No More Learning

—There has perhaps been an
evil hour for every philosopher, in which he thought:
What do I matter, if people should not believe my
poor arguments! —And then some malicious bird
has flown past him and twittered: "What do you
matter? What do you matter? "


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 257
333-
What does Knowing Mean ? —Non ridere, non
lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere! says Spinoza,
so simply and sublimely, as is his wont. Neverthe-
less, what else is this intelligere ultimately, but just
the form in which the three other things become
perceptible to us all at once? A result of the
diverging and opposite impulses of desiring to
deride, lament and execrate? Before knowledge
is possible each of these impulses must first have
brought forward its one-sided view of the object
or event. The struggle of these one-sided views
occurs afterwards, and out of it there occasionally
arises a compromise, a pacification, a recognition
of rights on all three sides, a sort of justice and
agreement: for in virtue of the justice and agree-
ment all those impulses can maintain themselves
in existence and retain their mutual rights. We, to
whose consciousness only the closing reconciliation
scenes and final settling of accounts of these long
processes manifest themselves, think on that account
that intelligere is something conciliating, just and
good, something essentially antithetical to the
impulses; whereas it is only a certain relation
of the impulses to one another. For a very
long time conscious thinking was regarded as
thinking proper: it is now only that the truth
dawns upon us that the greater part of our
intellectual activity goes on unconsciously and
unfelt by us; I believe, however, that the im-
pulses which are here in mutual conflict understand
right well how to make themselves felt by one
17


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258 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
another, and how to cause pain:—the violent,
sudden exhaustion which overtakes all thinkers,
may have its origin here (it is the exhaustion of
the battle-field). Aye, perhaps in our struggling
interior there is much concealed heroism, but
certainly nothing divine, or eternally-reposing-in-
itself, as Spinoza supposed. Conscious thinking, and
especially that of the philosopher, is the weakest,
and on that account also the relatively mildest
and quietest mode of thinking: and thus it is
precisely the philosopher who is most easily misled
concerning the nature of knowledge.
334-
One must Learn to Love. —This is our experience
in music: we must first learn in general to hear,
to hear fully, and to distinguish a theme or a
melody, we have to isolate and limit it as a life by
itself; then we need to exercise effort and good-will
in order to endure it in spite of its strangeness, we
need patience towards its aspect and expression,
and indulgence towards what is odd in it:—in the
end there comes a moment when we are accustomed
to it, when we expect it, when it dawns upon us
that we should miss it if it were lacking; and then
it goes on to exercise its spell and charm more
and more, and does not cease until we have become
its humble and enraptured lovers, who want it, and
want it again, and ask for nothing better from the
world. —It is thus with us, however, not only in
music: it is precisely thus that we have learned to
love all things that we now love. We are always
finally recompensed for our good-will, our patience,


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 259
reasonableness and gentleness towards what is
unfamiliar, by the unfamiliar slowly throwing off
its veil and presenting itself to us as a new, ineffable
beauty :—that is its thanks for our hospitality. He
also who loves himself must have learned it in this
way: there is no other way. Love also has to be
learned.
335-
Cheers for Physics ! —How many men are there
who know how to observe? And among the few
who do know,—how many observe themselves?
"Everyone is furthest from himself"—all the "triers
of the reins" know that to their discomfort; and
the saying, " Know thyself," in the mouth of a God
and spoken to man, is almost a mockery. But
that the case of self-observation is so desperate,
is attested best of all by the manner in which
almost everybody talks of the nature of a moral
action, that prompt, willing, convinced, loquacious
manner, with its look, its smile, and its pleasing
eagerness! Everyone seems inclined to say to
you: "Why, my dear Sir, that is precisely my affair!
You address yourself with your question to him
who is authorised to answer, for I happen to be wiser
with regard to this matter than in anything else.
Therefore, when a man decides that'this is right,'
when he accordingly concludes that ' it must there-
fore be done,' and thereupon does what he has thus
recognised as right and designated as necessary—
then the nature of his action is moral! " But, my
friend, you are talking to me about three actions
instead of one: your deciding, for instance, that
"this is right," is also an action,—could one not


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260 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
judge either morally or immorally? Why do you
regard this, and just this, as right? —"Because my
conscience tells me so; conscience never speaks
immorally, indeed it determines in the first place
what shall be moral! "—But why do you listen to
the voice of your conscience? And in how far are
you justified in regarding such a judgment as true
and infallible? This belief-—is there no further
conscience for it? Do you know nothing of an
intellectual conscience? A conscience behind your
"conscience "? Your decision, "this is right," has
a previous history in your impulses, your likes and
dislikes, your experiences and non-experiences;
"how has it originated? " you must ask, and after-
wards the further question: "what really impels me
to give ear to it? " You can listen to its command
like a brave soldier who hears the command of
his officer. Or like a woman who loves him who
commands. Or like a flatterer and coward, afraid
of the commander. Or like a blockhead who follows
because he has nothing to say to the contrary. In
short, you can give ear to your conscience in a
hundred different ways. But that you hear this or
that judgment as the voice of conscience, conse-
quently, that you feel a thing to be right—may
have its cause in the fact that you have never
reflected about yourself, and have blindly accepted
from your childhood what has been designated to
you as right: or in the fact that hitherto bread and
honours have fallen to your share with that which
you call your duty,—it is "right" to you, because
it seems to be your " condition of existence" (that
you, however, have a right to existence appears to


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 261
you as irrefutable! ). The persistency of your moral
judgment might still be just a proof of personal
wretchedness or impersonality; your "moral force"
might have its source in your obstinacy—or in
your incapacity to perceive new ideals! And to
be brief: if you had thought more acutely, observed
more accurately, and had learned more, you would
no longer under all circumstances call this and that
your "duty" and your "conscience ": the know-
ledge how moral judgments have in general always
originated, would make you tired of these pathetic
words,—as you have already grown tired of other
pathetic words, for instance "sin," "salvation," and
"redemption. "—And now, my friend, do not talk to
me about the categorical imperative! That word
tickles my ear, and I must laugh in spite of your
presence and your seriousness. In this connection
I recollect old Kant, who, as a punishment for having
gained possession surreptitiously of the "thing in
itself"—also a very ludicrous affair! —was imposed
upon by the categorical imperative, and with that in
his heart strayed back again to " God," the " soul,"
"freedom," and "immortality," like a fox which
strays back into its cage: and it had been his strength
and shrewdness which had broken open this cage! —
What? You admire the categorical imperative in
you? This " persistency" of your so-called moral
judgment? This absoluteness of the feeling that
"as I think on this matter, so must everyone think"?
Admire rather your selfishness therein! And the
blindness, paltriness, and modesty of your selfish-
ness! For it is selfishness in a person to regard
his judgment as universal law, and a blind, paltry


