At bottom, nothing
is thought or done which is not calculated to tear
up this spirit of tradition by the roots.
is thought or done which is not calculated to tear
up this spirit of tradition by the roots.
Nietzsche - v14 - Will to Power - a
.
.
.
Mr.
Herbert Spencer was
a decadent in biology, as also in morality (he
regarded the triumph of altruism as
sideratum ! ! ! ).
.
a de-
54.
After thousands of years of error and confusion,
it is my good fortune to have rediscovered the
road which leads to a Yea and to a Nay.
## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################
46
THE WILL TO POWER.
I teach people to say Nay in the face of all
that makes for weakness and exhaustion.
I teach people to say Yea in the face of all
that makes for strength, that preserves strength,
and justifies the feeling of strength.
Up to the present, neither the one nor the
other has been taught; but rather virtue, dis-
interestedness, pity, and even the negation of life.
All these are values proceeding from exhausted
people.
After having pondered over the physiology
of exhaustion for some time, I was led to the
question: to what extent the judgments of ex-
hausted people had percolated into the world of
values.
The result at which I arrived was as startling
as it could possibly be—even for one like my-
self who was already at home in many a strange
world: I found that all prevailing values—that is
to say, all those which had gained ascendancy
over humanity, or at least over its tamer portions,
could be traced back to the judgment of exhausted
people.
Under the cover of the holiest names, I found
the most destructive tendencies; people had
actually given the name “God” to all that renders
weak, teaches weakness, and infects with weakness.
I found that the “good man
was a form
of self-affirmation on the part of decadence.
That virtue which Schopenhauer still pro-
claimed as superior to all, and as the most funda-
mental of all virtues; even that same pity I
recognised as more dangerous than any vice.
.
.
## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
47
Deliberately to thwart the law of selection among
species, and their natural means of purging their
stock of degenerate members—this, up to my
time, had been the greatest of all virtues. .
One should do honour to the fatality which
says to the feeble: “perish! ”
The opposing of this fatality, the botching of
mankind and the allowing of it to putrefy, was
given the name “God. " One shall not take the
name of the Lord one's God in vain. . .
The race is corrupted—not by its vices, but by
its ignorance: it is corrupted because it has not
recognised exhaustion as exhaustion : physio-
logical misunderstandings are the cause of all
evil.
Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding.
Problem: how were the exhausted able to
make the laws of values ? In other words, how
did they who are the last, come to power ?
How did the instincts of the animal man ever get
to stand on their heads ?
.
.
4. THE CRISIS: NIHILISM AND THE IDEA OF
RECURRENCE.
55.
Extreme positions are not relieved by more
moderate ones, but by extreme opposite positions.
And thus the belief in the utter immorality of
nature, and in the absence of all purpose and sense,
are psychologically necessary passions when the
## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################
48
THE WILL TO POWER.
belief in God and in an essentially moral order of
things is no longer tenable.
Nihilism now appears, not because the sorrows
of existence are greater than they were formerly,
but because, in a general way, people have grown
suspicious of the “meaning " which might be given
to evil and even to existence. One interpretation
has been overthrown: but since it was held to be
the interpretation, it seems as though there were
no meaning in existence at all, as though every-
thing were in vain.
It yet remains to be shown that this “in vain ! ”
is the character of present Nihilism. The mistrust
of our former valuations has increased to such an
extent that it has led to the question : “are not
all 'values' merely allurements prolonging the
duration of the comedy, without, however, bringing
the unravelment any closer ? ” The “long period
of time” which has culminated in an “in vain "
without either goal or purpose, is the most par-
alysing of thoughts, more particularly when one
sees that one is duped without, however, being
able to resist being duped.
Let us imagine this thought in its worst form:
existence, as it is, without either a purpose or a
goal, but inevitably recurring, without an end in
nonentity: “Eternal Recurrence. "
This is the extremest form of Nihilism : nothing
(purposelessness) eternal!
1
## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
49
European form of Buddhism: the energy of
knowledge and of strength drives us to such a
belief. It is the most scientific of all possible
hypotheses. We deny final purposes. If exist-
ence had a final purpose it would have reached it.
*
It should be understood that what is being
aimed at, here, is a contradiction of Pantheism:
for “everything perfect, divine, eternal,” also leads
to the belief in Eternal Recurrence. Question :
has this pantheistic and affirmative attitude to all
things also been made impossible by morality?
At bottom only the moral
as been overcome.
Is there any sense in imagining a God " beyond
good and evil”? Would Pantheism in this sense
be possible?
Do we withdraw the idea of purpose
from the process, and affirm the process notwith-
standing ? This were so if, within that process,
something were attained every moment-and
always the same thing. Spinoza won an affirma-
tive position of this sort, in the sense that every
moment, according to him, has a logical necessity :
and he triumphed by means of his fundamentally
logical instinct over a like conformation of the
world.
But his case is exceptional. If every funda-
mental trait of character, which lies beneath every
act, and which finds expression in every act, were
recognised by the individual as his fundamental
D
VOL. 1.
## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################
50
THE WILL TO POWER.
trait of character, this individual would be driven
to regard every moment of existence in general,
triumphantly as good. It would simply be neces-
sary for that fundamental trait of character to be
felt in oneself as something good, valuable, and
pleasurable.
<
Now, in the case of those men and classes of
men who were treated with violence and oppressed
by their fellows, morality saved life from despair
and from the leap into nonentity: for impotence
in relation to mankind and not in relation to
Nature is what generates the most desperate
bitterness towards existence. Morality treated
the powerful, the violent, and the “masters" in
general, as enemies against whom the common
man must be protected—that is to say, emboldened,
strengthened. Morality has therefore always taught
the most profound hatred and contempt of the
fundamental trait of character of all rulers—i. e. ,
their Will to Power. To suppress, to deny, and
to decompose this morality, would mean to regard
this most thoroughly detested instinct with the
reverse of the old feeling and valuation. If the
sufferer and the oppressed man were to lose his
belief in his right to contemn the Will to Power,
his position would be desperate. This would be
so if the trait above-mentioned were essential to
life, in which case it would follow that even
that will to morality was only a cloak to this
“Will to Power," as are also even that hatred and
contempt. The oppressed man would then per-
## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
51
ceive that he stands on the same platform with the
oppressor, and that he has no individual privilege,
nor any higher rank than the latter.
*
On the contrary! There is nothing on earth
which can have any value, if it have not a modicum
of power—granted, of course, that life itself is the
Will to Power. Morality protected the botched
and bungled against Nihilism, in that it gave every
one of them infinite worth, metaphysical worth,
and classed them altogether in one order which
did not correspond with that of worldly power and
order of rank: it taught submission, humility, etc.
Admitting that the belief in this morality be destroyed,
the botched and the bungled would no longer have
any comfort, and would perish.
*
This perishing seems like self-annihilation, like
an instinctive selection of that which must de-
stroy. The symptoms of this self-destruction of
the botched and the bungled: self- vivisection,
poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, and, above
all, the instinctive constraint to acts whereby the
powerful are made into mortal enemies (training,
so to speak, one's own hangmen), the will to destruc-
tion as the will of a still deeper instinct-of the
instinct of self-destruction, of the Will to Nonentity.
*
Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled
have no longer any consolation, that they destroy
## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################
52
THE WILL TO POWER.
in order to be destroyed, that, having been deprived
of morality, they no longer have any reason to
“resign themselves,” that they take up their stand
on the territory of the opposite principle, and will
also exercise power themselves, by compelling the
powerful to become their hangmen. This is the
European form of Buddhism, that active negation,
after all existence has lost its meaning.
1
$
It must not be supposed that “distress has
grown more acute, on the contrary !
“ God,
morality, resignation ” were remedies in the very
deepest stages of misery : active Nihilism made
its appearance in circumstances which were rela-
tively much more favourable. The fact, alone, that
morality is regarded as overcome, presupposes a
certain degree of intellectual culture; while this
very culture, for its part, bears evidence to a
certain relative well-being. A certain intellectual
fatigue, brought on by the long struggle concerning
philosophical opinions, and carried to hopeless
scepticism against philosophy, shows moreover that
the level of these Nihilists is by no means a low
one. Only think of the conditions in which
Buddha appeared! The teaching of the eternal
recurrence would have learned principles to go
upon (just as Buddha's teaching, for instance, had
the notion of causality, etc. ).
