot find the way to HIS ideal, lives more frivolously and
shamelessly than the man without an ideal.
134. From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience,
all evidence of truth.
135. Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a considerable
part of it is rather an essential condition of being good.
136. The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other seeks some
one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus originates.
137. In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes
of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds
a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very
remarkable man.
138. We do the same when awake as when dreaming: we only invent and
imagine him with whom we have intercourse--and forget it immediately.
139. In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.
140. ADVICE AS A RIDDLE. --"If the band is not to break, bite it
first--secure to make! "
141. The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself
for a God.
142. The chastest utterance I ever heard: "Dans le veritable amour c'est
l'ame qui enveloppe le corps. "
143. Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is
most difficult to us. --Concerning the origin of many systems of morals.
144. When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally
something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a
certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I may say so, is "the barren
animal. "
145. Comparing man and woman generally, one may say that woman would
not have the genius for adornment, if she had not the instinct for the
SECONDARY role.
146. He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.
147. From old Florentine novels--moreover, from life: Buona femmina e
mala femmina vuol bastone. --Sacchetti, Nov. 86.
148. To seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion, and afterwards
to believe implicitly in this opinion of their neighbour--who can do
this conjuring trick so well as women?
149. That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of
what was formerly considered good--the atavism of an old ideal.
150. Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the
demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God everything
becomes--what? perhaps a "world"?
151. It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your
permission to possess it;--eh, my friends?
152. "Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise":
so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents.
153. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of
health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
155. The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness.
156. Insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups, parties,
nations, and epochs it is the rule.
157. The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one
gets successfully through many a bad night.
158. Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our
strongest impulse--the tyrant in us.
159. One MUST repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us
good or ill?
160. One no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after one has
communicated it.
161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.
162. "Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour's
neighbour":--so thinks every nation.
163. Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover--his
rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his
normal character.
164. Jesus said to his Jews: "The law was for servants;--love God as I
love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of God to do with morals! "
165. IN SIGHT OF EVERY PARTY. --A shepherd has always need of a
bell-wether--or he has himself to be a wether occasionally.
166. One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying
grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.
167. To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame--and something
precious.
168. Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it,
certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
169. To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing
oneself.
170. In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.
171. Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like
tender hands on a Cyclops.
172. One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind
(because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never
confess to the individual.
173. One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one
esteems equal or superior.
174. Ye Utilitarians--ye, too, love the UTILE only as a VEHICLE for
your inclinations,--ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels
insupportable!
175. One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.
176. The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is
counter to our vanity.
177. With regard to what "truthfulness" is, perhaps nobody has ever been
sufficiently truthful.
178. One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a
forfeiture of the rights of man!
179. The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very
indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "reformed. "
180. There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a
cause.
181. It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.
182. The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be
returned.
183. "I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can
no longer believe in you. "
184. There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of
wickedness.
185. "I dislike him. "--Why? --"I am not a match for him. "--Did any one
ever answer so?
CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
186. The moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle,
belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the "Science of Morals"
belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and coarse-fingered:--an
interesting contrast, which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious
in the very person of a moralist. Indeed, the expression, "Science
of Morals" is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far too
presumptuous and counter to GOOD taste,--which is always a foretaste of
more modest expressions. One ought to avow with the utmost fairness WHAT
is still necessary here for a long time, WHAT is alone proper for the
present: namely, the collection of material, the comprehensive survey
and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments of worth,
and distinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate, and perish--and
perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common
forms of these living crystallizations--as preparation for a THEORY OF
TYPES of morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest.
All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness,
demanded of themselves something very much higher, more pretentious, and
ceremonious, when they concerned themselves with morality as a science:
they wanted to GIVE A BASIC to morality--and every philosopher hitherto
has believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, has
been regarded as something "given. " How far from their awkward pride
was the seemingly insignificant problem--left in dust and decay--of a
description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands
and senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to
moral philosophers' knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary
epitome, or an accidental abridgement--perhaps as the morality of
their environment, their position, their church, their Zeitgeist, their
climate and zone--it was precisely because they were badly instructed
with regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager
to know about these matters, that they did not even come in sight of the
real problems of morals--problems which only disclose themselves by
a comparison of MANY kinds of morality. In every "Science of Morals"
hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself
has been OMITTED: there has been no suspicion that there was anything
problematic there! That which philosophers called "giving a basis to
morality," and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a right light,
proved merely a learned form of good FAITH in prevailing morality, a new
means of its EXPRESSION, consequently just a matter-of-fact within the
sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of
denial that it is LAWFUL for this morality to be called in question--and
in any case the reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and
vivisecting of this very faith. Hear, for instance, with what
innocence--almost worthy of honour--Schopenhauer represents his own
task, and draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a
"Science" whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and
old wives: "The principle," he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der
Ethik), [Footnote: Pages 54-55 of Schopenhauer's Basis of Morality,
translated by Arthur B. Bullock, M. A. (1903). ] "the axiom about the
purport of which all moralists are PRACTICALLY agreed: neminem laede,
immo omnes quantum potes juva--is REALLY the proposition which all moral
teachers strive to establish, . . . the REAL basis of ethics which
has been sought, like the philosopher's stone, for centuries. "--The
difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be
great--it is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his
efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and
sentimental this proposition is, in a world whose essence is Will
to Power, may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist,
ACTUALLY--played the flute. . . daily after dinner: one may read about
the matter in his biography. A question by the way: a pessimist, a
repudiator of God and of the world, who MAKES A HALT at morality--who
assents to morality, and plays the flute to laede-neminem morals, what?
Is that really--a pessimist?
187. Apart from the value of such assertions as "there is a categorical
imperative in us," one can always ask: What does such an assertion
indicate about him who makes it? There are systems of morals which are
meant to justify their author in the eyes of other people; other systems
of morals are meant to tranquilize him, and make him self-satisfied;
with other systems he wants to crucify and humble himself, with others
he wishes to take revenge, with others to conceal himself, with others
to glorify himself and gave superiority and distinction,--this system of
morals helps its author to forget, that system makes him, or something
of him, forgotten, many a moralist would like to exercise power and
creative arbitrariness over mankind, many another, perhaps, Kant
especially, gives us to understand by his morals that "what is estimable
in me, is that I know how to obey--and with you it SHALL not be
otherwise than with me! " In short, systems of morals are only a
SIGN-LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS.
188. In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of
tyranny against "nature" and also against "reason", that is, however, no
objection, unless one should again decree by some system of morals, that
all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful What is
essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a
long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port Royal,
or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every
language has attained to strength and freedom--the metrical constraint,
the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the poets and
orators of every nation given themselves! --not excepting some of
the prose writers of today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable
conscientiousness--"for the sake of a folly," as utilitarian bunglers
say, and thereby deem themselves wise--"from submission to arbitrary
laws," as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves "free," even
free-spirited. The singular fact remains, however, that everything
of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly
certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself,
or in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in
conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary
law, and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely
this is "nature" and "natural"--and not laisser-aller! Every artist
knows how different from the state of letting himself go, is his
"most natural" condition, the free arranging, locating, disposing,
and constructing in the moments of "inspiration"--and how strictly and
delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness
and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even the most
stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something floating, manifold,
and ambiguous in it). The essential thing "in heaven and in earth" is,
apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be long OBEDIENCE
in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in
the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance,
virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality--anything whatever
that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. The long bondage of
the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the communicability of
ideas, the discipline which the thinker imposed on himself to think
in accordance with the rules of a church or a court, or conformable
to Aristotelian premises, the persistent spiritual will to interpret
everything that happened according to a Christian scheme, and in every
occurrence to rediscover and justify the Christian God:--all this
violence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadfulness, and unreasonableness,
has proved itself the disciplinary means whereby the European spirit has
attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and subtle mobility;
granted also that much irrecoverable strength and spirit had to be
stifled, suffocated, and spoilt in the process (for here, as everywhere,
"nature" shows herself as she is, in all her extravagant and INDIFFERENT
magnificence, which is shocking, but nevertheless noble). That
for centuries European thinkers only thought in order to prove
something--nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of every thinker
who "wishes to prove something"--that it was always settled beforehand
what WAS TO BE the result of their strictest thinking, as it was perhaps
in the Asiatic astrology of former times, or as it is still at the
present day in the innocent, Christian-moral explanation of immediate
personal events "for the glory of God," or "for the good of the
soul":--this tyranny, this arbitrariness, this severe and magnificent
stupidity, has EDUCATED the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser and
the finer sense, is apparently an indispensable means even of spiritual
education and discipline. One may look at every system of morals in this
light: it is "nature" therein which teaches to hate the laisser-aller,
the too great freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons, for
immediate duties--it teaches the NARROWING OF PERSPECTIVES, and thus, in
a certain sense, that stupidity is a condition of life and development.
"Thou must obey some one, and for a long time; OTHERWISE thou wilt come
to grief, and lose all respect for thyself"--this seems to me to be the
moral imperative of nature, which is certainly neither "categorical,"
as old Kant wished (consequently the "otherwise"), nor does it address
itself to the individual (what does nature care for the individual! ),
but to nations, races, ages, and ranks; above all, however, to the
animal "man" generally, to MANKIND.
189. Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: it was a
master stroke of ENGLISH instinct to hallow and begloom Sunday to such
an extent that the Englishman unconsciously hankers for his week--and
work-day again:--as a kind of cleverly devised, cleverly intercalated
FAST, such as is also frequently found in the ancient world (although,
as is appropriate in southern nations, not precisely with respect
to work). Many kinds of fasts are necessary; and wherever powerful
influences and habits prevail, legislators have to see that intercalary
days are appointed, on which such impulses are fettered, and learn to
hunger anew. Viewed from a higher standpoint, whole generations and
epochs, when they show themselves infected with any moral fanaticism,
seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting, during
which an impulse learns to humble and submit itself--at the same time
also to PURIFY and SHARPEN itself; certain philosophical sects likewise
admit of a similar interpretation (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst
of Hellenic culture, with the atmosphere rank and overcharged with
Aphrodisiacal odours). --Here also is a hint for the explanation of the
paradox, why it was precisely in the most Christian period of European
history, and in general only under the pressure of Christian sentiments,
that the sexual impulse sublimated into love (amour-passion).