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262 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
and modest selfishness besides, because it betrays
that you have not yet discovered yourself, that you
have not yet created for yourself any individual,
quite individual ideal:—for this could never be the
ideal of another, to say nothing of all, of every
one! He who still thinks that "each would
have to act in this manner in this case," has not yet
advanced half a dozen paces in self-knowledge:
otherwise he would know that there neither are nor
can be similar actions,—that every action that has
been done, has been done in an entirely unique and
inimitable manner, and that it will be the same
with regard to all future actions; that all precepts
of conduct (and even the most esoteric and subtle
precepts of all moralities up to the present), apply
only to the coarse exterior,—that by means of them,
indeed, a semblance of equality can be attained,
but only a semblance,—that in outlook or retrospect,
every action is and remains an impenetrable affair,—
that our opinions of " good," " noble" and "great"
can never be demonstrated by our actions, because
no action is cognisable,—that our opinions, esti-
mates, and tables of values are certainly among
the most powerful levers in the mechanism of our
actions, that in every single case, nevertheless, the
law of their mechanism is untraceable. Let us
confine ourselves, therefore, to the purification of our
opinions and appreciations, and to the construction
of new tables of value of our own :—we will, how-
ever, brood no longer over the " moral worth of our
actions"! Yes, my friends! As regards the whole
moral twaddle of people about one another, it is
time to be disgusted with it! To sit in judgment


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WE FEARLESS ONES
277
conviction voluntarily condescends to the modesty of
an hypothesis, a preliminary standpoint for experi-
ment, or a regulative fiction, that its access to the
realm of knowledge, and a certain value therein,
can be conceded,--always, however, with the re-
striction that it must remain under police super-
vision, under the police of our distrust. —Regarded
more accurately, however, does not this imply that
only when a conviction ceases to be a conviction
can it obtain admission into science? Does not
the discipline of the scientific spirit just commence
when one no longer harbours any conviction? . . .
It is probably so: only, it remains to be asked
whether, in order that this discipline may comience,
it is not necessary that there should already be a
conviction, and in fact one so imperative and
absolute, that it makes a sacrifice of all other
convictions. One sees that science also rests
on a belief: there is no science at all “without
premises. ” The question whether truth is neces-
sary, must not merely be affirmed beforehand,
but must be affirmed to such an extent that
the principle, belief, or conviction finds expres-
sion, that "there is nothing more necessary than
truth, and in comparison with it everything else
has only a secondary value. ”—This absolute will
to truth: what is it? Is it the will not to allow
ourselves to be deceived ? Is it the will not to de-
ceive? For the will to truth could also be inter-
preted in this fashion, provided one includes under
the generalisation, “I will not deceive," the
special case, “I will not deceive myself. ” But
why not deceive? Why not allow oneself to be


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264 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
and foreign in history: if this embryo were given
several centuries and more, there might finally
evolve out of it a marvellous plant, with a smell
equally marvellous, on account of which our old
earth might be more pleasant to live in than it has
been hitherto. We moderns are just beginning
to form the chain of a very powerful, future senti-
ment, link by link,—we hardly know what we are
doing. It almost seems to us as if it were not the
question of a new sentiment, but of the decline of all
old sentiments :—the historical sense is still some-
thing so poor and cold, and many are attacked by it
as by a frost, and are made poorer and colder by it.
To others it appears as the indication of stealthily
approaching age, and our planet is regarded by
them as a melancholy invalid, who, in order to
forget his present condition, writes the history of
his youth. In fact, this is one aspect of the new
sentiment. He who knows how to regard the
history of man in its entirety as his own history,
feels in the immense generalisation all the grief
of the invalid who thinks of health, of the old
man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of the
lover who is robbed of his beloved, of the martyr
whose ideal is destroyed, of the hero on the
evening of the indecisive battle which has
brought him wounds and the loss of a friend.
But to bear this immense sum of grief of all
kinds, to be able to bear it, and yet still be
the hero who at the commencement of a second
day of battle greets the dawn and his happiness,
as one who has an horizon of centuries before
and behind him, as the heir of all nobility, of all


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SANCTUS JANUARIUS 265
past intellect, and the obligatory heir (as the
noblest) of all the old nobles; while at the same
time the first of a new nobility, the equal of which
has never been seen nor even dreamt of: to
take all this upon his soul, the oldest, the newest,
the losses, hopes, conquests, and victories of man-
kind: to have all this at last in one soul, and to
comprise it in one feeling:—this would necessarily
furnish a happiness which man has not hitherto
known,—a God's happiness, full of power and love,
full of tears and laughter, a happiness which, like
the sun in the evening, continually gives of its
inexhaustible riches and empties into the sea,—
and like the sun, too, feels itself richest when even
the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars! This
divine feeling might then be called—humanity!
338.
The Will to Suffering and the Compassionate. —Is
it to your advantage to be above all compassionate?
And is it to the advantage of the sufferers when
you are so? But let us leave the first question for
a moment without an answer. —That from which
we suffer most profoundly and personally is almost
incomprehensible and inaccessible to every one else:
in this matter we are hidden from our neighbour
even when he eats at the same table with us.
Everywhere, however, where we are noticed as
sufferers, our suffering is interpreted in a shallow
way; it belongs to the nature of the emotion of
pity to divest unfamiliar suffering of its properly
personal character :—our "benefactors" lower our
value and volition more than our enemies. In


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266 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, IV
most benefits which are conferred on the unfor-
tunate there is something shocking in the intellec-
tual levity with which the compassionate person
plays the role of fate: he knows nothing of all the
inner consequences and complications which are
called misfortune for me or for you! The entire
economy of my soul and its adjustment by "mis-
fortune," the uprising of new sources and needs, the
closing up of old wounds, the repudiation of whole
periods of the past—none of these things which
may be connected with misfortune preoccupy the
dear sympathiser. He wishes to succour, and does
not reflect that there is a personal necessity for mis-
fortune; that terror, want, impoverishment, midnight
watches, adventures, hazards and mistakes are as
necessary to me and to you as their opposites, yea,
that, to speak mystically, the path to one's own
heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of
one's own hell. No, he knows nothing thereof. The
"religion of compassion " (or " the heart") bids him
help, and he thinks he has helped best when he has
helped most speedily! If you adherents of this
religion actually have the same sentiments towards
yourselves which you have towards your fellows,
if you are unwilling to endure your own suffering
even for an hour, and continually forestall all
possible misfortune, if you regard suffering and
pain generally as evil, as detestable, as deserving
of annihilation, and as blots on existence, well, you
have then, besides your religion of compassion, yet
another religion in your heart (and this is perhaps
the mother of the former)—the religion of smug ease.
Ah, how little you know of the happiness of


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WE FEARLESS ONES
281
which people have met, after all distrust, dissen-
sion, and contradiction, the hallowed place of
peace, where thinkers could obtain rest even from
themselves, could recover breath and revive. I
see no one who has ventured to criticise the
estimates of moral worth. I miss in this con-
nection even the attempts of scientific curiosity,
and the fastidious, groping imagination of psycho-
logists and historians, which easily anticipates a
problem and catches it on the wing, without rightly
knowing what it catches. With difficulty I have
discovered some scanty data for the purpose of
furnishing a history of the origin of these feelings
and estimates of value (which is something different
from a criticism of them, and also something differ-
ent from a history of ethical systems). In an
individual case, I have done everything to encourage
the inclination and talent for this kind of history-
in vain, as it would seem to me at present. There
is little to be learned from those historians of
morality (especially Englishmen): they themselves
are usually, quite unsuspiciously, under the in-
fluence of a definite morality, and act unwittingly
as its armour-bearers and followers—perhaps still
repeating sincerely the popular superstition of
Christian Europe, that the characteristic of moral
action consists in abnegation, self-denial, self-
sacrifice, or in fellow-feeling and fellow-suffering.
The usual error in their premises is their insist-
ence on a certain consensus among human beings,
at least among civilised human beings, with
regard to certain propositions of morality, and
from thence they conclude that these propositions