*
What do we mean to-day by the words“ botched
and bungled"? In the first place, they are used
## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################
NIHILISM,
53
physiologically and not politically. The unhealthiest
kind of man all over Europe (in all classes) is the
soil out of which Nihilism grows: this species of
man will regard eternal recurrence as damnation-
once he is bitten by the thought, he can no longer
recoil before any action. He would not extirpate
passively, but would cause everything to be extir-
pated which is meaningless and without a goal to
this extent; although it is only a spasm, or sort of
blind rage in the presence of the fact that everything
has existed again and again for an eternity-even
this period of Nihilism and destruction. The value
of such a crisis is that it purifies, that it unites similar
elements, and makes them mutually destructive,
that it assigns common duties to men of opposite
persuasions, and brings the weaker and more un-numerisa
certain among them to the light, thus taking the
first step towards a new order of rank among forces
from the standpoint of health : recognising com-
manders as commanders, subordinates as sub-
ordinates. Naturally irrespective of all the
present forms of society,
What class of men will prove they are strongest
in this new order of things? The most moderate
- they who do not require any extreme forms of
belief, they who not only admit of, but actually
like, a certain modicum of chance and nonsense ;
they who can think of man with a very moderate
view of his value, without becoming weak and
small on that account; the most rich in health,
## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################
54
THE WILL TO POWER
who are able to withstand a maximum amount
of sorrow, and who are therefore not so very much
afraid of sorrow—men who are certain of their
power, and who represent with conscious pride the
state of strength to which man has attained.
How could such a man think of Eternal Re-
currence ?
56.
The Periods of European Nihilism,
The Period of Obscurity : all kinds of groping
measures devised to preserve old institutions and
not to arrest the progress of new ones.
The Period of Light : men see that old and
new are fundamental contraries; that the old
values are born of descending life, and that the
new ones are born of ascending life-that all old
ideals are unfriendly to life (born of decadence
and determining it, however much they may be
decked out in the Sunday finery of morality).
We understand the old, but are far from being
sufficiently strong for the new.
The Periods of the Three Great Passions : con-
tempt, pity, destruction.
The Periods of Catastrophes : the rise of a teach-
ing which will sift mankind . . . which drives
the weak to some decision and the strong also.
1
## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################
II.
CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF
EUROPEANNIHILISM.
(a) MODERN GLOOMINESS.
57.
My friends, we had a hard time as youths; we even
suffered from youth itself as though it were a serious
disease. This is owing to the age in which we were
born—an age of enormous internal decay and dis-
integration which, with all its weakness and even
with the best of its strength, is opposed to the
spirit of youth. Disintegration—that is to say, un-
certaintymis peculiar to this age: nothing stands
on solid ground or on a sound faith. People live
for the morrow, because the day-after-to-morrow is
doubtful. All our road is slippery and dangerous,
while the ice which still bears us has grown un-
conscionably thin: we all feel the mild and grue-
some breath of the thaw-wind-soon, where we are
walking, no one will any longer be able to stand !
>
58.
If this is not an age of decay and of diminishing
vitality, it is at least one of indiscriminate and
arbitrary experimentalising—and it is probable
that out of an excess of abortive experiments there
## p. 56 (#78) ##############################################
56
THE WILL TO POWER.
has grown this general impression, as of decay :
and perhaps decay itself.
59.
Concerning the history of modern gloominess.
The state-nomads (officials, etc. ): "home-
less".
>
The break-up of the family.
The "good man " as a symptom of exhaustion.
Justice as Will to Power (Rearing).
Lewdness and neurosis.
Black music: whither has real music gone?
The anarchist.
Contempt of man, loathing.
Most profound distinction : whether hunger or
superabundance is creative? The first creates the
Ideals of Romanticism.
Northern unnaturalness.
The need of Alcohol : the "need" of the work-
ing classes.
Philosophical Nihilism.
бо.
The slow advance and rise of the middle and
lower classes (including the lower kind of spirit
and body), which was already well under way
before the French Revolution, and would have
made the same progress forward without the latter,
-in short, then, the preponderance of the herd
over all herdsmen and bell-wethers,—-brings in its
train :
(1) Gloominess of spirit (the juxtaposition of
a stoical and a frivolous appearance of happiness,
## p. 57 (#79) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
57
. peculiar to noble cultures, is on the decline; much
suffering is allowed to be seen and heard which
formerly was borne in concealment;
(2) Moral hypocrisy (a way of distinguishing
oneself through morality, but by means of the
values of the herd: pity, solicitude, moderation; and
not by means of those virtues which are recognised
and honoured outside the herd's sphere of power);
(3) A really large amount of sympathy with
both pain and joy (a feeling of pleasure resulting
from being herded together, which is peculiar to
all gregarious animals—"public spirit," "patriot-
ism,” everything, in fact, which is apart from the
individual)
61.
Our age, with its indiscriminate endeavours to
mitigate distress, to honour it, and to wage war in
advance with unpleasant possibilities, is an age of
the poor. Our "rich people"—they are the poorest !
The real purpose of all wealth has been forgotten.
62.
Criticism of modern man :-"the good man," but
corrupted and misled by bad institutions (tyrants
and priests) ;-reason elevated to a position of
authority ;-history is regarded as the surmounting
of errors ;-the future is regarded as progress;
the Christian state (“God of the armies ");-
Christian sexual intercourse (as marriage);—the
realm of “justice” (the cult of "mankind ');-
« freedom. "
The romantic attitudes of the modern man :-
## p. 58 (#80) ##############################################
58
THE WILL TO POWER.
the noble man (Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand);
-taking the part of the oppressed and the bungled
and the botched : motto for historians and
romancers;—the Stoics of duty ;-disinterestedness
regarded as art and as knowledge ;-altruism as
the most mendacious form of egoism (utilitarianism),
the most sentimental form of egoism.
All this savours of the eighteenth century. But
it had other qualities which were not inherited,
namely, a certain insouciance, cheerfulness, ele-
gance, spiritual clearness. The spiritual tempo
has altered; the pleasure which was begotten by
spiritual refinement and clearness has given room
to the pleasure of colour, harmony, mass, reality,
etc. etc. Sensuality in spiritual things. In short,
it is the eighteenth century of Rousseau.
arolini
63.
Taken all in all, a considerable amount of
humanity has been attained by our men of to-day.
That we do not feel this is in itself a proof of the
fact that we have become so sensitive in regard to
small cases of distress, that we somewhat unjustly
overlook what has been achieved.
Here we must make allowances for the fact
that a great deal of decadence is rife, and that,
through such eyes, our world must appear bad and
wretched. But these eyes have always seen in the
same way, in all ages.
(1) A certain hypersensitiveness, even in moral
feelings.
(2) The quantum of bitterness and gloominess,
from. Yo's know your
## p. 59 (#81) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
59
which pessimism bears with it in its judgments-
both together have helped to bring about the pre-
ponderance of the other and opposite point of view,
that things are not well with our morality.
The fact of credit, of the commerce of the world,
and the means of traffic—are expressions of an
extraordinarily mild trustfulness in men, . . . Το
that may also be added-
(3) The deliverance of science from moral and
religious prejudices : a very good sign, though for
the most part misunderstood.
In my own way, I am attempting a justification
of history,
64.
The second appearance of Buddhism. -Its pre-
cursory signs: the increase of pity. Spiritual
exhaustion. The reduction of all problems to the
question of pleasure and pain. The glory of war
which calls forth a counter-stroke. Just as the
sharp demarcation of nations generates a counter-
movement in the form of the most hearty
Fraternity. ” The fact that it is impossible for
religion to carry on its work any longer with
dogma and fables.
The catastrophe of Nihilism will put an end to
all this Buddhistic culture,
st
65.
That which is most sorely afflicted to-day is
the instinct and will of tradition: all institutions
which owe their origin to this instinct, are opposed
## p. 60 (#82) ##############################################
60
THE WILL TO POWER,
to the tastes of the age. . . .
At bottom, nothing
is thought or done which is not calculated to tear
up this spirit of tradition by the roots. Tradition
is looked upon as a fatality; it is studied and
acknowledged in the form of “heredity”), but
people will not have anything to do with it. The
extension of one will over long periods of time, the
selection of conditions and valuations which make
it possible to dispose of centuries in advance—this,
precisely, is what is most utterly anti-modern.