190. There is something in the morality of Plato which does not really
belong to Plato, but which only appears in his philosophy, one might
say, in spite of him: namely, Socratism, for which he himself was
too noble. "No one desires to injure himself, hence all evil is done
unwittingly. The evil man inflicts injury on himself; he would not do
so, however, if he knew that evil is evil. The evil man, therefore, is
only evil through error; if one free him from error one will necessarily
make him--good. "--This mode of reasoning savours of the POPULACE, who
perceive only the unpleasant consequences of evil-doing, and practically
judge that "it is STUPID to do wrong"; while they accept "good" as
identical with "useful and pleasant," without further thought. As
regards every system of utilitarianism, one may at once assume that it
has the same origin, and follow the scent: one will seldom err. --Plato
did all he could to interpret something refined and noble into the
tenets of his teacher, and above all to interpret himself into them--he,
the most daring of all interpreters, who lifted the entire Socrates out
of the street, as a popular theme and song, to exhibit him in endless
and impossible modifications--namely, in all his own disguises and
multiplicities. In jest, and in Homeric language as well, what is the
Platonic Socrates, if not--[Greek words inserted here. ]
191. The old theological problem of "Faith" and "Knowledge," or more
plainly, of instinct and reason--the question whether, in respect to the
valuation of things, instinct deserves more authority than rationality,
which wants to appreciate and act according to motives, according to
a "Why," that is to say, in conformity to purpose and utility--it
is always the old moral problem that first appeared in the person of
Socrates, and had divided men's minds long before Christianity. Socrates
himself, following, of course, the taste of his talent--that of a
surpassing dialectician--took first the side of reason; and, in fact,
what did he do all his life but laugh at the awkward incapacity of the
noble Athenians, who were men of instinct, like all noble men, and could
never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of their actions?
In the end, however, though silently and secretly, he laughed also
at himself: with his finer conscience and introspection, he found
in himself the same difficulty and incapacity. "But why"--he said
to himself--"should one on that account separate oneself from the
instincts! One must set them right, and the reason ALSO--one must follow
the instincts, but at the same time persuade the reason to support them
with good arguments. " This was the real FALSENESS of that great and
mysterious ironist; he brought his conscience up to the point that he
was satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: in fact, he perceived
the irrationality in the moral judgment. --Plato, more innocent in such
matters, and without the craftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to
himself, at the expenditure of all his strength--the greatest strength
a philosopher had ever expended--that reason and instinct lead
spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to "God"; and since Plato, all
theologians and philosophers have followed the same path--which means
that in matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it,
"Faith," or as I call it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless
one should make an exception in the case of Descartes, the father of
rationalism (and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution), who
recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is only a tool, and
Descartes was superficial.
192. Whoever has followed the history of a single science, finds in
its development a clue to the understanding of the oldest and commonest
processes of all "knowledge and cognizance": there, as here, the
premature hypotheses, the fictions, the good stupid will to "belief,"
and the lack of distrust and patience are first developed--our senses
learn late, and never learn completely, to be subtle, reliable, and
cautious organs of knowledge. Our eyes find it easier on a given
occasion to produce a picture already often produced, than to seize upon
the divergence and novelty of an impression: the latter requires more
force, more "morality.
" It is difficult and painful for the ear to
listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly. When we hear
another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds
into words with which we are more familiar and conversant--it was thus,
for example, that the Germans modified the spoken word ARCUBALISTA into
ARMBRUST (cross-bow). Our senses are also hostile and averse to the
new; and generally, even in the "simplest" processes of sensation, the
emotions DOMINATE--such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion
of indolence. --As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words
(not to speak of syllables) of a page--he rather takes about five out
of every twenty words at random, and "guesses" the probably appropriate
sense to them--just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely
in respect to its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so
much easier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even in the midst of the
most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same; we fabricate the
greater part of the experience, and can hardly be made to contemplate
any event, EXCEPT as "inventors" thereof. All this goes to prove
that from our fundamental nature and from remote ages we have
been--ACCUSTOMED TO LYING. Or, to express it more politely and
hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly--one is much more of an artist
than one is aware of. --In an animated conversation, I often see the face
of the person with whom I am speaking so clearly and sharply defined
before me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I believe to
be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the
STRENGTH of my visual faculty--the delicacy of the play of the muscles
and of the expression of the eyes MUST therefore be imagined by me.
Probably the person put on quite a different expression, or none at all.
193. Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrariwise. What we
experience in dreams, provided we experience it often, pertains at
last just as much to the general belongings of our soul as anything
"actually" experienced; by virtue thereof we are richer or poorer, we
have a requirement more or less, and finally, in broad daylight, and
even in the brightest moments of our waking life, we are ruled to some
extent by the nature of our dreams. Supposing that someone has often
flown in his dreams, and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is
conscious of the power and art of flying as his privilege and his
peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who believes that on the
slightest impulse, he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles, who
knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an "upwards"
without effort or constraint, a "downwards" without descending
or lowering--without TROUBLE! --how could the man with such
dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to find "happiness" differently
coloured and defined, even in his waking hours! How could he fail--to
long DIFFERENTLY for happiness? "Flight," such as is described by poets,
must, when compared with his own "flying," be far too earthly, muscular,
violent, far too "troublesome" for him.
194. The difference among men does not manifest itself only in the
difference of their lists of desirable things--in their regarding
different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to
the greater or less value, the order of rank, of the commonly recognized
desirable things:--it manifests itself much more in what they regard as
actually HAVING and POSSESSING a desirable thing. As regards a woman,
for instance, the control over her body and her sexual gratification
serves as an amply sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the
more modest man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious thirst for
possession, sees the "questionableness," the mere apparentness of such
ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know especially
whether the woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for
his sake what she has or would like to have--only THEN does he look upon
her as "possessed. " A third, however, has not even here got to the limit
of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether
the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do
so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed,
profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let
himself be found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in
his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when
she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed
insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. One
man would like to possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts of
Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another, with a more
refined thirst for possession, says to himself: "One may not deceive
where one desires to possess"--he is irritated and impatient at the idea
that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of the people: "I must,
therefore, MAKE myself known, and first of all learn to know myself! "
Among helpful and charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward
craftiness which first gets up suitably him who has to be helped, as
though, for instance, he should "merit" help, seek just THEIR help, and
would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to them
for all help. With these conceits, they take control of the needy as a
property, just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a
desire for property. One finds them jealous when they are crossed or
forestalled in their charity. Parents involuntarily make something like
themselves out of their children--they call that "education"; no mother
doubts at the bottom of her heart that the child she has borne is
thereby her property, no father hesitates about his right to HIS OWN
ideas and notions of worth. Indeed, in former times fathers deemed it
right to use their discretion concerning the life or death of the newly
born (as among the ancient Germans). And like the father, so also do the
teacher, the class, the priest, and the prince still see in every new
individual an unobjectionable opportunity for a new possession. The
consequence is. . .
195. The Jews--a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the whole
ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as
they themselves say and believe--the Jews performed the miracle of the
inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new
and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused
into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent,"
"sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of
reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included
the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the
significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with THEM that
the SLAVE-INSURRECTION IN MORALS commences.
196. It is to be INFERRED that there are countless dark bodies near the
sun--such as we shall never see. Among ourselves, this is an allegory;
and the psychologist of morals reads the whole star-writing merely as an
allegorical and symbolic language in which much may be unexpressed.
197. The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Caesar Borgia)
are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as
one seeks a "morbidness" in the constitution of these healthiest of
all tropical monsters and growths, or even an innate "hell" in them--as
almost all moralists have done hitherto. Does it not seem that there is
a hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists? And
that the "tropical man" must be discredited at all costs, whether
as disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own hell and
self-torture? And why? In favour of the "temperate zones"? In favour
of the temperate men? The "moral"? The mediocre? --This for the chapter:
"Morals as Timidity. "
198. All the systems of morals which address themselves with a view to
their "happiness," as it is called--what else are they but suggestions
for behaviour adapted to the degree of DANGER from themselves in which
the individuals live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad
propensities, insofar as such have the Will to Power and would like
to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations,
permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife
wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form--because
they address themselves to "all," because they generalize where
generalization is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally,
and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely
with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even
seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously,
especially of "the other world. " That is all of little value when
estimated intellectually, and is far from being "science," much less
"wisdom"; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is
expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity,
stupidity--whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness
towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics advised and
fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, the
destruction of the emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he
recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent
mean at which they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals;
or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary
attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of art, perhaps as
music, or as love of God, and of mankind for God's sake--for in religion
the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that. . . ; or, finally,
even the complaisant and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has
been taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the
spiritual and corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of
wise old codgers and drunkards, with whom it "no longer has much
danger. "--This also for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity. "
199. Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind has existed, there have
also been human herds (family alliances, communities, tribes, peoples,
states, churches), and always a great number who obey in proportion
to the small number who command--in view, therefore, of the fact that
obedience has been most practiced and fostered among mankind hitherto,
one may reasonably suppose that, generally speaking, the need thereof is
now innate in every one, as a kind of FORMAL CONSCIENCE which gives
the command "Thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally
refrain from something", in short, "Thou shalt". This need tries to
satisfy itself and to fill its form with a content, according to its
strength, impatience, and eagerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous
appetite with little selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into
its ear by all sorts of commanders--parents, teachers, laws, class
prejudices, or public opinion. The extraordinary limitation of human
development, the hesitation, protractedness, frequent retrogression, and
turning thereof, is attributable to the fact that the herd-instinct of
obedience is transmitted best, and at the cost of the art of command. If
one imagine this instinct increasing to its greatest extent, commanders
and independent individuals will finally be lacking altogether, or they
will suffer inwardly from a bad conscience, and will have to impose
a deception on themselves in the first place in order to be able to
command just as if they also were only obeying. This condition of things
actually exists in Europe at present--I call it the moral hypocrisy of
the commanding class. They know no other way of protecting themselves
from their bad conscience than by playing the role of executors of older
and higher orders (of predecessors, of the constitution, of justice, of
the law, or of God himself), or they even justify themselves by maxims
from the current opinions of the herd, as "first servants of their
people," or "instruments of the public weal". On the other hand, the
gregarious European man nowadays assumes an air as if he were the only
kind of man that is allowable, he glorifies his qualities, such as
public spirit, kindness, deference, industry, temperance, modesty,
indulgence, sympathy, by virtue of which he is gentle, endurable, and
useful to the herd, as the peculiarly human virtues. In cases, however,
where it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed
with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace commanders
by the summing together of clever gregarious men all representative
constitutions, for example, are of this origin. In spite of all, what a
blessing, what a deliverance from a weight becoming unendurable, is the
appearance of an absolute ruler for these gregarious Europeans--of this
fact the effect of the appearance of Napoleon was the last great proof
the history of the influence of Napoleon is almost the history of
the higher happiness to which the entire century has attained in its
worthiest individuals and periods.