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282
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
are absoluteiy bidding even upon you and me; or
reversely, they come to the conclusion that ni
morality at all is binding, after the truth has
dawned upon them that to different peoples moral
valuations are necessarily different: both of which
conclusions are equally childish follies. The error
of the more subtle amongst them is that they
discover and criticise the probably foolish opinions
of a people about its own morality, or the opinions
of mankind about human morality generally; they
treat accordingly of its origin, its religious sanctions,
the superstition of free will, and such matters; and
they think that just by so doing they have criticised
the morality itself. But the worth of a precept,
“Thou shalt,” is still fundamentally different from
and independent of such opinions about it, and
must be distinguished from the weeds of error
with which it has perhaps been overgrown: just
as the worth of a medicine to a sick person is
altogether independent of the question whether
he has a scientific opinion about medicine, or
merely thinks about it as an old wife would do.
A morality could even have grown out of an
error: but with this knowledge the problem of its
worth would not even be touched. —Thus, no one
has hitherto tested the value of that most cele-
brated of all medicines, called morality: for which
purpose it is first of all necessary for one—to call it
in question. Well, that is just our work. -
346.
Our Note of Interrogation. —But you don't under-
stand it? As a matter of fact, an effort will be


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WE FEARLESS ONES
283
necessary in order to understand us. We seek
for words; we seek perhaps also for ears. Who
are we after all? If we wanted simply to call our-
selves in older phraseology, atheists, unbelievers,
or even immoralists, we should still be far from
thinking ourselves designated thereby : we are all
three in too late a phase for people generally to
conceive, for you, my inquisitive friends, to be able
to conceive, what is our state of mind under the
circumstances. No! we have no longer the bitter-
ness and passion of him who has broken loose,
who has to make for himself a belief, a goal,
and even a martyrdom out of his unbelief! We
have become saturated with the conviction (and
have grown cold and hard in it) that things
are not at all divinely ordered in this world, nor
even according to human standards do they go on
rationally, mercifully, or justly: we know the fact
that the world in which we live is ungodly, immoral,
and“ inhuman,”—we have far too long interpreted
it to ourselves falsely and mendaciously, according
to the wish and will of our veneration, that is to say,
according to our need. For man is a venerating
animal! But he is also a distrustful animal : and
that the world is not worth what we have believed
it to be worth is about the surest thing our dis-
trust has at last managed to grasp. So much
distrust, so much philosophy! We take good
care not to say that the world is of less value :
it seems to us at present absolutely ridiculous
when man claims to devise values to surpass
the values of the actual world, -it is precisely
from that point that we have retraced our steps;


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284
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
as from an extravagant error of human conceit and
irrationality, which for a long period has not been
recognised as such. This error had its last ex-
pression in modern Pessimism; an older and
stronger manifestation in the teaching of Buddha ;
but Christianity also contains it, more dubiously,
to be sure, and more ambiguously, but none the
less seductive on that account. The whole attitude
of "man versus the world,” man as world-denying
principle, man as the standard of the value of
things, as judge of the world, who in the end
puts existence itself on his scales and finds it too
light-the monstrous impertinence of this attitude
has dawned upon us as such, and has disgusted
us,—we now laugh when we find, “Man and
World” placed beside one another, separated by
the sublime presumption of the little word "and ”!
But how is it? Have we not in our very laugh-
ing just made a further step in despising mankind ?
And consequently also in Pessimism, in despising
the existence cognisable by us? Have we not
just thereby become liable to a suspicion of an
opposition between the world in which we have
hitherto been at home with our venerations—for
the sake of which we perhaps endure life-and
another world which we ourselves are : an inexor-
able, radical, most profound suspicion concerning
ourselves, which is continually getting us Euro-
peans more annoyingly into its power, and could
easily face the coming generation with the ter-
rible alternative : Either do away with your
venerations, or — with yourselves ! ” The latter
would be Nihilism—but would not the former


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WE FEARLESS ONES
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also be Nihilism? This is our note of interro-
gation.
347.
Believers and their Need of Belief. —How much
faith a person requires in order to flourish, how
much "fixed opinion” he requires which he does
not wish to have shaken, because he holds himself
thereby—is a measure of his power (or more plainly
speaking, of his weakness). Most people in old
Europe, as it seems to me, still need Christianity
at present, and on that account it still finds belief.
For such is man: a theological dogma might be
refuted to him a thousand times,-provided, how-
ever, that he had need of it, he would again and
again accept it as "true,"-according to the famous
"proof of power” of which the Bible speaks.
Some have still need of metaphysics; but also
the impatient longing for certainty which at present
discharges itself in scientific, positivist fashion
among large numbers of the people, the longing
by all means to get at something stable (while
on account of the warmth of the longing the
establishing of the certainty is more leisurely and
negligently undertaken): even this is still the
longing for a hold, a support; in short, the instinct
of weakness, which, while not actually creating
religions, metaphysics, and convictions of all kinds,
nevertheless—preserves them. In fact, around all
these positivist systems there fume the vapours of
a certain pessimistic gloom, something of weari-
ness, fatalism, disillusionment, and fear of new
disillusionment-or else manifest animosity, ill-
humour, anarchic exasperation, and whatever there


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288
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
learned man and his family, especially of the
nature of their callings and occupations. Where
the feeling finds expression, "That is at last
proved, I am now done with it," it is commonly
the ancestor in the blood and instincts of the
learned man that approves of the “accomplished
work” in the nook from which he sees things;
the belief in the proof is only an indication of what
has been looked upon for ages by a laborious
family as “good work. " Take an example: the
sons of registrars and office-clerks of every kind,
whose main task has always been to arrange a
variety of material, distribute it in drawers, and
systematise it generally, evince, when they become
learned men, an inclination to regard a problem
as almost solved when they have systematised it.
There are philosophers who are at bottom nothing
but systematising brains—the formal part of the
paternal occupation has become its essence to
them. The talent for classifications, for tables
of categories, betrays something; it is not for
nothing that a person is the child of his parents.
The son of an advocate will also have to be an
advocate as investigator : he seeks as a first con-
sideration, to carry the point in his case, as a
second consideration, he perhaps seeks to be in
the right. One recognises the sons of Protestant
clergymen and schoolmasters by the naïve as-
surance with which as learned men they already
assume their case to be proved, when it has but
been presented by them staunchly and warmly :
they are thoroughly accustomed to people believing
in them,-it belonged to their fathers' “trade”!