From which it follows, that disorganising principles
give our age its specific character.
66.
"Be simple"-a demand which, when made to
us complicated and incomprehensible triers of the
heart and reins, is a simple absurdity. . . . Be
natural: but if one should be by nature
natural," what then?
.
.
un-
67.
The means employed in former times in order
to arrive at similarly constituted and lasting types,
throughout long generations : entailed property
and the respect of elders (the origin of the faith
in gods and heroes as ancestors).
Now, the subdivision of property belongs to the
opposite tendency. A newspaper instead of the
daily prayers.
Railways, the telegraph. The
centralisation of an enormous number of different
interests in one soul: which, to that end, must be
very strong and mutable.
## p. 61 (#83) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
61
68.
: ܝܰ *
Why does everything become mummery. —The
modern man is lacking in unfailing instinct (instinct
being understood here to mean that which is the
outcome of a long period of activity in the same
occupation on the part of one family of men); the
incapability of producing anything perfect, is simply
the result of this lack of instinct : one individual
alone cannot make up for the schooling his ancestors
should have transmitted to him.
What a morality or book of law creates : that
deep instinct which renders automatism and per-
fection possible in life and in work.
But now we have reached the opposite point;
yes, we wanted to reach it—the most extreme con-
sciousness, through introspection on the part of man
and of history: and thus we are practically most
distant from perfection in Being, doing, and willing:
our desires-even our will to knowledge-shows
how prodigiously decadent we are. We are striving
after the very reverse of what strong races and strong
natures will have-understanding is an end. .
That Science is possible in the way in which it
is practised to-day, proves that all elementary
instincts, the instincts which ward off danger and
protect life, are no longer active. We no longer
save, we are merely spending the capital of our
forefathers, even in the way in which we pursue
knowledge.
69.
Nihilistic trait.
(a) In the natural sciences (“purposelessness”),
.
## p. 61 (#84) ##############################################
60
THE WILL TO POWER.
to the tastes of the age. . . . At bottom, not
is thought or done which is not calculated to
up this spirit of tradition by the roots. Trai"
is looked upon as a fatality; it is studied
acknowledged (in the form of “heredity ").
people will not have anything to do with it.
extension of one will over long periods of tim
selection of conditions and valuations which
it possible to dispose of centuries in advance-
precisely, is what is most utterly anti-mou
From which it follows, that disorganising prin
give our age its specific character.
66.
“ Be simple”-a demand which, when m
us complicated and incomprehensible triers
heart and reins, is a simple absurdity. .
natural: but if one should be by nature
natural,” what then?
67.
The means employed in former times ir -
to arrive at similarly constituted and lasting
throughout long generations : entailed p
and the respect of elders (the origin of th:
in gods and heroes as ancestors).
Now, the subdivision of property belongs,
opposite ten A ne naner instead
daily pray
elegraph
centralisat
ber of
interests i
end, 1
very stro
## p. 61 (#85) ##############################################
nothing
to tear
Tradition
Lied and
>'), but
it. The
time, the
ch make
ce—this
.
modern
,
rinciples
RSS air,
*** Mar
made to
s of the
Be
.
1
re "un
1
n order
s types
roperty
este We are still
=
restrong raw arriva
mi-enting is an and .
site in de way in which it
os dat all elementary
TE S vizci zard of danger will
je We no longer
capital of our
ich we punto
ne faith
to the
LORE
of the
T
ponelessnes")
## p. 62 (#86) ##############################################
62
THE WILL TO POWER.
(
causality, mechanism, “conformity to law," an in-
terval, a remnant.
(6) Likewise in politics: the individual lacks the
belief in his own right, innocence; falsehood rules
supreme, as also opportunism.
(c) Likewise in political economy: the abolition
of slavery: the lack of a redeeming class, and of
one who justifies—the rise of anarchy. “Educa-
tion”?
(d) Likewise in history: fatalism, Darwinism;
the last attempts at reconciling reason and Godli-
ness fail. Sentimentality in regard to the past :
biographies can no longer be endured! (Pheno-
menalism even here: character regarded as
mask; there are no facts. )
<
(e) Likewise in Art: romanticism and its
counter-stroke (repugnance towards romantic ideals
and lies). The latter, morally, as a sense of great-
est truthfulness, but pessimistic. Pure "artists”
(indifference as to the “subject"). (The psych-
ology of the father-confessor and puritanical psy-
chology-two forms of psychological romanticism:
but also their counter-stroke, the attempt to main-
tain a purely artistic attitude towards "men " -- but
even in this respect no one dares to make the
opposite valuation. )
a
70.
Against the teaching of the influence of environ-
ment and external causes: the power coming from
inside is infinitely superior; much that appears like
influence acting from without is merely the sub-
jection of environment to this inner power. Pre-
## p. 63 (#87) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
63
cisely the same environment may be used and
interpreted in opposite ways: there are no facts.
A genius is not explained by such theories con-
cerning origins.
il est bien
71.
Modernity” regarded in the light of nutrition
and digestion.
Sensitiveness is infinitely more acute (beneath
moral vestments : the increase of pity), the abund-
ance of different impressions is greater than ever.
The cosmopolitanism of articles of diet, of literature,
newspapers, forms, tastes, and even landscapes.
The speed of this affluence is prestissimo; im-.
pressions are wiped out, and people instinctively
guard against assimilating anything or against
taking anything seriously and “ digesting” it; the
result is a weakening of the powers of digestion.
There begins a sort of adaptation to this accumula-
tion of impressions. Man unlearns the art of doing,
and all he does is to react to stimuli coming from
his environment. He spends his strength, partly
in the process of assimilation, partly in defending
himself, and again partly in responding to stimuli.
Profound enfeeblement of spontaneity :—the his-
torian, the critic, the analyst, the interpreter, the
observer, the collector, the reader, all reactive
talents all science!
Artificial modification of one's own nature in
order to make it resemble a “mirror”; one is
interested, but only epidermally: this is system-
atic coolness, equilibrium, a steady low temperature,
## p. 64 (#88) ##############################################
64
THE WILL TO POWER.
just beneath the thin surface on which warmth,
movement, “storm,” and undulations play.
Opposition of external mobility to a certain dead
heaviness and fatigue.
72.
Where must our modern world be classed
under exhaustion or under increasing strength ?
Its multiformity and lack of repose are brought
about by the highest form of consciousness.
73
Overwork, curiosity and sympathy-our modern
vices.
74.
A contribution to the characterisation of "Moder-
nity. ”—Exaggerated development of intermediate
forms; the decay of types; the break-up of tradi-
tion, schools; the predominance of the instincts
(philosophically prepared : the unconscious has the
greater value) after the appearance of the enfeeble-
ment of will power and of the will to an end and
to the means thereto.
75.
A capable artisan or scholar cuts a good figure
if he have his pride in his art, and looks pleasantly
and contentedly upon life. On the other hand,
there is no sight more wretched than that of a
cobbler or a schoolmaster who, with the air of a
martyr, gives one to understand that he was really
## p. 65 (#89) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
65
born for something better. There is nothing better
than what is good! and that is : to have a certain
kind of capacity and to use it. This is virtù in
the Italian style of the Renaissance.
Nowadays, when the state has a nonsensically
oversized belly, in all fields and branches of work
there are “ representatives" over and above the
real workman: for instance, in addition to the
scholars, there are the journalists; in addition to
the suffering masses, there is a crowd of jabbering
and bragging ne'er-do-wells who "represent" that
suffering—not to speak of the professional politi-
cians who, though quite satisfied with their lot,
stand up in Parliament and, with strong lungs,
represent” grievances. Our modern life is ex-
tremely expensive, thanks to the host of middlemen
that infest it; whereas in the city of antiquity,
and in many a city of Spain and Italy to-day,
where there is an echo of the ancient spirit, the
man himself comes forward and will have nothing
to do with a representative or an intermediary in
the modern style-except perhaps to kick him
hence !
76.
The pre-eminence of the merchant and the
middleman, even in the most intellectual spheres :
the journalist, the “representative,” the historian
(as an intermediary between the past and the pre-
sent), the exotic and cosmopolitan, the middleman
between natural science and philosophy, the semi-
theologians.