200. The man of an age of dissolution which mixes the races with
one another, who has the inheritance of a diversified descent in his
body--that is to say, contrary, and often not only contrary, instincts
and standards of value, which struggle with one another and are seldom
at peace--such a man of late culture and broken lights, will, on an
average, be a weak man. His fundamental desire is that the war which is
IN HIM should come to an end; happiness appears to him in the character
of a soothing medicine and mode of thought (for instance, Epicurean
or Christian); it is above all things the happiness of repose, of
undisturbedness, of repletion, of final unity--it is the "Sabbath of
Sabbaths," to use the expression of the holy rhetorician, St. Augustine,
who was himself such a man. --Should, however, the contrariety and
conflict in such natures operate as an ADDITIONAL incentive and stimulus
to life--and if, on the other hand, in addition to their powerful and
irreconcilable instincts, they have also inherited and indoctrinated
into them a proper mastery and subtlety for carrying on the conflict
with themselves (that is to say, the faculty of self-control and
self-deception), there then arise those marvelously incomprehensible and
inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men, predestined for conquering
and circumventing others, the finest examples of which are Alcibiades
and Caesar (with whom I should like to associate the FIRST of Europeans
according to my taste, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second), and
among artists, perhaps Leonardo da Vinci. They appear precisely in the
same periods when that weaker type, with its longing for repose, comes
to the front; the two types are complementary to each other, and spring
from the same causes.
201. As long as the utility which determines moral estimates is only
gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of the community is only
kept in view, and the immoral is sought precisely and exclusively in
what seems dangerous to the maintenance of the community, there can be
no "morality of love to one's neighbour. " Granted even that there is
already a little constant exercise of consideration, sympathy, fairness,
gentleness, and mutual assistance, granted that even in this condition
of society all those instincts are already active which are latterly
distinguished by honourable names as "virtues," and eventually almost
coincide with the conception "morality": in that period they do not
as yet belong to the domain of moral valuations--they are still
ULTRA-MORAL. A sympathetic action, for instance, is neither called good
nor bad, moral nor immoral, in the best period of the Romans; and should
it be praised, a sort of resentful disdain is compatible with this
praise, even at the best, directly the sympathetic action is compared
with one which contributes to the welfare of the whole, to the RES
PUBLICA. After all, "love to our neighbour" is always a secondary
matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to
our FEAR OF OUR NEIGHBOUR. After the fabric of society seems on the
whole established and secured against external dangers, it is this
fear of our neighbour which again creates new perspectives of moral
valuation. Certain strong and dangerous instincts, such as the love of
enterprise, foolhardiness, revengefulness, astuteness, rapacity, and
love of power, which up till then had not only to be honoured from the
point of view of general utility--under other names, of course, than
those here given--but had to be fostered and cultivated (because they
were perpetually required in the common danger against the common
enemies), are now felt in their dangerousness to be doubly strong--when
the outlets for them are lacking--and are gradually branded as immoral
and given over to calumny. The contrary instincts and inclinations now
attain to moral honour, the gregarious instinct gradually draws its
conclusions. How much or how little dangerousness to the community or
to equality is contained in an opinion, a condition, an emotion, a
disposition, or an endowment--that is now the moral perspective, here
again fear is the mother of morals. It is by the loftiest and strongest
instincts, when they break out passionately and carry the individual
far above and beyond the average, and the low level of the gregarious
conscience, that the self-reliance of the community is destroyed, its
belief in itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks, consequently these
very instincts will be most branded and defamed. The lofty independent
spirituality, the will to stand alone, and even the cogent reason, are
felt to be dangers, everything that elevates the individual above the
herd, and is a source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called
EVIL, the tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalizing
disposition, the MEDIOCRITY of desires, attains to moral distinction and
honour. Finally, under very peaceful circumstances, there is always
less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings to severity
and rigour, and now every form of severity, even in justice, begins
to disturb the conscience, a lofty and rigorous nobleness and
self-responsibility almost offends, and awakens distrust, "the lamb,"
and still more "the sheep," wins respect. There is a point of diseased
mellowness and effeminacy in the history of society, at which society
itself takes the part of him who injures it, the part of the CRIMINAL,
and does so, in fact, seriously and honestly. To punish, appears to it
to be somehow unfair--it is certain that the idea of "punishment" and
"the obligation to punish" are then painful and alarming to people. "Is
it not sufficient if the criminal be rendered HARMLESS? Why should we
still punish? Punishment itself is terrible! "--with these questions
gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws its ultimate
conclusion. If one could at all do away with danger, the cause of fear,
one would have done away with this morality at the same time, it
would no longer be necessary, it WOULD NOT CONSIDER ITSELF any longer
necessary! --Whoever examines the conscience of the present-day European,
will always elicit the same imperative from its thousand moral folds
and hidden recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the herd "we wish
that some time or other there may be NOTHING MORE TO FEAR! " Some time
or other--the will and the way THERETO is nowadays called "progress" all
over Europe.
202. Let us at once say again what we have already said a hundred
times, for people's ears nowadays are unwilling to hear such truths--OUR
truths. We know well enough how offensive it sounds when any one
plainly, and without metaphor, counts man among the animals, but it will
be accounted to us almost a CRIME, that it is precisely in respect to
men of "modern ideas" that we have constantly applied the terms "herd,"
"herd-instincts," and such like expressions. What avail is it? We cannot
do otherwise, for it is precisely here that our new insight is. We
have found that in all the principal moral judgments, Europe has become
unanimous, including likewise the countries where European influence
prevails in Europe people evidently KNOW what Socrates thought he
did not know, and what the famous serpent of old once promised to
teach--they "know" today what is good and evil. It must then sound hard
and be distasteful to the ear, when we always insist that that which
here thinks it knows, that which here glorifies itself with praise
and blame, and calls itself good, is the instinct of the herding human
animal, the instinct which has come and is ever coming more and more
to the front, to preponderance and supremacy over other instincts,
according to the increasing physiological approximation and resemblance
of which it is the symptom. MORALITY IN EUROPE AT PRESENT IS
HERDING-ANIMAL MORALITY, and therefore, as we understand the matter,
only one kind of human morality, beside which, before which, and after
which many other moralities, and above all HIGHER moralities, are or
should be possible. Against such a "possibility," against such a "should
be," however, this morality defends itself with all its strength, it
says obstinately and inexorably "I am morality itself and nothing else
is morality! " Indeed, with the help of a religion which has humoured
and flattered the sublimest desires of the herding-animal, things have
reached such a point that we always find a more visible expression of
this morality even in political and social arrangements: the DEMOCRATIC
movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement. That its TEMPO,
however, is much too slow and sleepy for the more impatient ones, for
those who are sick and distracted by the herding-instinct, is indicated
by the increasingly furious howling, and always less disguised
teeth-gnashing of the anarchist dogs, who are now roving through the
highways of European culture. Apparently in opposition to the peacefully
industrious democrats and Revolution-ideologues, and still more so
to the awkward philosophasters and fraternity-visionaries who call
themselves Socialists and want a "free society," those are really at one
with them all in their thorough and instinctive hostility to every form
of society other than that of the AUTONOMOUS herd (to the extent even of
repudiating the notions "master" and "servant"--ni dieu ni maitre, says
a socialist formula); at one in their tenacious opposition to every
special claim, every special right and privilege (this means ultimately
opposition to EVERY right, for when all are equal, no one needs "rights"
any longer); at one in their distrust of punitive justice (as though it
were a violation of the weak, unfair to the NECESSARY consequences of
all former society); but equally at one in their religion of sympathy,
in their compassion for all that feels, lives, and suffers (down to the
very animals, up even to "God"--the extravagance of "sympathy for
God" belongs to a democratic age); altogether at one in the cry and
impatience of their sympathy, in their deadly hatred of suffering
generally, in their almost feminine incapacity for witnessing it or
ALLOWING it; at one in their involuntary beglooming and heart-softening,
under the spell of which Europe seems to be threatened with a new
Buddhism; at one in their belief in the morality of MUTUAL sympathy, as
though it were morality in itself, the climax, the ATTAINED climax of
mankind, the sole hope of the future, the consolation of the present,
the great discharge from all the obligations of the past; altogether at
one in their belief in the community as the DELIVERER, in the herd, and
therefore in "themselves. "
203. We, who hold a different belief--we, who regard the democratic
movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organization, but
as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as involving his
mediocrising and depreciation: where have WE to fix our hopes? In
NEW PHILOSOPHERS--there is no other alternative: in minds strong and
original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue
and invert "eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future,
who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which
will compel millenniums to take NEW paths. To teach man the future
of humanity as his WILL, as depending on human will, and to make
preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in
rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful
rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of
"history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is only its last
form)--for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will
some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that
has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might
look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before OUR
eyes:--is it lawful for me to say it aloud, ye free spirits? The
conditions which one would partly have to create and partly utilize for
their genesis; the presumptive methods and tests by virtue of which
a soul should grow up to such an elevation and power as to feel a
CONSTRAINT to these tasks; a transvaluation of values, under the new
pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled and a heart
transformed into brass, so as to bear the weight of such responsibility;
and on the other hand the necessity for such leaders, the dreadful
danger that they might be lacking, or miscarry and degenerate:--these
are OUR real anxieties and glooms, ye know it well, ye free spirits!
these are the heavy distant thoughts and storms which sweep across the
heaven of OUR life. There are few pains so grievous as to have seen,
divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
deteriorated; but he who has the rare eye for the universal danger
of "man" himself DETERIORATING, he who like us has recognized the
extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto played its game in
respect to the future of mankind--a game in which neither the hand, nor
even a "finger of God" has participated! --he who divines the fate that
is hidden under the idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of
"modern ideas," and still more under the whole of Christo-European
morality--suffers from an anguish with which no other is to be compared.
He sees at a glance all that could still BE MADE OUT OF MAN through
a favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and
arrangements; he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction how
unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often
in the past the type man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions
and new paths:--he knows still better from his painfulest recollections
on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank
have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become
contemptible. The UNIVERSAL DEGENERACY OF MANKIND to the level of
the "man of the future"--as idealized by the socialistic fools and
shallow-pates--this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely
gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"),
this brutalizing of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is
undoubtedly POSSIBLE! He who has thought out this possibility to its
ultimate conclusion knows ANOTHER loathing unknown to the rest of
mankind--and perhaps also a new MISSION!