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WE FEARLESS ONES
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A Jew, contrariwise, in accordance with his
business surroundings and the past of his race,
is least of all accustomed-to people believing
him. Observe Jewish scholars with regard to this
matter,—they all lay great stress on logic, that
is to say, on compelling assent by means of reasons ;
they know that they must conquer thereby, even
when race and class antipathy is against them, even
where people are unwilling to believe them. For
in fact, nothing is more democratic than logic:
it knows no respect of persons, and takes even the
crooked nose as straight. (In passing we may
remark that in respect to logical thinking, in
respect to cleaner intellectual habits, Europe is
not a little indebted to the Jews, above all the
Germans, as being a lamentably déraisonnable
race, who, even at the present day, must always
have their “heads washed "* in the first place.
Wherever the Jews have attained to influence, they
have taught to analyse more subtly, to argue more
acutely, to write more clearly and purely : it has
always been their problem to bring a people “ to
raison. ")
349.
The Origin of the Learned once more. -To seek
self-preservation merely, is the expression of a state
of distress, or of limitation of the true, fundamental
instinct of life, which aims at the extension of power,
and with this in view often enough calls in question
self-preservation and sacrifices it. It should be
* In German the expression Kopf zu waschen, besides
the literal sense, also means “to give a person a sound
drubbing. ”—TR.
19


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290
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
taken as symptomatic when individual philosophers,
as for example, the consumptive Spinoza, have
seen and have been obliged to see the principal
feature of life precisely in the so-called self-
preservative instinct :—they have just been men
in states of distress. That our modern natural
sciences have entangled themselves so much with
Spinoza's dogma (finally and most grossly in
Darwinism, with its inconceivably one-sided doc-
trine of the “struggle for existence”—), is probably
owing to the origin of most of the inquirers into
nature: they belong in this respect to the people,
their forefathers have been poor and humble persons,
who knew too well by immediate experience the
difficulty of making a living. Over the whole
of English Darwinism there hovers something of
the suffocating air of over-crowded England, some-
thing of the odour of humble people in need and
in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a
person ought to emerge from his paltry human
nook : and in nature the state of distress does not
prevail, but superfluity, even prodigality to the
extent of folly. The struggle for existence is only
an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to
live; the struggle, be it great or small, turns every-
where on predominance, on increase and expansion,
on power, in conformity to the will to power, which
is just the will to live.
350.
In Honour of Homines Religiosi. —The struggle
against the church is most certainly (among other
things—for it has a manifold significance) the



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WE FEARLESS ONES
291
struggle of the more ordinary, cheerful, confiding,
superficial natures against the rule of the graver,
profounder, more contemplative natures, that is to
say, the more malign and suspicious men, who
with long continued distrust in the worth of life,
brood also over their own worth :-the ordinary
instinct of the people, its sensual gaiety, its “good
heart,” revolts against them. The entire Roman
Church rests on a Southern suspicion of the nature
of man (always misunderstood in the North), a
suspicion whereby the European South has suc-
ceeded to the inheritance of the profound Orient-
the mysterious, venerable Asia—and its contem-
plative spirit. Protestantism was a popular
insurrection in favour of the simple, the respect-
able, the superficial (the North has always been
more good-natured and more shallow than the
South), but it was the French Revolution that first
gave the sceptre wholly and solemnly into the
hands of the “good man” (the sheep, the ass, the
goose, and everything incurably shallow, bawling,
and fit for the Bedlam of "modern ideas ").
351.
In Honour of Priestly Natures. —I think that
philosophers have always felt themselves furthest
removed from that which the people (in all classes
of society nowadays) take for wisdom : the prudent,
bovine placidity, piety, and country-parson meek-
ness, which lies in the meadow and gases at life
seriously and ruminatingly :—this is probably be-
cause philosophers have not had sufficiently the
taste of the “people," or of the country-parson


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290
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
taken as symptomatic when individual philosophers,
as for example, the consumptive Spinoza, have
seen and have been obliged to see the principal
feature of life precisely in the so-called self-
preservative instinct :-they have just been men
in states of distress. That our modern natural
sciences have entangled themselves so much with
Spinoza's dogma (finally and most grossly in
Darwinism, with its inconceivably one-sided doc-
trine of the “struggle for existence"-), is probably
owing to the origin of most of the inquirers into
nature: they belong in this respect to the people,
their forefathers have been poor and humble persons,
who knew too well by immediate experience the
difficulty of making a living. Over the whole
of English Darwinism there hovers something of
the suffocating air of over-crowded England, some-
thing of the odour of humble people in need and
in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a
person ought to emerge from his paltry human
nook : and in nature the state of distress does not
prevail, but superfluity, even prodigality to the
extent of folly. The struggle for existence is only
an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to
live; the struggle, be it great or small, turns every-
where on predominance, on increase and expansion,
on power, in conformity to the will to power, which
is just the will to live.
350.
In Honour of Homines Religiosi. —The struggle
against the church is most certainly (among other
things—for it has a manifold significance) the


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WE FEARLESS ONES 277
conviction voluntarily condescends to the modesty of
an hypothesis, a preliminary standpoint for experi-
ment, or a regulative fiction, that its access to the
realm of knowledge, and a certain value therein,
can be conceded,—always, however, with the re-
striction that it must remain under police super-
vision, under the police of our distrust. —Regarded
more accurately, however, does not this imply that
only when a conviction ceases to be a conviction
can it obtain admission into science? Does not
the discipline of the scientific spirit just commence
when one no longer harbours any conviction? . . .
It is probably so: only, it remains to be asked
whether, in order that this discipline may commence,
it is not necessary that there should already be a
conviction, and in fact one so imperative and
absolute, that it makes a sacrifice of all other
convictions. One sees that science also rests
on a belief: there is no science at all "without
premises. " The question whether truth is neces-
sary, must not merely be affirmed beforehand,
but must be affirmed to such an extent that
the principle, belief, or conviction finds expres-
sion, that "there is nothing more necessary than
truth, and in comparison with it everything else
has only a secondary value. "—This absolute will
to truth: what is it? Is it the will not to allow
ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to de-
ceive? For the will to truth could also be inter-
preted in this fashion, provided one includes under
the generalisation, "I will not deceive," the
special case, "I will not deceive myself. " But
why not deceive? Why not allow oneself to be


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278 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
deceived ? —Let it be noted that the reasons for the
former eventuality belong to a category quite differ-
ent from those for the latter: one does not want to
be deceived oneself, under the supposition that it
is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived,
—in this sense science would be a prolonged
process of caution, foresight and utility; against
which, however, one might reasonably make objec-
tions. What? is not-wishing-to-be-deceived really
less injurious, less dangerous, less fatal? What do
you know of the character of existence in all its
phases to be able to decide whether the greater
advantage is on the side of absolute distrust, or
of absolute trustfulness? In case, however, of both
being necessary, much trusting and much distrust-
ing, whence then should science derive the abso-
lute belief, the conviction on which it rests, that
truth is more important than anything else, even
than every other conviction? This conviction
could not have arisen if truth and untruth had
both continually proved themselves to be use-
ful: as is the case. Thus—the belief in science,
which now undeniably exists, cannot have had
its origin in such a utilitarian calculation, but
rather in spite of the fact of the inutility and
dangerousness of the " Will to truth," of "truth at
all costs," being continually demonstrated. "At
all costs": alas, we understand that sufficiently
well, after having sacrificed and slaughtered one
belief after another at this altar! —Consequently,
"Will to truth" does not imply, " I will not allow
myself to be deceived," but—there is no other
alternative—" I will not deceive, not even myself":