E
VOL. I,
## p. 66 (#90) ##############################################
66
THE WILL TO POWER.
77.
The men I have regarded with the most loathing,
heretofore, are the parasites of intellect: they are
to be found everywhere, already, in our modern
Europe, and as a matter of fact their conscience is
as light as it possibly can be. They may be a
little turbid, and savour somewhat of Pessimism,
but in the main they are voracious, dirty, dirtying,
stealthy, insinuating, light-fingered gentry, scabby
-and as innocent as all small sinners and microbes
are. They live at the expense of those who have
intellect and who distribute it liberally: they know
that it is peculiar to the rich mind to live in a dis-
interested fashion, without taking too much petty
thought for the morrow, and to distribute its wealth
prodigally. For intellect is a bad domestic econo-
mist, and pays no heed whatever to the fact that
everything lives on it and devours it.
78.
MODERN MUMMERY
The motleyness of modern men and its charm
Essentially a mask and a sign of boredom.
The journalist.
The political man in the "national swindle").
Mummery in the arts :
The lack of honesty in preparing and school-
ing oneself for them (Fromentin);
## p. 67 (#91) ##############################################
1
NIHILISM,
67
The Romanticists (their lack of philosophy
and science and their excess of literature);
The novelists (Walter Scott, but also the
monsters of the Nibelung, with their in-
ordinately nervous music);
The lyricists.
Scientificality. ”
Virtuosos (Jews).
The popular ideals are overcome, but not yet
in the presence of the people :
The saint, the sage, the prophet.
79.
The want of discipline in the modern spirit con-
cealed beneath all kinds of moral finery. The
show-words are: Toleration (for the "incapacity
of saying yes or no "); la largeur de sympathie
(= a third of indifference, a third of curiosity, and
a third of morbid susceptibility); "objectivity”
(the lack of personality and of will, and the in-
ability to "love"); "freedom” in regard to the
rule (Romanticism); "truth” as opposed to false-
hood and lying (Naturalism); the “scientific
spirit” (the “human document": or, in plain
English, the serial story which means "addition"
-instead of “composition”); “passion” in the
place of disorder and intemperance; " depth” in
the place of confusion and the pell-mell of symbols.
"
80.
Concerning the criticism of big words. --I ain full
of mistrust and malice towards what is called
## p. 68 (#92) ##############################################
68
THE WILL TO POWER.
C
“ideal”: this is my Pessimism, that I have recog-
nised to what extent sublime sentiments are
a source of evil—that is to say, a belittling and
depreciating of man.
Every time "progress" is expected to result
from an ideal, disappointment invariably follows;
the triumph of an ideal has always been a retro-
grade movement.
Christianity, revolution, the abolition of slavery,
equal rights, philanthropy, love of peace, justice,
truth: all these big words are only valuable in a
struggle, as banners : not as realities, but as show-
words, for something quite different (yea, even quite
opposed to what they mean ! ).
81.
The kind of man is known who has fallen in
love with the sentence "tout comprendre c'est tout
pardonner. " It is the weak and, above all, the dis-
illusioned: if there is something to pardon in
everything, there is also something to contemn!
It is the philosophy of disappointment, which here
swathes itself so humanly in pity, and gazes out
So sweetly,
They are Romanticists, whose faith has gone to
pot: now they at least wish to look on and see
how everything vanishes and fades. They call it
l'art pour l'art, " objectivity,” etc.
82.
The main symptoms of Pessimism :-Dinners at
Magny's; Russian Pessimism (Tolstoy, Dostoiew-
## p. 69 (#93) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
69
sky); æsthetic Pessimism, l'art pour l'art, “ de-
scription" (the romantic and the anti-romantic
Pessimism); Pessimism in the theory of know-
ledge (Schopenhauer: phenomenalism); anarchical
Pessimism; the “ religion of pity," Buddhistic
preparation; the Pessimism of culture (exoticness,
cosmopolitanism); moral Pessimism, myself.
»
.
83.
“Without the Christian Faith," said Pascal," you
would yourselves be like nature and history, un
monstre et un chaos. " We fulfilled this prophecy :
once the weak and optimistic eighteenth century
had embellished and rationalised man.
Schopenhauer and Pascal. -Inone essential point,
Schopenhauer is the first who takes up Pascal's
movement again : un monstre et un chaos, conse-
quently something that must be negatived
history, nature, and man himself!
"Our inability to know the truth is the result of
our corruption, of our moral decay,” says Pascal.
And Schopenhauer says essentially the same.
“The more profound the corruption of reason is,
the more necessary is the doctrine of salvation
or, putting it into Schopenhauerian phraseology,
negation.
84.
Schopenhauer as an epigone (state of affairs
before the Revolution) :
-Pity, sensuality, art,
weakness of will, Catholicism of the most intel-
lectual desires—that is, at bottom, the good old
eighteenth century.
## p. 70 (#94) ##############################################
70
THE WILL TO POWER,
Schopenhauer's fundamental misunderstanding
of the will (just as though passion, instinct, and
desire were the essential factors of will) is typical :
the depreciation of the will to the extent of mis-
taking it altogether. Likewise the hatred of
willing: the attempt at seeing something superior
-yea, even superiority itself, and that which really
matters, in non-willing, in the “subject-being
without aim or intention. " Great symptom of
fatigue or of the weakness of will: for this, in
reality, is what treats the passions as master, and
directs them as to the way and to the measure.
.
.
85.
The undignified attempt has been made to regard
Wagner and Schopenhauer as types of the mentally
unsound : an infinitely more essential understanding
of the matter would have been gained if the exact
decadent type which each of them represents had
been scientifically and accurately defined.
86.
"
Henrik Ibsen has become very clear to me.
With all his robust idealism and “Will to Truth,"
he never dared to ring himself free from moral-
illusionism which says " freedom,” and will not
admit, even to itself, what freedom is: the second
stage in the metamorphosis of the "Will to Power,"
in him who lacks In the first stage, one
demands justice at the hands of those who have
power. In the second, one speaks of “freedom,"
## p. 71 (#95) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
71
that is to say, one wishes to “shake oneself free
from those who have power.
In the third stage,
one speaks of "equal rights "—that is to say, so
long as one is not a predominant personality one
wishes to prevent one's competitors from growing
in power.
87.
The Decline of Protestantism: theoretically and
historically understood as a half-measure. Un-
deniable predominance of Catholicism to-day:
Protestant feeling is so dead that the strongest
anti-Protestant movements (Wagner's Parsifal, for
instance) are no longer regarded as such. The
whole of the more elevated intellectuality in France
is Catholic in instinct; Bismarck recognised that
there was no longer any such thing as Protest-
antism.
88.
Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and
tiresome form of decadence, in which Christianity
has known how to survive in the mediocre North,
is something incomplete and complexly valuable
for knowledge, in so far as it was able to bring
experiences of different kinds and origins into the
same heads.
89.
What has the German spirit not made out of
Christianity! And, to refer to Protestantism
again, how much beer is there not still in Pro-
testant Christianity! Can a crasser, more indolent,
and more lounging form of Christian belief be
## p. 72 (#96) ##############################################
72
THE WILL TO POWER.
imagined, than that of the average German Pro-
testant? . . . It is indeed a very humble Christi-
anity. I call it the Homeopathy of Christianity !
I am reminded that, to-day, there also exists a
less humble sort of Protestantism; it is taught by
royal chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but
nobody has ever maintained that any “spirit”
'
“ hovers
over these waters. It is merely a less
respectable form of Christian faith, not by any
means a more comprehensible one.
90.
Progress. -Let us be on our guard lest we
deceive ourselves! Time flies forward apace, —
we would fain believe that everything flies forward
with it, that evolution is an advancing develop-
ment. . . . That is the appearance of things which
deceives the most circumspect. But the nineteenth
century shows no advance whatever on the six-
teenth: and the German spirit of 1888 is an
example of a backward movement when compared
with that of 1788. • Mankind does not
advance, it does not even exist. The aspect of
the whole is much more like that of a huge experi-
menting workshop where some things in all ages
succeed, while an incalculable number of things
fail ; where all order, logic, co-ordination, and
responsibility is lacking. How dare we blink the
fact that the rise of Christianity is a decadent
movement ? —that the German Reformation was
a recrudescence of Christian barbarism - that the
Revolution destroyed the instinct for an organisa-
## p. 73 (#97) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
a decadent in biology, as also in morality (he
regarded the triumph of altruism as
sideratum ! ! ! ).