CHAPTER VI. WE SCHOLARS
204. At the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here as that
which it has always been--namely, resolutely MONTRER SES PLAIES,
according to Balzac--I would venture to protest against an improper and
injurious alteration of rank, which quite unnoticed, and as if with the
best conscience, threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations
of science and philosophy. I mean to say that one must have the right
out of one's own EXPERIENCE--experience, as it seems to me, always
implies unfortunate experience? --to treat of such an important question
of rank, so as not to speak of colour like the blind, or AGAINST science
like women and artists ("Ah! this dreadful science! " sigh their instinct
and their shame, "it always FINDS THINGS OUT! "). The declaration of
independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy,
is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and
disorganization: the self-glorification and self-conceitedness of
the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best
springtime--which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise
smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedom
from all masters! " and after science has, with the happiest results,
resisted theology, whose "hand-maid" it had been too long, it now
proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for
philosophy, and in its turn to play the "master"--what am I saying!
to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account. My memory--the memory of
a scientific man, if you please! --teems with the naivetes of insolence
which I have heard about philosophy and philosophers from young
naturalists and old physicians (not to mention the most cultured and
most conceited of all learned men, the philologists and schoolmasters,
who are both the one and the other by profession). On one occasion it
was the specialist and the Jack Horner who instinctively stood on the
defensive against all synthetic tasks and capabilities; at another time
it was the industrious worker who had got a scent of OTIUM and refined
luxuriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher, and felt
himself aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occasion it was the
colour-blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing in philosophy but
a series of REFUTED systems, and an extravagant expenditure which "does
nobody any good". At another time the fear of disguised mysticism and of
the boundary-adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous, at another
time the disregard of individual philosophers, which had involuntarily
extended to disregard of philosophy generally. In fine, I found most
frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in young scholars,
the evil after-effect of some particular philosopher, to whom on the
whole obedience had been foresworn, without, however, the spell of his
scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of--the
result being a general ill-will to all philosophy. (Such seems to
me, for instance, the after-effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern
Germany: by his unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has succeeded in
severing the whole of the last generation of Germans from its connection
with German culture, which culture, all things considered, has been
an elevation and a divining refinement of the HISTORICAL SENSE, but
precisely at this point Schopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive,
and un-German to the extent of ingeniousness. ) On the whole, speaking
generally, it may just have been the humanness, all-too-humanness of the
modern philosophers themselves, in short, their contemptibleness, which
has injured most radically the reverence for philosophy and opened the
doors to the instinct of the populace. Let it but be acknowledged to
what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of the
world of Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever else all the royal
and magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called, and with what
justice an honest man of science MAY feel himself of a better family and
origin, in view of such representatives of philosophy, who, owing to
the fashion of the present day, are just as much aloft as they are down
below--in Germany, for instance, the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist
Eugen Duhring and the amalgamist Eduard von Hartmann. It is especially
the sight of those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves
"realists," or "positivists," which is calculated to implant a
dangerous distrust in the soul of a young and ambitious scholar those
philosophers, at the best, are themselves but scholars and specialists,
that is very evident! All of them are persons who have been vanquished
and BROUGHT BACK AGAIN under the dominion of science, who at one time
or another claimed more from themselves, without having a right to the
"more" and its responsibility--and who now, creditably, rancorously, and
vindictively, represent in word and deed, DISBELIEF in the master-task
and supremacy of philosophy After all, how could it be otherwise?
Science flourishes nowadays and has the good conscience clearly visible
on its countenance, while that to which the entire modern philosophy has
gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day, excites
distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity Philosophy reduced to
a "theory of knowledge," no more in fact than a diffident science of
epochs and doctrine of forbearance a philosophy that never even
gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously DENIES itself the right
to enter--that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony,
something that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy--RULE!
205. The dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are, in
fact, so manifold nowadays, that one might doubt whether this fruit
could still come to maturity. The extent and towering structure of the
sciences have increased enormously, and therewith also the probability
that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will attach
himself somewhere and "specialize" so that he will no longer attain to
his elevation, that is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection,
and his DESPECTION. Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his
maturity and strength is past, or when he is impaired, coarsened, and
deteriorated, so that his view, his general estimate of things, is no
longer of much importance. It is perhaps just the refinement of his
intellectual conscience that makes him hesitate and linger on the
way, he dreads the temptation to become a dilettante, a millepede, a
milleantenna, he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost
his self-respect no longer commands, no longer LEADS, unless he should
aspire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and
spiritual rat-catcher--in short, a misleader. This is in the last
instance a question of taste, if it has not really been a question of
conscience. To double once more the philosopher's difficulties, there is
also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a Yea or Nay, not
concerning science, but concerning life and the worth of life--he learns
unwillingly to believe that it is his right and even his duty to obtain
this verdict, and he has to seek his way to the right and the belief
only through the most extensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying)
experiences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. In fact, the
philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either
with the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with the religiously
elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and God-intoxicated
man; and even yet when one hears anybody praised, because he lives
"wisely," or "as a philosopher," it hardly means anything more than
"prudently and apart. " Wisdom: that seems to the populace to be a kind
of flight, a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a
bad game; but the GENUINE philosopher--does it not seem so to US,
my friends? --lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all,
IMPRUDENTLY, and feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attempts
and temptations of life--he risks HIMSELF constantly, he plays THIS bad
game.
206. In relation to the genius, that is to say, a being who either
ENGENDERS or PRODUCES--both words understood in their fullest sense--the
man of learning, the scientific average man, has always something of
the old maid about him; for, like her, he is not conversant with the two
principal functions of man. To both, of course, to the scholar and
to the old maid, one concedes respectability, as if by way of
indemnification--in these cases one emphasizes the respectability--and
yet, in the compulsion of this concession, one has the same admixture
of vexation. Let us examine more closely: what is the scientific man?
Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is
to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type
of man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank and file,
equability and moderation in capacity and requirement; he has the
instinct for people like himself, and for that which they require--for
instance: the portion of independence and green meadow without which
there is no rest from labour, the claim to honour and consideration
(which first and foremost presupposes recognition and recognisability),
the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value and
usefulness, with which the inward DISTRUST which lies at the bottom of
the heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and
again to be overcome. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also
maladies and faults of an ignoble kind: he is full of petty envy, and
has a lynx-eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations
he cannot attain. He is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go,
but does not FLOW; and precisely before the man of the great current he
stands all the colder and more reserved--his eye is then like a smooth
and irresponsive lake, which is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy.
The worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results
from the instinct of mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of
mediocrity, which labours instinctively for the destruction of
the exceptional man, and endeavours to break--or still better, to
relax--every bent bow To relax, of course, with consideration, and
naturally with an indulgent hand--to RELAX with confiding sympathy
that is the real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to
introduce itself as the religion of sympathy.
207. However gratefully one may welcome the OBJECTIVE spirit--and
who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity and its confounded
IPSISIMOSITY! --in the end, however, one must learn caution even with
regard to one's gratitude, and put a stop to the exaggeration with
which the unselfing and depersonalizing of the spirit has recently been
celebrated, as if it were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation
and glorification--as is especially accustomed to happen in the
pessimist school, which has also in its turn good reasons for paying the
highest honours to "disinterested knowledge" The objective man, who no
longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the IDEAL man of learning
in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand
complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly
instruments that exist, but his place is in the hand of one who is more
powerful He is only an instrument, we may say, he is a MIRROR--he is no
"purpose in himself" The objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed
to prostration before everything that wants to be known, with such
desires only as knowing or "reflecting" implies--he waits until
something comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the
light footsteps and gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on
his surface and film Whatever "personality" he still possesses seems to
him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so much has he
come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms
and events He calls up the recollection of "himself" with an effort,
and not infrequently wrongly, he readily confounds himself with other
persons, he makes mistakes with regard to his own needs, and here only
is he unrefined and negligent Perhaps he is troubled about the health,
or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack
of companions and society--indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his
suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove away to the MORE
GENERAL case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how
to help himself He does not now take himself seriously and devote time
to himself he is serene, NOT from lack of trouble, but from lack
of capacity for grasping and dealing with HIS trouble The habitual
complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant
and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that
comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous
indifference as to Yea and Nay: alas! there are enough of cases in which
he has to atone for these virtues of his! --and as man generally, he
becomes far too easily the CAPUT MORTUUM of such virtues. Should one
wish love or hatred from him--I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and
animal understand them--he will do what he can, and furnish what he can.
But one must not be surprised if it should not be much--if he should
show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and
deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and
rather UN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is
only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality
is he still "nature" and "natural. " His mirroring and eternally
self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to
deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy. "JE NE MEPRISE
PRESQUE RIEN"--he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue
the PRESQUE! Neither is he a model man; he does not go in advance of any
one, nor after, either; he places himself generally too far off to have
any reason for espousing the cause of either good or evil. If he has
been so long confounded with the PHILOSOPHER, with the Caesarian trainer
and dictator of civilization, he has had far too much honour, and what
is more essential in him has been overlooked--he is an instrument,
something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but
nothing in himself--PRESQUE RIEN! The objective man is an instrument,
a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and
mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected; but he
is no goal, not outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary man in whom the
REST of existence justifies itself, no termination--and still less a
commencement, an engendering, or primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful,
self-centred, that wants to be master; but rather only a soft, inflated,
delicate, movable potter's-form, that must wait for some kind of content
and frame to "shape" itself thereto--for the most part a man without
frame and content, a "selfless" man. Consequently, also, nothing for
women, IN PARENTHESI.
208. When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not a skeptic--I
hope that has been gathered from the foregoing description of the
objective spirit? --people all hear it impatiently; they regard him on
that account with some apprehension, they would like to ask so many,
many questions. . . indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so
many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation of
skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-threatening
sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive were being tried
somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered Russian
NIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTATIS, that not only denies, means
denial, but--dreadful thought! PRACTISES denial. Against this kind of
"good-will"--a will to the veritable, actual negation of life--there is,
as is generally acknowledged nowadays, no better soporific and sedative
than skepticism, the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of skepticism;
and Hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day as an
antidote to the "spirit," and its underground noises. "Are not our ears
already full of bad sounds? " say the skeptics, as lovers of repose, and
almost as a kind of safety police; "this subterranean Nay is terrible!
Be still, ye pessimistic moles! " The skeptic, in effect, that delicate
creature, is far too easily frightened; his conscience is schooled so
as to start at every Nay, and even at that sharp, decided Yea, and feels
something like a bite thereby. Yea! and Nay! --they seem to him opposed
to morality; he loves, on the contrary, to make a festival to his virtue
by a noble aloofness, while perhaps he says with Montaigne: "What do I
know? " Or with Socrates: "I know that I know nothing. " Or: "Here I do
not trust myself, no door is open to me. " Or: "Even if the door were
open, why should I enter immediately? " Or: "What is the use of any hasty
hypotheses? It might quite well be in good taste to make no hypotheses
at all. Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once what is
crooked? to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum? Is there not time
enough for that? Has not the time leisure?
worse still! under their dress and finery.
128. The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you
allure the senses to it.
129. The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on that
account he keeps so far away from him:--the devil, in effect, as the
oldest friend of knowledge.
130. What a person IS begins to betray itself when his talent
decreases,--when he ceases to show what he CAN do. Talent is also an
adornment; an adornment is also a concealment.