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WE FEARLESS ONES
293
be, a human sacrifice. . . . The people regard such
sacrificed, silent, serious men of “faith" as "wise,"
that is to say, as men who have become sages, as
"reliable" in relation to their own unreliability.
Who would desire to deprive the people of that
expression and that veneration ? —But as is fair on
the other side, among philosophers the priest also
is still held to belong to the “people," and is not
regarded as a sage, because, above all, they them-
selves do not believe in “sages," and they already
scent "the people” in this very belief and super-
stition. It was modesty which invented in Greece
the word "philosopher," and left to the play-
actors of the spirit the superb arrogance of assuming
the name "wise "—the modesty of such monsters
of pride and self-glorification as Pythagoras and
Plato.
352.
Why we can hardly Dispense with Morality. -
The naked man is generally an ignominious
spectacle--I speak of us European males (and by
no means of European females ! ). If the most
joyous company at table suddenly found themselves
stripped and divested of their garments through the
trick of an enchanter, I believe that not only would
the joyousness be gone and the strongest appetite
lost;—it seems that we Europeans cannot at all
dispense with the masquerade that is called
clothing. But should not the disguise of “moral
men,” the screening under moral formulæ and
notions of decency, the whole kindly concealment
of our conduct under conceptions of duty, virtue,
public sentiment, honourableness, and disinter-


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280 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
this itself always becomes more untrustworthy,
what if nothing any longer proves itself divine,
except it be error, blindness, and falsehood ;—what
if God himself turns out to be our most persistent
lie? —
345-
Morality as a Problem. —A defect in personality
revenges itself everywhere: an enfeebled, lank,
obliterated, self-disavowing and disowning person-
ality is no longer fit for anything good—it is
least of all fit for philosophy. "Selflessness"
has no value either in heaven or on earth; the great
problems all demand great love, and it is only the
strong, well-rounded, secure spirits, those who have
a solid basis, that are qualified for them. It makes
the most material difference whether a thinker stands
personally related to his problems, having his fate,
his need, and even his highest happiness therein;
or merely impersonally, that is to say, if he can
only feel and grasp them with the tentacles of cold,
prying thought. In the latter case I warrant that
nothing comes of it: for the great problems, grant-
ing that they let themselves be grasped at all, do
not let themselves be held by toads and weaklings:
that has ever been their taste—a taste also which
they share with all high-spirited women. —How is
it that I have not yet met with any one, not even in
books, who seems to have stood to morality in this
position, as one who knew morality as a problem,
and this problem as his own personal need, afflic-
tion, pleasure and passion? It is obvious that
up to the present morality has not been a problem
at all; it has rather been the very ground on


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WE FEARLESS ONES 281
which people have met, after all distrust, dissen-
sion, and contradiction, the hallowed place of
peace, where thinkers could obtain rest even from
themselves, could recover breath and revive. I
see no one who has ventured to criticise the
estimates of moral worth. I miss in this con-
nection even the attempts of scientific curiosity,
and the fastidious, groping imagination of psycho-
logists and historians, which easily anticipates a
problem and catches it on the wing, without rightly
knowing what it catches. With difficulty I have
discovered some scanty data for the purpose of
furnishing a history of the origin of these feelings
and estimates of value (which is something different
from a criticism of them, and also something differ-
ent from a history of ethical systems). In an
individual case, I have done everything to encourage
the inclination and talent for this kind of history—
in vain, as it would seem to me at present. There
is little to be learned from those historians of
morality (especially Englishmen): they themselves
are usually, quite unsuspiciously, under the in-
fluence of a definite morality, and act unwittingly
as its armour-bearers and followers—perhaps still
repeating sincerely the popular superstition of
Christian Europe, that the characteristic of moral
action consists in abnegation, self-denial, self-
sacrifice, or in fellow-feeling and fellow-suffering.
The usual error in their premises is their insist-
ence on a certain consensus among human beings,
at least among civilised human beings, with
regard to certain propositions of morality, and
from thence they conclude that these propositions


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282 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
are absolutely binding even upon you and me; or
reversely, they come to the conclusion that no
morality at all is binding, after the truth has
dawned upon them that to different peoples moral
valuations are necessarily different: both of which
conclusions are equally childish follies. The error
of the more subtle amongst them is that they
discover and criticise the probably foolish opinions
of a people about its own morality, or the opinions
of mankind about human morality generally; they
treat accordingly of its origin, its religious sanctions,
the superstition of free will, and such matters; and
they think that just by so doing they have criticised
the morality itself. But the worth of a precept,
"Thou shalt," is still fundamentally different from
and independent of such opinions about it, and
must be distinguished from the weeds of error
with which it has perhaps been overgrown: just
as the worth of a medicine to a sick person is
altogether independent of the question whether
he has a scientific opinion about medicine, or
merely thinks about it as an old wife would do.
A morality could even have grown out of an
error: but with this knowledge the problem of its
worth would not even be touched. —Thus, no one
has hitherto tested the value of that most cele-
brated of all medicines, called morality: for which
purpose it is first of all necessary for one—to call it
in question. Well, that is just our work. —
346.
Our Note of Interrogation. —But you don't under-
stand it? As a matter of fact, an effort will be


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WE FEARLESS ONES 283
necessary in order to understand us. We seek
for words; we seek perhaps also for ears. Who
are we after all? If we wanted simply to call our-
selves in older phraseology, atheists, unbelievers,
or even immoralists, we should still be far from
thinking ourselves designated thereby: we are all
three in too late a phase for people generally to
conceive, for you, my inquisitive friends, to be able
to conceive, what is our state of mind under the
circumstances. No! we have no longer the bitter-
ness and passion of him who has broken loose,
who has to make for himself a belief, a goal,
and even a martyrdom out of his unbelief! We
have become saturated with the conviction (and
have grown cold and hard in it) that things
are not at all divinely ordered in this world, nor
even according to human standards do they go on
rationally, mercifully, or justly: we know the fact
that the world in which we live is ungodly, immoral,
and " inhuman,"—we have far too long interpreted
it to ourselves falsely and mendaciously, according
to the wish and will of our veneration, that is to say,
according to our need. For man is a venerating
animal! But he is also a distrustful animal: and
that the world is not worth what we have believed
it to be worth is about the surest thing our dis-
trust has at last managed to grasp. So much
distrust, so much philosophy! We take good
care not to say that the world is of less value:
it seems to us at present absolutely ridiculous
when man claims to devise values to surpass
the values of the actual world,—it is precisely
from that point that we have retraced our steps;
S