.
a de-
54.
After thousands of years of error and confusion,
it is my good fortune to have rediscovered the
road which leads to a Yea and to a Nay.
## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################
46
THE WILL TO POWER.
I teach people to say Nay in the face of all
that makes for weakness and exhaustion.
I teach people to say Yea in the face of all
that makes for strength, that preserves strength,
and justifies the feeling of strength.
Up to the present, neither the one nor the
other has been taught; but rather virtue, dis-
interestedness, pity, and even the negation of life.
All these are values proceeding from exhausted
people.
After having pondered over the physiology
of exhaustion for some time, I was led to the
question: to what extent the judgments of ex-
hausted people had percolated into the world of
values.
The result at which I arrived was as startling
as it could possibly be—even for one like my-
self who was already at home in many a strange
world: I found that all prevailing values—that is
to say, all those which had gained ascendancy
over humanity, or at least over its tamer portions,
could be traced back to the judgment of exhausted
people.
Under the cover of the holiest names, I found
the most destructive tendencies; people had
actually given the name “God” to all that renders
weak, teaches weakness, and infects with weakness.
I found that the “good man
was a form
of self-affirmation on the part of decadence.
That virtue which Schopenhauer still pro-
claimed as superior to all, and as the most funda-
mental of all virtues; even that same pity I
recognised as more dangerous than any vice.
.
.
## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
47
Deliberately to thwart the law of selection among
species, and their natural means of purging their
stock of degenerate members—this, up to my
time, had been the greatest of all virtues. .
One should do honour to the fatality which
says to the feeble: “perish! ”
The opposing of this fatality, the botching of
mankind and the allowing of it to putrefy, was
given the name “God. " One shall not take the
name of the Lord one's God in vain. . .
The race is corrupted—not by its vices, but by
its ignorance: it is corrupted because it has not
recognised exhaustion as exhaustion : physio-
logical misunderstandings are the cause of all
evil.
Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding.
Problem: how were the exhausted able to
make the laws of values ? In other words, how
did they who are the last, come to power ?
How did the instincts of the animal man ever get
to stand on their heads ?
.
.
4. THE CRISIS: NIHILISM AND THE IDEA OF
RECURRENCE.
55.
Extreme positions are not relieved by more
moderate ones, but by extreme opposite positions.
And thus the belief in the utter immorality of
nature, and in the absence of all purpose and sense,
are psychologically necessary passions when the
## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################
48
THE WILL TO POWER.
belief in God and in an essentially moral order of
things is no longer tenable.
Nihilism now appears, not because the sorrows
of existence are greater than they were formerly,
but because, in a general way, people have grown
suspicious of the “meaning " which might be given
to evil and even to existence. One interpretation
has been overthrown: but since it was held to be
the interpretation, it seems as though there were
no meaning in existence at all, as though every-
thing were in vain.
It yet remains to be shown that this “in vain ! ”
is the character of present Nihilism. The mistrust
of our former valuations has increased to such an
extent that it has led to the question : “are not
all 'values' merely allurements prolonging the
duration of the comedy, without, however, bringing
the unravelment any closer ? ” The “long period
of time” which has culminated in an “in vain "
without either goal or purpose, is the most par-
alysing of thoughts, more particularly when one
sees that one is duped without, however, being
able to resist being duped.
Let us imagine this thought in its worst form:
existence, as it is, without either a purpose or a
goal, but inevitably recurring, without an end in
nonentity: “Eternal Recurrence. "
This is the extremest form of Nihilism : nothing
(purposelessness) eternal!
1
## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
49
European form of Buddhism: the energy of
knowledge and of strength drives us to such a
belief. It is the most scientific of all possible
hypotheses. We deny final purposes. If exist-
ence had a final purpose it would have reached it.
*
It should be understood that what is being
aimed at, here, is a contradiction of Pantheism:
for “everything perfect, divine, eternal,” also leads
to the belief in Eternal Recurrence. Question :
has this pantheistic and affirmative attitude to all
things also been made impossible by morality?
At bottom only the moral
as been overcome.
Is there any sense in imagining a God " beyond
good and evil”? Would Pantheism in this sense
be possible?
Do we withdraw the idea of purpose
from the process, and affirm the process notwith-
standing ? This were so if, within that process,
something were attained every moment-and
always the same thing. Spinoza won an affirma-
tive position of this sort, in the sense that every
moment, according to him, has a logical necessity :
and he triumphed by means of his fundamentally
logical instinct over a like conformation of the
world.
But his case is exceptional. If every funda-
mental trait of character, which lies beneath every
act, and which finds expression in every act, were
recognised by the individual as his fundamental
D
VOL. 1.
## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################
50
THE WILL TO POWER.
trait of character, this individual would be driven
to regard every moment of existence in general,
triumphantly as good. It would simply be neces-
sary for that fundamental trait of character to be
felt in oneself as something good, valuable, and
pleasurable.
<
Now, in the case of those men and classes of
men who were treated with violence and oppressed
by their fellows, morality saved life from despair
and from the leap into nonentity: for impotence
in relation to mankind and not in relation to
Nature is what generates the most desperate
bitterness towards existence. Morality treated
the powerful, the violent, and the “masters" in
general, as enemies against whom the common
man must be protected—that is to say, emboldened,
strengthened. Morality has therefore always taught
the most profound hatred and contempt of the
fundamental trait of character of all rulers—i. e. ,
their Will to Power. To suppress, to deny, and
to decompose this morality, would mean to regard
this most thoroughly detested instinct with the
reverse of the old feeling and valuation. If the
sufferer and the oppressed man were to lose his
belief in his right to contemn the Will to Power,
his position would be desperate. This would be
so if the trait above-mentioned were essential to
life, in which case it would follow that even
that will to morality was only a cloak to this
“Will to Power," as are also even that hatred and
contempt. The oppressed man would then per-
## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
51
ceive that he stands on the same platform with the
oppressor, and that he has no individual privilege,
nor any higher rank than the latter.
*
On the contrary! There is nothing on earth
which can have any value, if it have not a modicum
of power—granted, of course, that life itself is the
Will to Power. Morality protected the botched
and bungled against Nihilism, in that it gave every
one of them infinite worth, metaphysical worth,
and classed them altogether in one order which
did not correspond with that of worldly power and
order of rank: it taught submission, humility, etc.
Admitting that the belief in this morality be destroyed,
the botched and the bungled would no longer have
any comfort, and would perish.
*
This perishing seems like self-annihilation, like
an instinctive selection of that which must de-
stroy. The symptoms of this self-destruction of
the botched and the bungled: self- vivisection,
poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, and, above
all, the instinctive constraint to acts whereby the
powerful are made into mortal enemies (training,
so to speak, one's own hangmen), the will to destruc-
tion as the will of a still deeper instinct-of the
instinct of self-destruction, of the Will to Nonentity.
*
Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled
have no longer any consolation, that they destroy
## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################
52
THE WILL TO POWER.
in order to be destroyed, that, having been deprived
of morality, they no longer have any reason to
“resign themselves,” that they take up their stand
on the territory of the opposite principle, and will
also exercise power themselves, by compelling the
powerful to become their hangmen. This is the
European form of Buddhism, that active negation,
after all existence has lost its meaning.
1
$
It must not be supposed that “distress has
grown more acute, on the contrary !
“ God,
morality, resignation ” were remedies in the very
deepest stages of misery : active Nihilism made
its appearance in circumstances which were rela-
tively much more favourable. The fact, alone, that
morality is regarded as overcome, presupposes a
certain degree of intellectual culture; while this
very culture, for its part, bears evidence to a
certain relative well-being. A certain intellectual
fatigue, brought on by the long struggle concerning
philosophical opinions, and carried to hopeless
scepticism against philosophy, shows moreover that
the level of these Nihilists is by no means a low
one. Only think of the conditions in which
Buddha appeared! The teaching of the eternal
recurrence would have learned principles to go
upon (just as Buddha's teaching, for instance, had
the notion of causality, etc. ).