131. The sexes deceive themselves about each other: the reason is that
in reality they honour and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to
express it more agreeably). Thus man wishes woman to be peaceable: but
in fact woman is ESSENTIALLY unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she
may have assumed the peaceable demeanour.
132. One is punished best for one's virtues.
133. He who cannot find the way to HIS ideal, lives more frivolously and
shamelessly than the man without an ideal.
134. From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience,
all evidence of truth.
135. Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a considerable
part of it is rather an essential condition of being good.
136. The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other seeks some
one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus originates.
137. In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes
of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds
a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very
remarkable man.
138. We do the same when awake as when dreaming: we only invent and
imagine him with whom we have intercourse--and forget it immediately.
139. In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.
140. ADVICE AS A RIDDLE. --"If the band is not to break, bite it
first--secure to make! "
141. The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself
for a God.
142. The chastest utterance I ever heard: "Dans le veritable amour c'est
l'ame qui enveloppe le corps. "
143. Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is
most difficult to us. --Concerning the origin of many systems of morals.
144. When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally
something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a
certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I may say so, is "the barren
animal. "
145. Comparing man and woman generally, one may say that woman would
not have the genius for adornment, if she had not the instinct for the
SECONDARY role.
146. He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.
147. From old Florentine novels--moreover, from life: Buona femmina e
mala femmina vuol bastone. --Sacchetti, Nov. 86.
148. To seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion, and afterwards
to believe implicitly in this opinion of their neighbour--who can do
this conjuring trick so well as women?
149. That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of
what was formerly considered good--the atavism of an old ideal.
150. Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the
demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God everything
becomes--what? perhaps a "world"?
151. It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your
permission to possess it;--eh, my friends?
152. "Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise":
so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents.
153. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of
health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
155. The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness.
156. Insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups, parties,
nations, and epochs it is the rule.
157. The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one
gets successfully through many a bad night.
158. Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our
strongest impulse--the tyrant in us.
159. One MUST repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us
good or ill?
160. One no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after one has
communicated it.
161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.
162. "Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour's
neighbour":--so thinks every nation.
163. Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover--his
rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his
normal character.
164. Jesus said to his Jews: "The law was for servants;--love God as I
love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of God to do with morals! "
165. IN SIGHT OF EVERY PARTY. --A shepherd has always need of a
bell-wether--or he has himself to be a wether occasionally.
166. One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying
grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.
167. To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame--and something
precious.
168. Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it,
certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
169. To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing
oneself.
170. In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.
171. Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like
tender hands on a Cyclops.
172. One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind
(because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never
confess to the individual.
173. One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one
esteems equal or superior.
174. Ye Utilitarians--ye, too, love the UTILE only as a VEHICLE for
your inclinations,--ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels
insupportable!
175. One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.
176. The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is
counter to our vanity.
177. With regard to what "truthfulness" is, perhaps nobody has ever been
sufficiently truthful.
178. One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a
forfeiture of the rights of man!
179. The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very
indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "reformed. "
180. There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a
cause.
181. It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.
182. The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be
returned.
183. "I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can
no longer believe in you. "
184. There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of
wickedness.
185. "I dislike him. "--Why? --"I am not a match for him. "--Did any one
ever answer so?
CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
186. The moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle,
belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the "Science of Morals"
belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and coarse-fingered:--an
interesting contrast, which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious
in the very person of a moralist. Indeed, the expression, "Science
of Morals" is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far too
presumptuous and counter to GOOD taste,--which is always a foretaste of
more modest expressions. One ought to avow with the utmost fairness WHAT
is still necessary here for a long time, WHAT is alone proper for the
present: namely, the collection of material, the comprehensive survey
and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments of worth,
and distinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate, and perish--and
perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common
forms of these living crystallizations--as preparation for a THEORY OF
TYPES of morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest.
All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness,
demanded of themselves something very much higher, more pretentious, and
ceremonious, when they concerned themselves with morality as a science:
they wanted to GIVE A BASIC to morality--and every philosopher hitherto
has believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, has
been regarded as something "given. " How far from their awkward pride
was the seemingly insignificant problem--left in dust and decay--of a
description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands
and senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to
moral philosophers' knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary
epitome, or an accidental abridgement--perhaps as the morality of
their environment, their position, their church, their Zeitgeist, their
climate and zone--it was precisely because they were badly instructed
with regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager
to know about these matters, that they did not even come in sight of the
real problems of morals--problems which only disclose themselves by
a comparison of MANY kinds of morality. In every "Science of Morals"
hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself
has been OMITTED: there has been no suspicion that there was anything
problematic there! That which philosophers called "giving a basis to
morality," and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a right light,
proved merely a learned form of good FAITH in prevailing morality, a new
means of its EXPRESSION, consequently just a matter-of-fact within the
sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of
denial that it is LAWFUL for this morality to be called in question--and
in any case the reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and
vivisecting of this very faith. Hear, for instance, with what
innocence--almost worthy of honour--Schopenhauer represents his own
task, and draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a
"Science" whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and
old wives: "The principle," he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der
Ethik), [Footnote: Pages 54-55 of Schopenhauer's Basis of Morality,
translated by Arthur B. Bullock, M. A. (1903). ] "the axiom about the
purport of which all moralists are PRACTICALLY agreed: neminem laede,
immo omnes quantum potes juva--is REALLY the proposition which all moral
teachers strive to establish, . . . the REAL basis of ethics which
has been sought, like the philosopher's stone, for centuries. "--The
difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be
great--it is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his
efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and
sentimental this proposition is, in a world whose essence is Will
to Power, may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist,
ACTUALLY--played the flute. . . daily after dinner: one may read about
the matter in his biography. A question by the way: a pessimist, a
repudiator of God and of the world, who MAKES A HALT at morality--who
assents to morality, and plays the flute to laede-neminem morals, what?
Is that really--a pessimist?
187. Apart from the value of such assertions as "there is a categorical
imperative in us," one can always ask: What does such an assertion
indicate about him who makes it? There are systems of morals which are
meant to justify their author in the eyes of other people; other systems
of morals are meant to tranquilize him, and make him self-satisfied;
with other systems he wants to crucify and humble himself, with others
he wishes to take revenge, with others to conceal himself, with others
to glorify himself and gave superiority and distinction,--this system of
morals helps its author to forget, that system makes him, or something
of him, forgotten, many a moralist would like to exercise power and
creative arbitrariness over mankind, many another, perhaps, Kant
especially, gives us to understand by his morals that "what is estimable
in me, is that I know how to obey--and with you it SHALL not be
otherwise than with me! " In short, systems of morals are only a
SIGN-LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS.
188. In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of
tyranny against "nature" and also against "reason", that is, however, no
objection, unless one should again decree by some system of morals, that
all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful What is
essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a
long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port Royal,
or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every
language has attained to strength and freedom--the metrical constraint,
the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the poets and
orators of every nation given themselves! --not excepting some of
the prose writers of today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable
conscientiousness--"for the sake of a folly," as utilitarian bunglers
say, and thereby deem themselves wise--"from submission to arbitrary
laws," as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves "free," even
free-spirited. The singular fact remains, however, that everything
of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly
certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself,
or in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in
conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary
law, and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely
this is "nature" and "natural"--and not laisser-aller! Every artist
knows how different from the state of letting himself go, is his
"most natural" condition, the free arranging, locating, disposing,
and constructing in the moments of "inspiration"--and how strictly and
delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness
and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even the most
stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something floating, manifold,
and ambiguous in it). The essential thing "in heaven and in earth" is,
apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be long OBEDIENCE
in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in
the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance,
virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality--anything whatever
that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. The long bondage of
the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the communicability of
ideas, the discipline which the thinker imposed on himself to think
in accordance with the rules of a church or a court, or conformable
to Aristotelian premises, the persistent spiritual will to interpret
everything that happened according to a Christian scheme, and in every
occurrence to rediscover and justify the Christian God:--all this
violence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadfulness, and unreasonableness,
has proved itself the disciplinary means whereby the European spirit has
attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and subtle mobility;
granted also that much irrecoverable strength and spirit had to be
stifled, suffocated, and spoilt in the process (for here, as everywhere,
"nature" shows herself as she is, in all her extravagant and INDIFFERENT
magnificence, which is shocking, but nevertheless noble). That
for centuries European thinkers only thought in order to prove
something--nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of every thinker
who "wishes to prove something"--that it was always settled beforehand
what WAS TO BE the result of their strictest thinking, as it was perhaps
in the Asiatic astrology of former times, or as it is still at the
present day in the innocent, Christian-moral explanation of immediate
personal events "for the glory of God," or "for the good of the
soul":--this tyranny, this arbitrariness, this severe and magnificent
stupidity, has EDUCATED the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser and
the finer sense, is apparently an indispensable means even of spiritual
education and discipline. One may look at every system of morals in this
light: it is "nature" therein which teaches to hate the laisser-aller,
the too great freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons, for
immediate duties--it teaches the NARROWING OF PERSPECTIVES, and thus, in
a certain sense, that stupidity is a condition of life and development.
"Thou must obey some one, and for a long time; OTHERWISE thou wilt come
to grief, and lose all respect for thyself"--this seems to me to be the
moral imperative of nature, which is certainly neither "categorical,"
as old Kant wished (consequently the "otherwise"), nor does it address
itself to the individual (what does nature care for the individual! ),
but to nations, races, ages, and ranks; above all, however, to the
animal "man" generally, to MANKIND.
189. Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: it was a
master stroke of ENGLISH instinct to hallow and begloom Sunday to such
an extent that the Englishman unconsciously hankers for his week--and
work-day again:--as a kind of cleverly devised, cleverly intercalated
FAST, such as is also frequently found in the ancient world (although,
as is appropriate in southern nations, not precisely with respect
to work). Many kinds of fasts are necessary; and wherever powerful
influences and habits prevail, legislators have to see that intercalary
days are appointed, on which such impulses are fettered, and learn to
hunger anew. Viewed from a higher standpoint, whole generations and
epochs, when they show themselves infected with any moral fanaticism,
seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting, during
which an impulse learns to humble and submit itself--at the same time
also to PURIFY and SHARPEN itself; certain philosophical sects likewise
admit of a similar interpretation (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst
of Hellenic culture, with the atmosphere rank and overcharged with
Aphrodisiacal odours). --Here also is a hint for the explanation of the
paradox, why it was precisely in the most Christian period of European
history, and in general only under the pressure of Christian sentiments,
that the sexual impulse sublimated into love (amour-passion).