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284 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
as from an extravagant error of human conceit and
irrationality, which for a long period has not been
recognised as such. This error had its last ex-
pression in modern Pessimism; an older and
stronger manifestation in the teaching of Buddha;
but Christianity also contains it, more dubiously,
to be sure, and more ambiguously, but none the
less seductive on that account. The whole attitude
of "man versus the world," man as world-denying
principle, man as the standard of the value of
things, as judge of the world, who in the end
puts existence itself on his scales and finds it too
light—the monstrous impertinence of this attitude
has dawned upon us as such, and has disgusted
us,—we now laugh when we find, "Man and
World" placed beside one another, separated by
the sublime presumption of the little word "and "!
But how is it? Have we not in our very laugh-
ing just made a further step in despising mankind?
And consequently also in Pessimism, in despising
the existence cognisable by us? Have we not
just thereby become liable to a suspicion of an
opposition between the world in which we have
hitherto been at home with our venerations—for
the sake of which we perhaps endure life—and
another world which we ourselves are: an inexor-
able, radical, most profound suspicion concerning
ourselves, which is continually getting us Euro-
peans more annoyingly into its power, and could
easily face the coming generation with the ter-
rible alternative: Either do away with your
venerations, or — with yourselves /" The latter
would be Nihilism—but would not the former


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WE FEARLESS ONES
297
necessities would at the same time have to be
most dependent upon others for his necessities.
It seems to me, however, to be so in relation to
whole races and successions of generations : where
necessity and need have long compelled men to
communicate with their fellows and understand
one another rapidly and subtly, a surplus of the
power and art of communication is at last acquired,
as if it were a fortune which had gradually accumu-
lated, and now waited for an heir to squander it
prodigally (the so-called artists are these heirs, in
like manner the orators, preachers, and authors:
all of them men who come at the end of a long
succession, “late-born” always, in the best sense of
the word, and as has been said, squanderers by
their very nature). Granted that this observation
is correct, I may proceed further to the conjecture
that consciousness generally has only been developed
under the pressure of the necessity for communica-
tion,—that from the first it has been necessary and
useful only between man and man (especially
between those commanding and those obeying),
and has only developed in proportion to its utility.
Consciousness is properly only a connecting net-
work between man and man,-it is only as
such that it has had to develop; the recluse
and wild-beast species of men would not have
needed it. The very fact that our actions,
thoughts, feelings and motions come within the
range of our consciousness—at least a part of them
-is the result of a terrible, prolonged “must”
ruling man's destiny: as the most endangered
animal he needed help and protection ; he needed


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284 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
as from an extravagant error of human conceit and
irrationality, which for a long period has not been
recognised as such. This error had its last ex-
pression in modern Pessimism; an older and
stronger manifestation in the teaching of Buddha;
but Christianity also contains it, more dubiously,
to be sure, and more ambiguously, but none the
less seductive on that account. The whole attitude
of "man versus the world," man as world-denying
principle, man as the standard of the value of
things, as judge of the world, who in the end
puts existence itself on his scales and finds it too
light—the monstrous impertinence of this attitude
has dawned upon us as such, and has disgusted
us,—we now laugh when we find, "Man and
World" placed beside one another, separated by
the sublime presumption of the little word "and "!
But how is it? Have we not in our very laugh-
ing just made a further step in despising mankind?
And consequently also in Pessimism, in despising
the existence cognisable by us? Have we not
just thereby become liable to a suspicion of an
opposition between the world in which we have
hitherto been at home with our venerations—for
the sake of which we perhaps endure life—and
another world which we ourselves are: an inexor-
able, radical, most profound suspicion concerning
ourselves, which is continually getting us Euro-
peans more annoyingly into its power, and could
easily face the coming generation with the ter-
rible alternative: Either do away with your
venerations, or — with yourselves! " The latter
would be Nihilism—but would not the former


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WE FEARLESS ONES
299
tion to communal and gregarious utility that it
is finely developed; and that consequently each
of us, in spite of the best intention of understanding
himself as individually as possible, and of “knowing
himself,” will always just call into consciousness
the non-individual in him, namely, his “average-
ness”;—that our thought itself is continuously as it
were outvoted by the character of consciousness-
by the imperious "genius of the species " therein-
and is translated back into the perspective of the
herd. Fundamentally our actions are in an incom-
parable manner altogether personal, unique and
absolutely individual—there is no doubt about it;
but as soon as we translate them into conscious-
ness, they do not appear so any longer. . . . This is
the proper phenomenalism and perspectivism as I
understand it: the nature of animal consciousness
involves the notion that the world of which we can
become conscious is only a superficial and symbolic
world, a generalised and vulgarised world ;—that
everything which becomes conscious becomes just
thereby shallow, meagre, relatively stupid, - a
generalisation, a symbol, a characteristic of the
herd; that with the evolving of consciousness there
is always combined a great, radical perversion,
falsification, superficialisation, and generalisation.
Finally, the growing consciousness is a danger,
and whoever lives among the most conscious
Europeans knows even that it is a disease. As
may be conjectured, it is not the antithesis of
subject and object with which I am here con-
cerned: I leave that distinction to the episte-
mologists who have remained entangled in the


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286 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
is of symptom or masquerade of the feeling of
weakness. Even the readiness with which our
cleverest contemporaries get lost in wretched
corners and alleys, for example, in Vaterlanderei
(so I designate Jingoism, called chauvinisme in
France, and "deutsch" in Germany), or in petty
aesthetic creeds in the manner of Parisian natura-
lisme (which only brings into prominence and
uncovers that aspect of nature which excites
simultaneously disgust and astonishment—they
like at present to call this aspect la verite" vraie),
or in Nihilism in the St Petersburg style (that
is to say, in the belief in unbelief, even to
martyrdom for it):—this shows always and above
all the need of belief, support, backbone, and
buttress. . . . Belief is always most desired, most
pressingly needed where there is a lack of will: for
the will, as emotion of command, is the distin-
guishing characteristic of sovereignty and power.
That is to say, the less a person knows how to
command, the more urgent is his desire for one
who commands, who commands sternly,—a God, a
prince, a caste, a physician, a confessor, a dogma,
a party conscience. From whence perhaps it
could be inferred that the two world-religions,
Buddhism and Christianity, might well have had
the cause of their rise, and especially of their rapid
extension, in an extraordinary malady of the will.
And in truth it has been so: both religions lighted
upon a longing, monstrously exaggerated by malady
of the will, for an imperative, a "Thou-shalt," a
longing going the length of despair; both religions
were teachers of fanaticism in times of slackness


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WE FEARLESS ONES 287
of will-power, and thereby offered to innumerable
persons a support, a new possibility of exercising
will, an enjoyment in willing. For in fact fanati-
cism is the sole "volitional strength" to which
the weak and irresolute can be excited, as a
sort of hypnotising of the entire sensory-intellectual
system, in favour of the over-abundant nutrition
(hypertrophy) of a particular point of view and a
particular sentiment, which then dominates—the
Christian calls it his faith. When a man arrives
at the fundamental conviction that he requires to
be commanded, he becomes "a believer. " Reversely,
one could imagine a delight and a power of self-
determining, and a freedom of will whereby a spirit
could bid farewell to every belief, to every wish for
certainty, accustomed as it would be to support
itself on slender cords and possibilities, and to
dance even on the verge of abysses. Such a spirit
would be the free spirit par excellence.
348.
The Origin of the Learned. —The learned man in
Europe grows out of all the different ranks and
social conditions, like a plant requiring no specific
soil: on that account he belongs essentially and
involuntarily to the partisans of democratic thought.
But this origin betrays itself. If one has trained
one's glance to some extent to recognise in a
learned book or scientific treatise the intellectual
idiosyncrasy of the learned man—all of them
have such idiosyncrasy,—and if we take it by
surprise, we shall almost always get a glimpse
behind it of the "antecedent history" of the