*
What do we mean to-day by the words“ botched
and bungled"? In the first place, they are used
## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################
NIHILISM,
53
physiologically and not politically. The unhealthiest
kind of man all over Europe (in all classes) is the
soil out of which Nihilism grows: this species of
man will regard eternal recurrence as damnation-
once he is bitten by the thought, he can no longer
recoil before any action. He would not extirpate
passively, but would cause everything to be extir-
pated which is meaningless and without a goal to
this extent; although it is only a spasm, or sort of
blind rage in the presence of the fact that everything
has existed again and again for an eternity-even
this period of Nihilism and destruction. The value
of such a crisis is that it purifies, that it unites similar
elements, and makes them mutually destructive,
that it assigns common duties to men of opposite
persuasions, and brings the weaker and more un-numerisa
certain among them to the light, thus taking the
first step towards a new order of rank among forces
from the standpoint of health : recognising com-
manders as commanders, subordinates as sub-
ordinates. Naturally irrespective of all the
present forms of society,
What class of men will prove they are strongest
in this new order of things? The most moderate
- they who do not require any extreme forms of
belief, they who not only admit of, but actually
like, a certain modicum of chance and nonsense ;
they who can think of man with a very moderate
view of his value, without becoming weak and
small on that account; the most rich in health,
## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################
54
THE WILL TO POWER
who are able to withstand a maximum amount
of sorrow, and who are therefore not so very much
afraid of sorrow—men who are certain of their
power, and who represent with conscious pride the
state of strength to which man has attained.
How could such a man think of Eternal Re-
currence ?
56.
The Periods of European Nihilism,
The Period of Obscurity : all kinds of groping
measures devised to preserve old institutions and
not to arrest the progress of new ones.
The Period of Light : men see that old and
new are fundamental contraries; that the old
values are born of descending life, and that the
new ones are born of ascending life-that all old
ideals are unfriendly to life (born of decadence
and determining it, however much they may be
decked out in the Sunday finery of morality).
We understand the old, but are far from being
sufficiently strong for the new.
The Periods of the Three Great Passions : con-
tempt, pity, destruction.
The Periods of Catastrophes : the rise of a teach-
ing which will sift mankind . . . which drives
the weak to some decision and the strong also.
1
## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################
II.
CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF
EUROPEANNIHILISM.
(a) MODERN GLOOMINESS.
57.
My friends, we had a hard time as youths; we even
suffered from youth itself as though it were a serious
disease. This is owing to the age in which we were
born—an age of enormous internal decay and dis-
integration which, with all its weakness and even
with the best of its strength, is opposed to the
spirit of youth. Disintegration—that is to say, un-
certaintymis peculiar to this age: nothing stands
on solid ground or on a sound faith. People live
for the morrow, because the day-after-to-morrow is
doubtful. All our road is slippery and dangerous,
while the ice which still bears us has grown un-
conscionably thin: we all feel the mild and grue-
some breath of the thaw-wind-soon, where we are
walking, no one will any longer be able to stand !
>
58.
If this is not an age of decay and of diminishing
vitality, it is at least one of indiscriminate and
arbitrary experimentalising—and it is probable
that out of an excess of abortive experiments there
## p. 56 (#78) ##############################################
56
THE WILL TO POWER.
has grown this general impression, as of decay :
and perhaps decay itself.
59.
Concerning the history of modern gloominess.
The state-nomads (officials, etc. ): "home-
less".
>
The break-up of the family.
The "good man " as a symptom of exhaustion.
Justice as Will to Power (Rearing).
Lewdness and neurosis.
Black music: whither has real music gone?
The anarchist.
Contempt of man, loathing.
Most profound distinction : whether hunger or
superabundance is creative? The first creates the
Ideals of Romanticism.
Northern unnaturalness.
The need of Alcohol : the "need" of the work-
ing classes.
Philosophical Nihilism.
бо.
The slow advance and rise of the middle and
lower classes (including the lower kind of spirit
and body), which was already well under way
before the French Revolution, and would have
made the same progress forward without the latter,
-in short, then, the preponderance of the herd
over all herdsmen and bell-wethers,—-brings in its
train :
(1) Gloominess of spirit (the juxtaposition of
a stoical and a frivolous appearance of happiness,
## p. 57 (#79) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
57
. peculiar to noble cultures, is on the decline; much
suffering is allowed to be seen and heard which
formerly was borne in concealment;
(2) Moral hypocrisy (a way of distinguishing
oneself through morality, but by means of the
values of the herd: pity, solicitude, moderation; and
not by means of those virtues which are recognised
and honoured outside the herd's sphere of power);
(3) A really large amount of sympathy with
both pain and joy (a feeling of pleasure resulting
from being herded together, which is peculiar to
all gregarious animals—"public spirit," "patriot-
ism,” everything, in fact, which is apart from the
individual)
61.
Our age, with its indiscriminate endeavours to
mitigate distress, to honour it, and to wage war in
advance with unpleasant possibilities, is an age of
the poor. Our "rich people"—they are the poorest !
The real purpose of all wealth has been forgotten.
62.
Criticism of modern man :-"the good man," but
corrupted and misled by bad institutions (tyrants
and priests) ;-reason elevated to a position of
authority ;-history is regarded as the surmounting
of errors ;-the future is regarded as progress;
the Christian state (“God of the armies ");-
Christian sexual intercourse (as marriage);—the
realm of “justice” (the cult of "mankind ');-
« freedom. "
The romantic attitudes of the modern man :-
## p. 58 (#80) ##############################################
58
THE WILL TO POWER.
the noble man (Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand);
-taking the part of the oppressed and the bungled
and the botched : motto for historians and
romancers;—the Stoics of duty ;-disinterestedness
regarded as art and as knowledge ;-altruism as
the most mendacious form of egoism (utilitarianism),
the most sentimental form of egoism.
All this savours of the eighteenth century. But
it had other qualities which were not inherited,
namely, a certain insouciance, cheerfulness, ele-
gance, spiritual clearness. The spiritual tempo
has altered; the pleasure which was begotten by
spiritual refinement and clearness has given room
to the pleasure of colour, harmony, mass, reality,
etc. etc. Sensuality in spiritual things. In short,
it is the eighteenth century of Rousseau.
arolini
63.
Taken all in all, a considerable amount of
humanity has been attained by our men of to-day.
That we do not feel this is in itself a proof of the
fact that we have become so sensitive in regard to
small cases of distress, that we somewhat unjustly
overlook what has been achieved.
Here we must make allowances for the fact
that a great deal of decadence is rife, and that,
through such eyes, our world must appear bad and
wretched. But these eyes have always seen in the
same way, in all ages.
(1) A certain hypersensitiveness, even in moral
feelings.
(2) The quantum of bitterness and gloominess,
from. Yo's know your
## p. 59 (#81) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
59
which pessimism bears with it in its judgments-
both together have helped to bring about the pre-
ponderance of the other and opposite point of view,
that things are not well with our morality.
The fact of credit, of the commerce of the world,
and the means of traffic—are expressions of an
extraordinarily mild trustfulness in men, . . . Το
that may also be added-
(3) The deliverance of science from moral and
religious prejudices : a very good sign, though for
the most part misunderstood.
In my own way, I am attempting a justification
of history,
64.
The second appearance of Buddhism. -Its pre-
cursory signs: the increase of pity. Spiritual
exhaustion. The reduction of all problems to the
question of pleasure and pain. The glory of war
which calls forth a counter-stroke. Just as the
sharp demarcation of nations generates a counter-
movement in the form of the most hearty
Fraternity. ” The fact that it is impossible for
religion to carry on its work any longer with
dogma and fables.
The catastrophe of Nihilism will put an end to
all this Buddhistic culture,
st
65.
That which is most sorely afflicted to-day is
the instinct and will of tradition: all institutions
which owe their origin to this instinct, are opposed
## p. 60 (#82) ##############################################
60
THE WILL TO POWER,
to the tastes of the age. . . .
At bottom, nothing
is thought or done which is not calculated to tear
up this spirit of tradition by the roots. Tradition
is looked upon as a fatality; it is studied and
acknowledged in the form of “heredity”), but
people will not have anything to do with it. The
extension of one will over long periods of time, the
selection of conditions and valuations which make
it possible to dispose of centuries in advance—this,
precisely, is what is most utterly anti-modern.