190. There is something in the morality of Plato which does not really
belong to Plato, but which only appears in his philosophy, one might
say, in spite of him: namely, Socratism, for which he himself was
too noble. "No one desires to injure himself, hence all evil is done
unwittingly. The evil man inflicts injury on himself; he would not do
so, however, if he knew that evil is evil. The evil man, therefore, is
only evil through error; if one free him from error one will necessarily
make him--good. "--This mode of reasoning savours of the POPULACE, who
perceive only the unpleasant consequences of evil-doing, and practically
judge that "it is STUPID to do wrong"; while they accept "good" as
identical with "useful and pleasant," without further thought. As
regards every system of utilitarianism, one may at once assume that it
has the same origin, and follow the scent: one will seldom err. --Plato
did all he could to interpret something refined and noble into the
tenets of his teacher, and above all to interpret himself into them--he,
the most daring of all interpreters, who lifted the entire Socrates out
of the street, as a popular theme and song, to exhibit him in endless
and impossible modifications--namely, in all his own disguises and
multiplicities. In jest, and in Homeric language as well, what is the
Platonic Socrates, if not--[Greek words inserted here. ]
191. The old theological problem of "Faith" and "Knowledge," or more
plainly, of instinct and reason--the question whether, in respect to the
valuation of things, instinct deserves more authority than rationality,
which wants to appreciate and act according to motives, according to
a "Why," that is to say, in conformity to purpose and utility--it
is always the old moral problem that first appeared in the person of
Socrates, and had divided men's minds long before Christianity. Socrates
himself, following, of course, the taste of his talent--that of a
surpassing dialectician--took first the side of reason; and, in fact,
what did he do all his life but laugh at the awkward incapacity of the
noble Athenians, who were men of instinct, like all noble men, and could
never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of their actions?
In the end, however, though silently and secretly, he laughed also
at himself: with his finer conscience and introspection, he found
in himself the same difficulty and incapacity. "But why"--he said
to himself--"should one on that account separate oneself from the
instincts! One must set them right, and the reason ALSO--one must follow
the instincts, but at the same time persuade the reason to support them
with good arguments. " This was the real FALSENESS of that great and
mysterious ironist; he brought his conscience up to the point that he
was satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: in fact, he perceived
the irrationality in the moral judgment. --Plato, more innocent in such
matters, and without the craftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to
himself, at the expenditure of all his strength--the greatest strength
a philosopher had ever expended--that reason and instinct lead
spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to "God"; and since Plato, all
theologians and philosophers have followed the same path--which means
that in matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it,
"Faith," or as I call it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless
one should make an exception in the case of Descartes, the father of
rationalism (and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution), who
recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is only a tool, and
Descartes was superficial.
192. Whoever has followed the history of a single science, finds in
its development a clue to the understanding of the oldest and commonest
processes of all "knowledge and cognizance": there, as here, the
premature hypotheses, the fictions, the good stupid will to "belief,"
and the lack of distrust and patience are first developed--our senses
learn late, and never learn completely, to be subtle, reliable, and
cautious organs of knowledge. Our eyes find it easier on a given
occasion to produce a picture already often produced, than to seize upon
the divergence and novelty of an impression: the latter requires more
force, more "morality.
" It is difficult and painful for the ear to
listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly. When we hear
another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds
into words with which we are more familiar and conversant--it was thus,
for example, that the Germans modified the spoken word ARCUBALISTA into
ARMBRUST (cross-bow). Our senses are also hostile and averse to the
new; and generally, even in the "simplest" processes of sensation, the
emotions DOMINATE--such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion
of indolence. --As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words
(not to speak of syllables) of a page--he rather takes about five out
of every twenty words at random, and "guesses" the probably appropriate
sense to them--just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely
in respect to its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so
much easier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even in the midst of the
most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same; we fabricate the
greater part of the experience, and can hardly be made to contemplate
any event, EXCEPT as "inventors" thereof. All this goes to prove
that from our fundamental nature and from remote ages we have
been--ACCUSTOMED TO LYING. Or, to express it more politely and
hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly--one is much more of an artist
than one is aware of. --In an animated conversation, I often see the face
of the person with whom I am speaking so clearly and sharply defined
before me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I believe to
be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the
STRENGTH of my visual faculty--the delicacy of the play of the muscles
and of the expression of the eyes MUST therefore be imagined by me.
Probably the person put on quite a different expression, or none at all.
193. Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrariwise. What we
experience in dreams, provided we experience it often, pertains at
last just as much to the general belongings of our soul as anything
"actually" experienced; by virtue thereof we are richer or poorer, we
have a requirement more or less, and finally, in broad daylight, and
even in the brightest moments of our waking life, we are ruled to some
extent by the nature of our dreams. Supposing that someone has often
flown in his dreams, and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is
conscious of the power and art of flying as his privilege and his
peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who believes that on the
slightest impulse, he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles, who
knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an "upwards"
without effort or constraint, a "downwards" without descending
or lowering--without TROUBLE! --how could the man with such
dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to find "happiness" differently
coloured and defined, even in his waking hours! How could he fail--to
long DIFFERENTLY for happiness? "Flight," such as is described by poets,
must, when compared with his own "flying," be far too earthly, muscular,
violent, far too "troublesome" for him.
194. The difference among men does not manifest itself only in the
difference of their lists of desirable things--in their regarding
different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to
the greater or less value, the order of rank, of the commonly recognized
desirable things:--it manifests itself much more in what they regard as
actually HAVING and POSSESSING a desirable thing. As regards a woman,
for instance, the control over her body and her sexual gratification
serves as an amply sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the
more modest man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious thirst for
possession, sees the "questionableness," the mere apparentness of such
ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know especially
whether the woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for
his sake what she has or would like to have--only THEN does he look upon
her as "possessed. " A third, however, has not even here got to the limit
of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether
the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do
so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed,
profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let
himself be found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in
his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when
she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed
insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. One
man would like to possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts of
Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another, with a more
refined thirst for possession, says to himself: "One may not deceive
where one desires to possess"--he is irritated and impatient at the idea
that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of the people: "I must,
therefore, MAKE myself known, and first of all learn to know myself! "
Among helpful and charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward
craftiness which first gets up suitably him who has to be helped, as
though, for instance, he should "merit" help, seek just THEIR help, and
would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to them
for all help. With these conceits, they take control of the needy as a
property, just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a
desire for property. One finds them jealous when they are crossed or
forestalled in their charity. Parents involuntarily make something like
themselves out of their children--they call that "education"; no mother
doubts at the bottom of her heart that the child she has borne is
thereby her property, no father hesitates about his right to HIS OWN
ideas and notions of worth. Indeed, in former times fathers deemed it
right to use their discretion concerning the life or death of the newly
born (as among the ancient Germans). And like the father, so also do the
teacher, the class, the priest, and the prince still see in every new
individual an unobjectionable opportunity for a new possession. The
consequence is. . .
195. The Jews--a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the whole
ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as
they themselves say and believe--the Jews performed the miracle of the
inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new
and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused
into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent,"
"sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of
reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included
the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the
significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with THEM that
the SLAVE-INSURRECTION IN MORALS commences.
196. It is to be INFERRED that there are countless dark bodies near the
sun--such as we shall never see. Among ourselves, this is an allegory;
and the psychologist of morals reads the whole star-writing merely as an
allegorical and symbolic language in which much may be unexpressed.
197. The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Caesar Borgia)
are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as
one seeks a "morbidness" in the constitution of these healthiest of
all tropical monsters and growths, or even an innate "hell" in them--as
almost all moralists have done hitherto. Does it not seem that there is
a hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists? And
that the "tropical man" must be discredited at all costs, whether
as disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own hell and
self-torture? And why? In favour of the "temperate zones"? In favour
of the temperate men? The "moral"? The mediocre? --This for the chapter:
"Morals as Timidity. "
198. All the systems of morals which address themselves with a view to
their "happiness," as it is called--what else are they but suggestions
for behaviour adapted to the degree of DANGER from themselves in which
the individuals live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad
propensities, insofar as such have the Will to Power and would like
to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations,
permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife
wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form--because
they address themselves to "all," because they generalize where
generalization is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally,
and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely
with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even
seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously,
especially of "the other world. " That is all of little value when
estimated intellectually, and is far from being "science," much less
"wisdom"; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is
expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity,
stupidity--whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness
towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics advised and
fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, the
destruction of the emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he
recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent
mean at which they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals;
or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary
attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of art, perhaps as
music, or as love of God, and of mankind for God's sake--for in religion
the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that. . . ; or, finally,
even the complaisant and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has
been taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the
spiritual and corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of
wise old codgers and drunkards, with whom it "no longer has much
danger. "--This also for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity. "
199. Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind has existed, there have
also been human herds (family alliances, communities, tribes, peoples,
states, churches), and always a great number who obey in proportion
to the small number who command--in view, therefore, of the fact that
obedience has been most practiced and fostered among mankind hitherto,
one may reasonably suppose that, generally speaking, the need thereof is
now innate in every one, as a kind of FORMAL CONSCIENCE which gives
the command "Thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally
refrain from something", in short, "Thou shalt". This need tries to
satisfy itself and to fill its form with a content, according to its
strength, impatience, and eagerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous
appetite with little selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into
its ear by all sorts of commanders--parents, teachers, laws, class
prejudices, or public opinion. The extraordinary limitation of human
development, the hesitation, protractedness, frequent retrogression, and
turning thereof, is attributable to the fact that the herd-instinct of
obedience is transmitted best, and at the cost of the art of command. If
one imagine this instinct increasing to its greatest extent, commanders
and independent individuals will finally be lacking altogether, or they
will suffer inwardly from a bad conscience, and will have to impose
a deception on themselves in the first place in order to be able to
command just as if they also were only obeying. This condition of things
actually exists in Europe at present--I call it the moral hypocrisy of
the commanding class. They know no other way of protecting themselves
from their bad conscience than by playing the role of executors of older
and higher orders (of predecessors, of the constitution, of justice, of
the law, or of God himself), or they even justify themselves by maxims
from the current opinions of the herd, as "first servants of their
people," or "instruments of the public weal". On the other hand, the
gregarious European man nowadays assumes an air as if he were the only
kind of man that is allowable, he glorifies his qualities, such as
public spirit, kindness, deference, industry, temperance, modesty,
indulgence, sympathy, by virtue of which he is gentle, endurable, and
useful to the herd, as the peculiarly human virtues. In cases, however,
where it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed
with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace commanders
by the summing together of clever gregarious men all representative
constitutions, for example, are of this origin. In spite of all, what a
blessing, what a deliverance from a weight becoming unendurable, is the
appearance of an absolute ruler for these gregarious Europeans--of this
fact the effect of the appearance of Napoleon was the last great proof
the history of the influence of Napoleon is almost the history of
the higher happiness to which the entire century has attained in its
worthiest individuals and periods.