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288 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
learned man and his family, especially of the
nature of their callings and occupations. Where
the feeling finds expression, "That is at last
proved, I am now done with it," it is commonly
the ancestor in the blood and instincts of the
learned man that approves of the "accomplished
work" in the nook from which he sees things;—
the belief in the proof is only an indication of what
has been looked upon for ages by a laborious
family as "good work. " Take an example: the
sons of registrars and office-clerks of every kind,
whose main task has always been to arrange a
variety of material, distribute it in drawers, and
systematise it generally, evince, when they become
learned men, an inclination to regard a problem
as almost solved when they have systematised it.
There are philosophers who are at bottom nothing
but systematising brains—the formal part of the
paternal occupation has become its essence to
them. The talent for classifications, for tables
of categories, betrays something; it is not for
nothing that a person is the child of his parents.
The son of an advocate will also have to be an
advocate as investigator: he seeks as a first con-
sideration, to carry the point in his case, as a
second consideration, he perhaps seeks to be in
the right. One recognises the sons of Protestant
clergymen and schoolmasters by the naive as-
surance with which as learned men they already
assume their case to be proved, when it has but
been presented by them staunchly and warmly:
they are thoroughly accustomed to people believing
in them,—it belonged to their fathers' "trade"!


## p. 289 (#391) ############################################

WE FEARLESS ONES 289
A Jew, contrariwise, in accordance with his
business surroundings and the past of his race,
is least of all accustomed—to people believing
him. Observe Jewish scholars with regard to this
matter,—they all lay great stress on logic, that
is to say, on compelling assent by means of reasons;
they know that they must conquer thereby, even
when race and class antipathy is against them, even
where people are unwilling to believe them. For
in fact, nothing is more democratic than logic:
it knows no respect of persons, and takes even the
crooked nose as straight. (In passing we may
remark that in respect to logical thinking, in
respect to cleaner intellectual habits, Europe is
not a little indebted to the Jews; above all the
Germans, as being a lamentably dtraisonnable
race, who, even at the present day, must always
have their "heads washed "* in the first place.
Wherever the Jews have attained to influence, they
have taught to analyse more subtly, to argue more
acutely, to write more clearly and purely: it has
always been their problem to bring a people "to
raison")
349-
The Origin of the Learned once more. —To seek
self-preservation merely, is the expression of a state
of distress, or of limitation of the true, fundamental
instinct of life, which aims at the extension of power,
and with this in view often enough calls in question
self-preservation and sacrifices it. It should be
* In German the expression Kopf zu waschen, besides
the literal sense, also means "to give a person a sound
drubbing. "—Tr.
19


## p. 290 (#392) ############################################

29O THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
taken as symptomatic when individual philosophers,
as for example, the consumptive Spinoza, have
seen and have been obliged to see the principal
feature of life precisely in the so-called self-
preservative instinct:—they have just been men
in states of distress. That our modern natural
sciences have entangled themselves so much with
Spinoza's dogma (finally and most grossly in
Darwinism, with its inconceivably one-sided doc-
trine of the "struggle for existence "—), is probably
owing to the origin of most of the inquirers into
nature: they belong in this respect to the people,
their forefathers have been poor and humble persons,
who knew too well by immediate experience the
difficulty of making a living. Over the whole
of English Darwinism there hovers something of
the suffocating air of over-crowded England, some-
thing of the odour of humble people in need and
in straits. But as an investigator of nature, a
person ought to emerge from his paltry human
nook: and in nature the state of distress does not
prevail, but superfluity, even prodigality to the
extent of folly. The struggle for existence is only
an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to
live; the struggle, be it great or small, turns every-
where on predominance, on increase and expansion,
on power, in conformity to the will to power, which
is just the will to live.
3 SO.
In Honour of Homines Religiosi. —The struggle
against the church is most certainly (among other
things—for it has a manifold significance) the


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WE FEARLESS ONES 291
struggle of the more ordinary, cheerful, confiding,
superficial natures against the rule of the graver,
profounder, more contemplative natures, that is to
say, the more malign and suspicious men, who
with long continued distrust in the worth of life,
brood also over their own worth:—the ordinary
instinct of the people, its sensual gaiety, its "good
heart," revolts against them. The entire Roman
Church rests on a Southern suspicion of the nature
of man (always misunderstood in the North), a
suspicion whereby the European South has suc-
ceeded to the inheritance of the profound Orient—
the mysterious, venerable Asia—and its contem-
plative spirit. Protestantism was a popular
insurrection in favour of the simple, the respect-
able, the superficial (the North has always been
more good-natured and more shallow than the
South), but it was the French Revolution that first
gave the sceptre wholly and solemnly into the
hands of the "good man " (the sheep, the ass, the
goose, and everything incurably shallow, bawling,
and fit for the Bedlam of " modern ideas ").
351-
In Honour of Priestly Natures. —I think that
philosophers have always felt themselves furthest
removed from that which the people (in all classes
of society nowadays) take for wisdom: the prudent,
bovine placidity, piety, and country-parson meek-
ness, which lies in the meadow and gazes at life
seriously and ruminatingly:—this is probably be-
cause philosophers have not had sufficiently the
taste of the "people," or of the country-parson


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292 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
for that kind of wisdom. Philosophers will also
perhaps be the latest to acknowledge that the
people should understand something of that which
lies furthest from them, something of the great
passion of the thinker, who lives and must live
continually in the storm-cloud of the highest
problems and the heaviest responsibilities (con-
sequently, not gazing at all, to say nothing of
doing so indifferently, securely, objectively). The
people venerate an entirely different type of man
when on their part they form the ideal of a
"sage," and they are a thousand times justified
in rendering homage with the highest eulogies and
honours to precisely that type of men—namely,
the gentle, serious, simple, chaste, priestly natures
and those related to them,—it is to them that
the praise falls due in the popular veneration of
wisdom. And to whom should the people ever
have more reason to be grateful than to these men
who pertain to its class and rise from its ranks, but
are persons consecrated, chosen, and sacrificed for its
good—they themselves believe themselves sacrificed
to God,—before whom the people can pour forth its
heart with impunity, by whom it can get rid of its
secrets, cares, and worse things (for the man who
"communicates himself" gets rid of himself, and he
who has "confessed " forgets). Here there exists a
great need: for sewers and pure cleansing waters
are required also for spiritual filth, and rapid
currents of love are needed, and strong, lowly, pure
hearts, who qualify and sacrifice themselves for
such service of the non-public health department—
for it is a sacrificing, the priest is, and continues to