From which it follows, that disorganising principles
give our age its specific character.
66.
"Be simple"-a demand which, when made to
us complicated and incomprehensible triers of the
heart and reins, is a simple absurdity. . . . Be
natural: but if one should be by nature
natural," what then?
.
.
un-
67.
The means employed in former times in order
to arrive at similarly constituted and lasting types,
throughout long generations : entailed property
and the respect of elders (the origin of the faith
in gods and heroes as ancestors).
Now, the subdivision of property belongs to the
opposite tendency. A newspaper instead of the
daily prayers.
Railways, the telegraph. The
centralisation of an enormous number of different
interests in one soul: which, to that end, must be
very strong and mutable.
## p. 61 (#83) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
61
68.
: ܝܰ *
Why does everything become mummery. —The
modern man is lacking in unfailing instinct (instinct
being understood here to mean that which is the
outcome of a long period of activity in the same
occupation on the part of one family of men); the
incapability of producing anything perfect, is simply
the result of this lack of instinct : one individual
alone cannot make up for the schooling his ancestors
should have transmitted to him.
What a morality or book of law creates : that
deep instinct which renders automatism and per-
fection possible in life and in work.
But now we have reached the opposite point;
yes, we wanted to reach it—the most extreme con-
sciousness, through introspection on the part of man
and of history: and thus we are practically most
distant from perfection in Being, doing, and willing:
our desires-even our will to knowledge-shows
how prodigiously decadent we are. We are striving
after the very reverse of what strong races and strong
natures will have-understanding is an end. .
That Science is possible in the way in which it
is practised to-day, proves that all elementary
instincts, the instincts which ward off danger and
protect life, are no longer active. We no longer
save, we are merely spending the capital of our
forefathers, even in the way in which we pursue
knowledge.
69.
Nihilistic trait.
(a) In the natural sciences (“purposelessness”),
.
## p. 61 (#84) ##############################################
60
THE WILL TO POWER.
to the tastes of the age. . . . At bottom, not
is thought or done which is not calculated to
up this spirit of tradition by the roots. Trai"
is looked upon as a fatality; it is studied
acknowledged (in the form of “heredity ").
people will not have anything to do with it.
extension of one will over long periods of tim
selection of conditions and valuations which
it possible to dispose of centuries in advance-
precisely, is what is most utterly anti-mou
From which it follows, that disorganising prin
give our age its specific character.
66.
“ Be simple”-a demand which, when m
us complicated and incomprehensible triers
heart and reins, is a simple absurdity. .
natural: but if one should be by nature
natural,” what then?
67.
The means employed in former times ir -
to arrive at similarly constituted and lasting
throughout long generations : entailed p
and the respect of elders (the origin of th:
in gods and heroes as ancestors).
Now, the subdivision of property belongs,
opposite ten A ne naner instead
daily pray
elegraph
centralisat
ber of
interests i
end, 1
very stro
## p. 61 (#85) ##############################################
nothing
to tear
Tradition
Lied and
>'), but
it. The
time, the
ch make
ce—this
.
modern
,
rinciples
RSS air,
*** Mar
made to
s of the
Be
.
1
re "un
1
n order
s types
roperty
este We are still
=
restrong raw arriva
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site in de way in which it
os dat all elementary
TE S vizci zard of danger will
je We no longer
capital of our
ich we punto
ne faith
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LORE
of the
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ponelessnes")
## p. 62 (#86) ##############################################
62
THE WILL TO POWER.
(
causality, mechanism, “conformity to law," an in-
terval, a remnant.
(6) Likewise in politics: the individual lacks the
belief in his own right, innocence; falsehood rules
supreme, as also opportunism.
(c) Likewise in political economy: the abolition
of slavery: the lack of a redeeming class, and of
one who justifies—the rise of anarchy. “Educa-
tion”?
(d) Likewise in history: fatalism, Darwinism;
the last attempts at reconciling reason and Godli-
ness fail. Sentimentality in regard to the past :
biographies can no longer be endured! (Pheno-
menalism even here: character regarded as
mask; there are no facts. )
<
(e) Likewise in Art: romanticism and its
counter-stroke (repugnance towards romantic ideals
and lies). The latter, morally, as a sense of great-
est truthfulness, but pessimistic. Pure "artists”
(indifference as to the “subject"). (The psych-
ology of the father-confessor and puritanical psy-
chology-two forms of psychological romanticism:
but also their counter-stroke, the attempt to main-
tain a purely artistic attitude towards "men " -- but
even in this respect no one dares to make the
opposite valuation. )
a
70.
Against the teaching of the influence of environ-
ment and external causes: the power coming from
inside is infinitely superior; much that appears like
influence acting from without is merely the sub-
jection of environment to this inner power. Pre-
## p. 63 (#87) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
63
cisely the same environment may be used and
interpreted in opposite ways: there are no facts.
A genius is not explained by such theories con-
cerning origins.
il est bien
71.
Modernity” regarded in the light of nutrition
and digestion.
Sensitiveness is infinitely more acute (beneath
moral vestments : the increase of pity), the abund-
ance of different impressions is greater than ever.
The cosmopolitanism of articles of diet, of literature,
newspapers, forms, tastes, and even landscapes.
The speed of this affluence is prestissimo; im-.
pressions are wiped out, and people instinctively
guard against assimilating anything or against
taking anything seriously and “ digesting” it; the
result is a weakening of the powers of digestion.
There begins a sort of adaptation to this accumula-
tion of impressions. Man unlearns the art of doing,
and all he does is to react to stimuli coming from
his environment. He spends his strength, partly
in the process of assimilation, partly in defending
himself, and again partly in responding to stimuli.
Profound enfeeblement of spontaneity :—the his-
torian, the critic, the analyst, the interpreter, the
observer, the collector, the reader, all reactive
talents all science!
Artificial modification of one's own nature in
order to make it resemble a “mirror”; one is
interested, but only epidermally: this is system-
atic coolness, equilibrium, a steady low temperature,
## p. 64 (#88) ##############################################
64
THE WILL TO POWER.
just beneath the thin surface on which warmth,
movement, “storm,” and undulations play.
Opposition of external mobility to a certain dead
heaviness and fatigue.
72.
Where must our modern world be classed
under exhaustion or under increasing strength ?
Its multiformity and lack of repose are brought
about by the highest form of consciousness.
73
Overwork, curiosity and sympathy-our modern
vices.
74.
A contribution to the characterisation of "Moder-
nity. ”—Exaggerated development of intermediate
forms; the decay of types; the break-up of tradi-
tion, schools; the predominance of the instincts
(philosophically prepared : the unconscious has the
greater value) after the appearance of the enfeeble-
ment of will power and of the will to an end and
to the means thereto.
75.
A capable artisan or scholar cuts a good figure
if he have his pride in his art, and looks pleasantly
and contentedly upon life. On the other hand,
there is no sight more wretched than that of a
cobbler or a schoolmaster who, with the air of a
martyr, gives one to understand that he was really
## p. 65 (#89) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
65
born for something better. There is nothing better
than what is good! and that is : to have a certain
kind of capacity and to use it. This is virtù in
the Italian style of the Renaissance.
Nowadays, when the state has a nonsensically
oversized belly, in all fields and branches of work
there are “ representatives" over and above the
real workman: for instance, in addition to the
scholars, there are the journalists; in addition to
the suffering masses, there is a crowd of jabbering
and bragging ne'er-do-wells who "represent" that
suffering—not to speak of the professional politi-
cians who, though quite satisfied with their lot,
stand up in Parliament and, with strong lungs,
represent” grievances. Our modern life is ex-
tremely expensive, thanks to the host of middlemen
that infest it; whereas in the city of antiquity,
and in many a city of Spain and Italy to-day,
where there is an echo of the ancient spirit, the
man himself comes forward and will have nothing
to do with a representative or an intermediary in
the modern style-except perhaps to kick him
hence !
76.
The pre-eminence of the merchant and the
middleman, even in the most intellectual spheres :
the journalist, the “representative,” the historian
(as an intermediary between the past and the pre-
sent), the exotic and cosmopolitan, the middleman
between natural science and philosophy, the semi-
theologians.
E
VOL. I,
## p. 66 (#90) ##############################################
66
THE WILL TO POWER.