200. The man of an age of dissolution which mixes the races with
one another, who has the inheritance of a diversified descent in his
body--that is to say, contrary, and often not only contrary, instincts
and standards of value, which struggle with one another and are seldom
at peace--such a man of late culture and broken lights, will, on an
average, be a weak man. His fundamental desire is that the war which is
IN HIM should come to an end; happiness appears to him in the character
of a soothing medicine and mode of thought (for instance, Epicurean
or Christian); it is above all things the happiness of repose, of
undisturbedness, of repletion, of final unity--it is the "Sabbath of
Sabbaths," to use the expression of the holy rhetorician, St. Augustine,
who was himself such a man. --Should, however, the contrariety and
conflict in such natures operate as an ADDITIONAL incentive and stimulus
to life--and if, on the other hand, in addition to their powerful and
irreconcilable instincts, they have also inherited and indoctrinated
into them a proper mastery and subtlety for carrying on the conflict
with themselves (that is to say, the faculty of self-control and
self-deception), there then arise those marvelously incomprehensible and
inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men, predestined for conquering
and circumventing others, the finest examples of which are Alcibiades
and Caesar (with whom I should like to associate the FIRST of Europeans
according to my taste, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second), and
among artists, perhaps Leonardo da Vinci. They appear precisely in the
same periods when that weaker type, with its longing for repose, comes
to the front; the two types are complementary to each other, and spring
from the same causes.
201. As long as the utility which determines moral estimates is only
gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of the community is only
kept in view, and the immoral is sought precisely and exclusively in
what seems dangerous to the maintenance of the community, there can be
no "morality of love to one's neighbour. " Granted even that there is
already a little constant exercise of consideration, sympathy, fairness,
gentleness, and mutual assistance, granted that even in this condition
of society all those instincts are already active which are latterly
distinguished by honourable names as "virtues," and eventually almost
coincide with the conception "morality": in that period they do not
as yet belong to the domain of moral valuations--they are still
ULTRA-MORAL. A sympathetic action, for instance, is neither called good
nor bad, moral nor immoral, in the best period of the Romans; and should
it be praised, a sort of resentful disdain is compatible with this
praise, even at the best, directly the sympathetic action is compared
with one which contributes to the welfare of the whole, to the RES
PUBLICA. After all, "love to our neighbour" is always a secondary
matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to
our FEAR OF OUR NEIGHBOUR. After the fabric of society seems on the
whole established and secured against external dangers, it is this
fear of our neighbour which again creates new perspectives of moral
valuation. Certain strong and dangerous instincts, such as the love of
enterprise, foolhardiness, revengefulness, astuteness, rapacity, and
love of power, which up till then had not only to be honoured from the
point of view of general utility--under other names, of course, than
those here given--but had to be fostered and cultivated (because they
were perpetually required in the common danger against the common
enemies), are now felt in their dangerousness to be doubly strong--when
the outlets for them are lacking--and are gradually branded as immoral
and given over to calumny. The contrary instincts and inclinations now
attain to moral honour, the gregarious instinct gradually draws its
conclusions. How much or how little dangerousness to the community or
to equality is contained in an opinion, a condition, an emotion, a
disposition, or an endowment--that is now the moral perspective, here
again fear is the mother of morals. It is by the loftiest and strongest
instincts, when they break out passionately and carry the individual
far above and beyond the average, and the low level of the gregarious
conscience, that the self-reliance of the community is destroyed, its
belief in itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks, consequently these
very instincts will be most branded and defamed. The lofty independent
spirituality, the will to stand alone, and even the cogent reason, are
felt to be dangers, everything that elevates the individual above the
herd, and is a source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called
EVIL, the tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalizing
disposition, the MEDIOCRITY of desires, attains to moral distinction and
honour. Finally, under very peaceful circumstances, there is always
less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings to severity
and rigour, and now every form of severity, even in justice, begins
to disturb the conscience, a lofty and rigorous nobleness and
self-responsibility almost offends, and awakens distrust, "the lamb,"
and still more "the sheep," wins respect. There is a point of diseased
mellowness and effeminacy in the history of society, at which society
itself takes the part of him who injures it, the part of the CRIMINAL,
and does so, in fact, seriously and honestly. To punish, appears to it
to be somehow unfair--it is certain that the idea of "punishment" and
"the obligation to punish" are then painful and alarming to people. "Is
it not sufficient if the criminal be rendered HARMLESS? Why should we
still punish? Punishment itself is terrible! "--with these questions
gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws its ultimate
conclusion. If one could at all do away with danger, the cause of fear,
one would have done away with this morality at the same time, it
would no longer be necessary, it WOULD NOT CONSIDER ITSELF any longer
necessary! --Whoever examines the conscience of the present-day European,
will always elicit the same imperative from its thousand moral folds
and hidden recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the herd "we wish
that some time or other there may be NOTHING MORE TO FEAR! " Some time
or other--the will and the way THERETO is nowadays called "progress" all
over Europe.
202. Let us at once say again what we have already said a hundred
times, for people's ears nowadays are unwilling to hear such truths--OUR
truths. We know well enough how offensive it sounds when any one
plainly, and without metaphor, counts man among the animals, but it will
be accounted to us almost a CRIME, that it is precisely in respect to
men of "modern ideas" that we have constantly applied the terms "herd,"
"herd-instincts," and such like expressions. What avail is it? We cannot
do otherwise, for it is precisely here that our new insight is. We
have found that in all the principal moral judgments, Europe has become
unanimous, including likewise the countries where European influence
prevails in Europe people evidently KNOW what Socrates thought he
did not know, and what the famous serpent of old once promised to
teach--they "know" today what is good and evil. It must then sound hard
and be distasteful to the ear, when we always insist that that which
here thinks it knows, that which here glorifies itself with praise
and blame, and calls itself good, is the instinct of the herding human
animal, the instinct which has come and is ever coming more and more
to the front, to preponderance and supremacy over other instincts,
according to the increasing physiological approximation and resemblance
of which it is the symptom. MORALITY IN EUROPE AT PRESENT IS
HERDING-ANIMAL MORALITY, and therefore, as we understand the matter,
only one kind of human morality, beside which, before which, and after
which many other moralities, and above all HIGHER moralities, are or
should be possible. Against such a "possibility," against such a "should
be," however, this morality defends itself with all its strength, it
says obstinately and inexorably "I am morality itself and nothing else
is morality! " Indeed, with the help of a religion which has humoured
and flattered the sublimest desires of the herding-animal, things have
reached such a point that we always find a more visible expression of
this morality even in political and social arrangements: the DEMOCRATIC
movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement. That its TEMPO,
however, is much too slow and sleepy for the more impatient ones, for
those who are sick and distracted by the herding-instinct, is indicated
by the increasingly furious howling, and always less disguised
teeth-gnashing of the anarchist dogs, who are now roving through the
highways of European culture. Apparently in opposition to the peacefully
industrious democrats and Revolution-ideologues, and still more so
to the awkward philosophasters and fraternity-visionaries who call
themselves Socialists and want a "free society," those are really at one
with them all in their thorough and instinctive hostility to every form
of society other than that of the AUTONOMOUS herd (to the extent even of
repudiating the notions "master" and "servant"--ni dieu ni maitre, says
a socialist formula); at one in their tenacious opposition to every
special claim, every special right and privilege (this means ultimately
opposition to EVERY right, for when all are equal, no one needs "rights"
any longer); at one in their distrust of punitive justice (as though it
were a violation of the weak, unfair to the NECESSARY consequences of
all former society); but equally at one in their religion of sympathy,
in their compassion for all that feels, lives, and suffers (down to the
very animals, up even to "God"--the extravagance of "sympathy for
God" belongs to a democratic age); altogether at one in the cry and
impatience of their sympathy, in their deadly hatred of suffering
generally, in their almost feminine incapacity for witnessing it or
ALLOWING it; at one in their involuntary beglooming and heart-softening,
under the spell of which Europe seems to be threatened with a new
Buddhism; at one in their belief in the morality of MUTUAL sympathy, as
though it were morality in itself, the climax, the ATTAINED climax of
mankind, the sole hope of the future, the consolation of the present,
the great discharge from all the obligations of the past; altogether at
one in their belief in the community as the DELIVERER, in the herd, and
therefore in "themselves. "
203. We, who hold a different belief--we, who regard the democratic
movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organization, but
as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as involving his
mediocrising and depreciation: where have WE to fix our hopes? In
NEW PHILOSOPHERS--there is no other alternative: in minds strong and
original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue
and invert "eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future,
who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which
will compel millenniums to take NEW paths. To teach man the future
of humanity as his WILL, as depending on human will, and to make
preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in
rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful
rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of
"history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is only its last
form)--for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will
some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that
has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might
look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before OUR
eyes:--is it lawful for me to say it aloud, ye free spirits? The
conditions which one would partly have to create and partly utilize for
their genesis; the presumptive methods and tests by virtue of which
a soul should grow up to such an elevation and power as to feel a
CONSTRAINT to these tasks; a transvaluation of values, under the new
pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled and a heart
transformed into brass, so as to bear the weight of such responsibility;
and on the other hand the necessity for such leaders, the dreadful
danger that they might be lacking, or miscarry and degenerate:--these
are OUR real anxieties and glooms, ye know it well, ye free spirits!
these are the heavy distant thoughts and storms which sweep across the
heaven of OUR life. There are few pains so grievous as to have seen,
divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
deteriorated; but he who has the rare eye for the universal danger
of "man" himself DETERIORATING, he who like us has recognized the
extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto played its game in
respect to the future of mankind--a game in which neither the hand, nor
even a "finger of God" has participated! --he who divines the fate that
is hidden under the idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of
"modern ideas," and still more under the whole of Christo-European
morality--suffers from an anguish with which no other is to be compared.
He sees at a glance all that could still BE MADE OUT OF MAN through
a favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and
arrangements; he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction how
unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often
in the past the type man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions
and new paths:--he knows still better from his painfulest recollections
on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank
have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become
contemptible. The UNIVERSAL DEGENERACY OF MANKIND to the level of
the "man of the future"--as idealized by the socialistic fools and
shallow-pates--this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely
gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"),
this brutalizing of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is
undoubtedly POSSIBLE! He who has thought out this possibility to its
ultimate conclusion knows ANOTHER loathing unknown to the rest of
mankind--and perhaps also a new MISSION!