77.
The men I have regarded with the most loathing,
heretofore, are the parasites of intellect: they are
to be found everywhere, already, in our modern
Europe, and as a matter of fact their conscience is
as light as it possibly can be. They may be a
little turbid, and savour somewhat of Pessimism,
but in the main they are voracious, dirty, dirtying,
stealthy, insinuating, light-fingered gentry, scabby
-and as innocent as all small sinners and microbes
are. They live at the expense of those who have
intellect and who distribute it liberally: they know
that it is peculiar to the rich mind to live in a dis-
interested fashion, without taking too much petty
thought for the morrow, and to distribute its wealth
prodigally. For intellect is a bad domestic econo-
mist, and pays no heed whatever to the fact that
everything lives on it and devours it.
78.
MODERN MUMMERY
The motleyness of modern men and its charm
Essentially a mask and a sign of boredom.
The journalist.
The political man in the "national swindle").
Mummery in the arts :
The lack of honesty in preparing and school-
ing oneself for them (Fromentin);
## p. 67 (#91) ##############################################
1
NIHILISM,
67
The Romanticists (their lack of philosophy
and science and their excess of literature);
The novelists (Walter Scott, but also the
monsters of the Nibelung, with their in-
ordinately nervous music);
The lyricists.
Scientificality. ”
Virtuosos (Jews).
The popular ideals are overcome, but not yet
in the presence of the people :
The saint, the sage, the prophet.
79.
The want of discipline in the modern spirit con-
cealed beneath all kinds of moral finery. The
show-words are: Toleration (for the "incapacity
of saying yes or no "); la largeur de sympathie
(= a third of indifference, a third of curiosity, and
a third of morbid susceptibility); "objectivity”
(the lack of personality and of will, and the in-
ability to "love"); "freedom” in regard to the
rule (Romanticism); "truth” as opposed to false-
hood and lying (Naturalism); the “scientific
spirit” (the “human document": or, in plain
English, the serial story which means "addition"
-instead of “composition”); “passion” in the
place of disorder and intemperance; " depth” in
the place of confusion and the pell-mell of symbols.
"
80.
Concerning the criticism of big words. --I ain full
of mistrust and malice towards what is called
## p. 68 (#92) ##############################################
68
THE WILL TO POWER.
C
“ideal”: this is my Pessimism, that I have recog-
nised to what extent sublime sentiments are
a source of evil—that is to say, a belittling and
depreciating of man.
Every time "progress" is expected to result
from an ideal, disappointment invariably follows;
the triumph of an ideal has always been a retro-
grade movement.
Christianity, revolution, the abolition of slavery,
equal rights, philanthropy, love of peace, justice,
truth: all these big words are only valuable in a
struggle, as banners : not as realities, but as show-
words, for something quite different (yea, even quite
opposed to what they mean ! ).
81.
The kind of man is known who has fallen in
love with the sentence "tout comprendre c'est tout
pardonner. " It is the weak and, above all, the dis-
illusioned: if there is something to pardon in
everything, there is also something to contemn!
It is the philosophy of disappointment, which here
swathes itself so humanly in pity, and gazes out
So sweetly,
They are Romanticists, whose faith has gone to
pot: now they at least wish to look on and see
how everything vanishes and fades. They call it
l'art pour l'art, " objectivity,” etc.
82.
The main symptoms of Pessimism :-Dinners at
Magny's; Russian Pessimism (Tolstoy, Dostoiew-
## p. 69 (#93) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
69
sky); æsthetic Pessimism, l'art pour l'art, “ de-
scription" (the romantic and the anti-romantic
Pessimism); Pessimism in the theory of know-
ledge (Schopenhauer: phenomenalism); anarchical
Pessimism; the “ religion of pity," Buddhistic
preparation; the Pessimism of culture (exoticness,
cosmopolitanism); moral Pessimism, myself.
»
.
83.
“Without the Christian Faith," said Pascal," you
would yourselves be like nature and history, un
monstre et un chaos. " We fulfilled this prophecy :
once the weak and optimistic eighteenth century
had embellished and rationalised man.
Schopenhauer and Pascal. -Inone essential point,
Schopenhauer is the first who takes up Pascal's
movement again : un monstre et un chaos, conse-
quently something that must be negatived
history, nature, and man himself!
"Our inability to know the truth is the result of
our corruption, of our moral decay,” says Pascal.
And Schopenhauer says essentially the same.
“The more profound the corruption of reason is,
the more necessary is the doctrine of salvation
or, putting it into Schopenhauerian phraseology,
negation.
84.
Schopenhauer as an epigone (state of affairs
before the Revolution) :
-Pity, sensuality, art,
weakness of will, Catholicism of the most intel-
lectual desires—that is, at bottom, the good old
eighteenth century.
## p. 70 (#94) ##############################################
70
THE WILL TO POWER,
Schopenhauer's fundamental misunderstanding
of the will (just as though passion, instinct, and
desire were the essential factors of will) is typical :
the depreciation of the will to the extent of mis-
taking it altogether. Likewise the hatred of
willing: the attempt at seeing something superior
-yea, even superiority itself, and that which really
matters, in non-willing, in the “subject-being
without aim or intention. " Great symptom of
fatigue or of the weakness of will: for this, in
reality, is what treats the passions as master, and
directs them as to the way and to the measure.
.
.
85.
The undignified attempt has been made to regard
Wagner and Schopenhauer as types of the mentally
unsound : an infinitely more essential understanding
of the matter would have been gained if the exact
decadent type which each of them represents had
been scientifically and accurately defined.
86.
"
Henrik Ibsen has become very clear to me.
With all his robust idealism and “Will to Truth,"
he never dared to ring himself free from moral-
illusionism which says " freedom,” and will not
admit, even to itself, what freedom is: the second
stage in the metamorphosis of the "Will to Power,"
in him who lacks In the first stage, one
demands justice at the hands of those who have
power. In the second, one speaks of “freedom,"
## p. 71 (#95) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
71
that is to say, one wishes to “shake oneself free
from those who have power.
In the third stage,
one speaks of "equal rights "—that is to say, so
long as one is not a predominant personality one
wishes to prevent one's competitors from growing
in power.
87.
The Decline of Protestantism: theoretically and
historically understood as a half-measure. Un-
deniable predominance of Catholicism to-day:
Protestant feeling is so dead that the strongest
anti-Protestant movements (Wagner's Parsifal, for
instance) are no longer regarded as such. The
whole of the more elevated intellectuality in France
is Catholic in instinct; Bismarck recognised that
there was no longer any such thing as Protest-
antism.
88.
Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and
tiresome form of decadence, in which Christianity
has known how to survive in the mediocre North,
is something incomplete and complexly valuable
for knowledge, in so far as it was able to bring
experiences of different kinds and origins into the
same heads.
89.
What has the German spirit not made out of
Christianity! And, to refer to Protestantism
again, how much beer is there not still in Pro-
testant Christianity! Can a crasser, more indolent,
and more lounging form of Christian belief be
## p. 72 (#96) ##############################################
72
THE WILL TO POWER.
imagined, than that of the average German Pro-
testant? . . . It is indeed a very humble Christi-
anity. I call it the Homeopathy of Christianity !
I am reminded that, to-day, there also exists a
less humble sort of Protestantism; it is taught by
royal chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but
nobody has ever maintained that any “spirit”
'
“ hovers
over these waters. It is merely a less
respectable form of Christian faith, not by any
means a more comprehensible one.
90.
Progress. -Let us be on our guard lest we
deceive ourselves! Time flies forward apace, —
we would fain believe that everything flies forward
with it, that evolution is an advancing develop-
ment. . . . That is the appearance of things which
deceives the most circumspect. But the nineteenth
century shows no advance whatever on the six-
teenth: and the German spirit of 1888 is an
example of a backward movement when compared
with that of 1788. • Mankind does not
advance, it does not even exist. The aspect of
the whole is much more like that of a huge experi-
menting workshop where some things in all ages
succeed, while an incalculable number of things
fail ; where all order, logic, co-ordination, and
responsibility is lacking. How dare we blink the
fact that the rise of Christianity is a decadent
movement ? —that the German Reformation was
a recrudescence of Christian barbarism - that the
Revolution destroyed the instinct for an organisa-
## p. 73 (#97) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