CHAPTER VI. WE SCHOLARS
204. At the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here as that
which it has always been--namely, resolutely MONTRER SES PLAIES,
according to Balzac--I would venture to protest against an improper and
injurious alteration of rank, which quite unnoticed, and as if with the
best conscience, threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations
of science and philosophy. I mean to say that one must have the right
out of one's own EXPERIENCE--experience, as it seems to me, always
implies unfortunate experience? --to treat of such an important question
of rank, so as not to speak of colour like the blind, or AGAINST science
like women and artists ("Ah! this dreadful science! " sigh their instinct
and their shame, "it always FINDS THINGS OUT! "). The declaration of
independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy,
is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and
disorganization: the self-glorification and self-conceitedness of
the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best
springtime--which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise
smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedom
from all masters! " and after science has, with the happiest results,
resisted theology, whose "hand-maid" it had been too long, it now
proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for
philosophy, and in its turn to play the "master"--what am I saying!
to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account. My memory--the memory of
a scientific man, if you please! --teems with the naivetes of insolence
which I have heard about philosophy and philosophers from young
naturalists and old physicians (not to mention the most cultured and
most conceited of all learned men, the philologists and schoolmasters,
who are both the one and the other by profession). On one occasion it
was the specialist and the Jack Horner who instinctively stood on the
defensive against all synthetic tasks and capabilities; at another time
it was the industrious worker who had got a scent of OTIUM and refined
luxuriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher, and felt
himself aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occasion it was the
colour-blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing in philosophy but
a series of REFUTED systems, and an extravagant expenditure which "does
nobody any good". At another time the fear of disguised mysticism and of
the boundary-adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous, at another
time the disregard of individual philosophers, which had involuntarily
extended to disregard of philosophy generally. In fine, I found most
frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in young scholars,
the evil after-effect of some particular philosopher, to whom on the
whole obedience had been foresworn, without, however, the spell of his
scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of--the
result being a general ill-will to all philosophy. (Such seems to
me, for instance, the after-effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern
Germany: by his unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has succeeded in
severing the whole of the last generation of Germans from its connection
with German culture, which culture, all things considered, has been
an elevation and a divining refinement of the HISTORICAL SENSE, but
precisely at this point Schopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive,
and un-German to the extent of ingeniousness. ) On the whole, speaking
generally, it may just have been the humanness, all-too-humanness of the
modern philosophers themselves, in short, their contemptibleness, which
has injured most radically the reverence for philosophy and opened the
doors to the instinct of the populace. Let it but be acknowledged to
what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of the
world of Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever else all the royal
and magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called, and with what
justice an honest man of science MAY feel himself of a better family and
origin, in view of such representatives of philosophy, who, owing to
the fashion of the present day, are just as much aloft as they are down
below--in Germany, for instance, the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist
Eugen Duhring and the amalgamist Eduard von Hartmann. It is especially
the sight of those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves
"realists," or "positivists," which is calculated to implant a
dangerous distrust in the soul of a young and ambitious scholar those
philosophers, at the best, are themselves but scholars and specialists,
that is very evident! All of them are persons who have been vanquished
and BROUGHT BACK AGAIN under the dominion of science, who at one time
or another claimed more from themselves, without having a right to the
"more" and its responsibility--and who now, creditably, rancorously, and
vindictively, represent in word and deed, DISBELIEF in the master-task
and supremacy of philosophy After all, how could it be otherwise?
Science flourishes nowadays and has the good conscience clearly visible
on its countenance, while that to which the entire modern philosophy has
gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day, excites
distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity Philosophy reduced to
a "theory of knowledge," no more in fact than a diffident science of
epochs and doctrine of forbearance a philosophy that never even
gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously DENIES itself the right
to enter--that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony,
something that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy--RULE!
205. The dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are, in
fact, so manifold nowadays, that one might doubt whether this fruit
could still come to maturity. The extent and towering structure of the
sciences have increased enormously, and therewith also the probability
that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will attach
himself somewhere and "specialize" so that he will no longer attain to
his elevation, that is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection,
and his DESPECTION. Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his
maturity and strength is past, or when he is impaired, coarsened, and
deteriorated, so that his view, his general estimate of things, is no
longer of much importance. It is perhaps just the refinement of his
intellectual conscience that makes him hesitate and linger on the
way, he dreads the temptation to become a dilettante, a millepede, a
milleantenna, he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost
his self-respect no longer commands, no longer LEADS, unless he should
aspire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and
spiritual rat-catcher--in short, a misleader. This is in the last
instance a question of taste, if it has not really been a question of
conscience. To double once more the philosopher's difficulties, there is
also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a Yea or Nay, not
concerning science, but concerning life and the worth of life--he learns
unwillingly to believe that it is his right and even his duty to obtain
this verdict, and he has to seek his way to the right and the belief
only through the most extensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying)
experiences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. In fact, the
philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either
with the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with the religiously
elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and God-intoxicated
man; and even yet when one hears anybody praised, because he lives
"wisely," or "as a philosopher," it hardly means anything more than
"prudently and apart. " Wisdom: that seems to the populace to be a kind
of flight, a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a
bad game; but the GENUINE philosopher--does it not seem so to US,
my friends? --lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all,
IMPRUDENTLY, and feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attempts
and temptations of life--he risks HIMSELF constantly, he plays THIS bad
game.
206. In relation to the genius, that is to say, a being who either
ENGENDERS or PRODUCES--both words understood in their fullest sense--the
man of learning, the scientific average man, has always something of
the old maid about him; for, like her, he is not conversant with the two
principal functions of man. To both, of course, to the scholar and
to the old maid, one concedes respectability, as if by way of
indemnification--in these cases one emphasizes the respectability--and
yet, in the compulsion of this concession, one has the same admixture
of vexation. Let us examine more closely: what is the scientific man?
Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is
to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type
of man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank and file,
equability and moderation in capacity and requirement; he has the
instinct for people like himself, and for that which they require--for
instance: the portion of independence and green meadow without which
there is no rest from labour, the claim to honour and consideration
(which first and foremost presupposes recognition and recognisability),
the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value and
usefulness, with which the inward DISTRUST which lies at the bottom of
the heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and
again to be overcome. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also
maladies and faults of an ignoble kind: he is full of petty envy, and
has a lynx-eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations
he cannot attain. He is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go,
but does not FLOW; and precisely before the man of the great current he
stands all the colder and more reserved--his eye is then like a smooth
and irresponsive lake, which is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy.
The worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results
from the instinct of mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of
mediocrity, which labours instinctively for the destruction of
the exceptional man, and endeavours to break--or still better, to
relax--every bent bow To relax, of course, with consideration, and
naturally with an indulgent hand--to RELAX with confiding sympathy
that is the real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to
introduce itself as the religion of sympathy.
207. However gratefully one may welcome the OBJECTIVE spirit--and
who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity and its confounded
IPSISIMOSITY! --in the end, however, one must learn caution even with
regard to one's gratitude, and put a stop to the exaggeration with
which the unselfing and depersonalizing of the spirit has recently been
celebrated, as if it were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation
and glorification--as is especially accustomed to happen in the
pessimist school, which has also in its turn good reasons for paying the
highest honours to "disinterested knowledge" The objective man, who no
longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the IDEAL man of learning
in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand
complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly
instruments that exist, but his place is in the hand of one who is more
powerful He is only an instrument, we may say, he is a MIRROR--he is no
"purpose in himself" The objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed
to prostration before everything that wants to be known, with such
desires only as knowing or "reflecting" implies--he waits until
something comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the
light footsteps and gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on
his surface and film Whatever "personality" he still possesses seems to
him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so much has he
come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms
and events He calls up the recollection of "himself" with an effort,
and not infrequently wrongly, he readily confounds himself with other
persons, he makes mistakes with regard to his own needs, and here only
is he unrefined and negligent Perhaps he is troubled about the health,
or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack
of companions and society--indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his
suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove away to the MORE
GENERAL case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how
to help himself He does not now take himself seriously and devote time
to himself he is serene, NOT from lack of trouble, but from lack
of capacity for grasping and dealing with HIS trouble The habitual
complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant
and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that
comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous
indifference as to Yea and Nay: alas! there are enough of cases in which
he has to atone for these virtues of his! --and as man generally, he
becomes far too easily the CAPUT MORTUUM of such virtues. Should one
wish love or hatred from him--I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and
animal understand them--he will do what he can, and furnish what he can.
But one must not be surprised if it should not be much--if he should
show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and
deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and
rather UN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is
only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality
is he still "nature" and "natural. " His mirroring and eternally
self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to
deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy. "JE NE MEPRISE
PRESQUE RIEN"--he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue
the PRESQUE! Neither is he a model man; he does not go in advance of any
one, nor after, either; he places himself generally too far off to have
any reason for espousing the cause of either good or evil. If he has
been so long confounded with the PHILOSOPHER, with the Caesarian trainer
and dictator of civilization, he has had far too much honour, and what
is more essential in him has been overlooked--he is an instrument,
something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but
nothing in himself--PRESQUE RIEN! The objective man is an instrument,
a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and
mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected; but he
is no goal, not outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary man in whom the
REST of existence justifies itself, no termination--and still less a
commencement, an engendering, or primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful,
self-centred, that wants to be master; but rather only a soft, inflated,
delicate, movable potter's-form, that must wait for some kind of content
and frame to "shape" itself thereto--for the most part a man without
frame and content, a "selfless" man. Consequently, also, nothing for
women, IN PARENTHESI.
208. When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not a skeptic--I
hope that has been gathered from the foregoing description of the
objective spirit? --people all hear it impatiently; they regard him on
that account with some apprehension, they would like to ask so many,
many questions. . . indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so
many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation of
skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-threatening
sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive were being tried
somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered Russian
NIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTATIS, that not only denies, means
denial, but--dreadful thought! PRACTISES denial. Against this kind of
"good-will"--a will to the veritable, actual negation of life--there is,
as is generally acknowledged nowadays, no better soporific and sedative
than skepticism, the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of skepticism;
and Hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day as an
antidote to the "spirit," and its underground noises. "Are not our ears
already full of bad sounds? " say the skeptics, as lovers of repose, and
almost as a kind of safety police; "this subterranean Nay is terrible!
Be still, ye pessimistic moles! " The skeptic, in effect, that delicate
creature, is far too easily frightened; his conscience is schooled so
as to start at every Nay, and even at that sharp, decided Yea, and feels
something like a bite thereby. Yea! and Nay! --they seem to him opposed
to morality; he loves, on the contrary, to make a festival to his virtue
by a noble aloofness, while perhaps he says with Montaigne: "What do I
know? " Or with Socrates: "I know that I know nothing. " Or: "Here I do
not trust myself, no door is open to me. " Or: "Even if the door were
open, why should I enter immediately? " Or: "What is the use of any hasty
hypotheses? It might quite well be in good taste to make no hypotheses
at all. Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once what is
crooked? to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum? Is there not time
enough for that? Has not the time leisure?