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WE FEARLESS ONES
307
Hegel, inasmuch as we (in contradistinction to all
Latin peoples) instinctively attribute to becoming,
to evolution, a profounder significance and higher
value than to that which “is”—we hardly believe
at all in the validity of the concept “being. "
This is all the more the case because we are not
inclined to concede to our human logic that it is
logic in itself, that it is the only kind of logic (we
should rather like, on the contrary, to convince
ourselves that it is only a special case, and perhaps
one of the strangest and most stupid). A fourth
question would be whether also Schopenhauer with
his Pessimism, that is to say the problem of
the worth of existence, had to be a German. I
think not. The event after which this problem
was to be expected with certainty, so that an
astronomer of the soul could have calculated the
day and the hour for it-namely, the decay of the
belief in the Christian God, the victory of scientific
atheism,-is a universal European event, in which
all races are to have their share of service and
honour. On the contrary, it has to be ascribed
precisely to the Germans—those with whom
Schopenhauer was contemporary,—that they de-
layed this victory of atheism longest, and en-
dangered it most. Hegel especially was its retarder
par excellence, in virtue of the grandiose attempt
which he made to persuade us of the divinity of
existence, with the help at the very last of our
sixth sense, “the historical sense. ” As philosopher,
Schopenhauer was the first avowed and inflexible
atheist we Germans have had : his hostility to
Hegel had here its background. The non-divinity


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308
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
of existence was regarded by him as something
understood, palpable, indisputable; he always lost
his philosophical composure and got into a passion
when he saw anyone hesitate and beat about the
bush here. It is at this point that his thorough
uprightness of character comes in: unconditional,
honest atheism is precisely the preliminary condition
for his raising the problem, as a final and hardwon
victory of the European conscience, as the most
prolific act of two thousand years' discipline to
truth, which in the end no longer tolerates the
lie of the belief in a God. . . . One sees what has
really gained the victory over the Christian God,
Christian morality itself, the conception of veracity,
taken ever more strictly, the confessional subtlety
of the Christian conscience, translated and sub-
limated to the scientific conscience, to intellectual
purity at any price. To look upon nature as if it
were a proof of the goodness and care of a God;
to interpret history in honour of a divine reason,
as a constant testimony to a inoral order in the
world and a moral final purpose; to explain
personal experiences as pious men have long
enough explained them, as if everything were a
dispensation or intimation of Providence, some-
thing planned and sent on behalf of the salvation
of the soul : all that is now past, it has conscience
against it, it is regarded by all the more acute
consciences as disreputable and dishonourable,
as mendaciousness, femininism, weakness, and
cowardice,—by virtue of this severity, if by any-
thing, we are good Europeans, the heirs of Europe's
longest and bravest self-conquest. When we thus


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WE FEARLESS ONES 295
second of these inventions is the more essential:
the first, the mode of life, has usually been there
already, side by side, however, with other modes of
life, and still unconscious of the value which it
embodies. The import, the originality of the
founder of a religion, discloses itself usually in the
fact that he sees the mode of life, selects it, and
divines for the first time the purpose for which it
can be used, how it can be interpreted. Jesus (or
Paul), for example, found around him the life of the
common people in the Roman province, a modest,
virtuous, oppressed life: he interpreted it, he put
the highest significance and value into it—and
thereby the courage to despise every other mode
of life, the calm fanaticism of the Moravians, the
secret, subterranean self-confidence which goes on
increasing, and is at last ready " to. overcome the
world " (that is to say, Rome, and the upper classes
throughout the empire). Buddha, in like manner,
found the same type of man,—he found it in fact
dispersed among all the classes and social ranks of
a people who were good and kind (and above all
inoffensive), owing to indolence, and who likewise
owing to indolence, lived abstemiously, almost
without requirements. He understood that such a
type of man, with all its vis inertiae, had inevitably
to glide into a belief which promises to avoid the
return of earthly ill (that is to say, labour and
activity generally),—this "understanding" was his
genius. The founder of a religion possesses
psychological infallibility in the knowledge of a
definite, average type of souls, who have not yet
recognised themselves as akin. It is he who brings


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296 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
them together: the founding of a religion, therefore,
always becomes a long ceremony of recognition. —
354-
The "Genius of the Species. "—The problem of
consciousness (or more correctly: of becoming
conscious of oneself) meets us only when we begin
to perceive in what measure we could dispense with
it: and it is at the beginning of this perception
that we are now placed by physiology and zoology
(which have thus required two centuries to over-
take the hint thrown out in advance by Leibnitz).
For we could in fact think, feel, will, and recollect,
we could likewise "act" in every sense of the term,
and nevertheless nothing of it all would require
to "come into consciousness" (as one says meta-
phorically). The whole of life would be possible
without its seeing itself as it were in a mirror: as
in fact even at present the far greater part of our
life still goes on without this mirroring,—and even
our thinking, feeling, volitional life as well, how-
ever painful this statement may sound to an older
philosopher. What then is the purpose of conscious-
ness generally, when it is in the main superfluous ? —
Now it seems to me, if you will hear my answer
and its perhaps extravagant supposition, that the
subtlety and strength of consciousness are always in
proportion to the capacity for communication of a man
(or an animal), the capacity for communication in
its turn being in proportion to the necessity for
communication: the latter not to be understood as if
precisely the individual himself who is master in
the art of communicating and making known his



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WE FEARLESS ONES 297
necessities would at the same time have to be
most dependent upon others for his necessities.
It seems to me, however, to be so in relation to
whole races and successions of generations: where
necessity and need have long compelled men to
communicate with their fellows and understand
one another rapidly and subtly, a surplus of the
power and art of communication is at last acquired,
as if it were a fortune which had gradually accumu-
lated, and now waited for an heir to squander it
prodigally (the so-called artists are these heirs, in
like manner the orators, preachers, and authors:
all of them men who come at the end of a long
succession, " late-born " always, in the best sense of
the word, and as has been said, squanderers by
their very nature). Granted that this observation
is correct, I may proceed further to the conjecture
that consciousness generally has only been developed
under the pressure of the necessity for communica-
tion,—that from the first it has been necessary and
useful only between man and man (especially
between those commanding and those obeying),
and has only developed in proportion to its utility.
Consciousness is properly only a connecting net-
work between man and man,—it is only as
such that it has had to develop; the recluse
and wild-beast species of men would not have
needed it. The very fact that our actions,
thoughts, feelings and motions come within the
range of our consciousness—at least a part of them
—is the result of a terrible, prolonged "must"
ruling man's destiny: as the most endangered
animal he needed help and protection; he needed


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312
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
an experience of man, entirely different from what
the north has had. The Lutheran Reformation
in all its length and breadth was the indignation
of the simple against something "complicated. "
To speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest mis-
understanding, in which much is to be forgiven,-
people did not understand the mode of expression
of a victorious Church, and only saw corruption ;
they misunderstood the noble scepticism, the luxury
of scepticism and toleration which every victorious,
self-confident power permits. . . . One overlooks
the fact readily enough at present that as regards
all cardinal questions concerning power Luther
was badly endowed; he was fatally short-sighted,
superficial and imprudent-and above all, as a
man sprung from the people, he lacked all the
hereditary qualities of a ruling caste, and all the
instincts for power; so that his work, his intention
to restore the work of the Romans, merely became
involuntarily and unconsciously the commencement
of a work of destruction. He unravelled, he tore
asunder with honest rage, where the old spider had
woven longest and most carefully. He gave the
sacred books into the hands of everyone,—they
thereby got at last into the hands of the philologists,
that is to say, the annihilators of every belief based
upon books. He demolished the conception of
“the Church” in that he repudiated the belief in
the inspiration of the Councils : for only under the
supposition that the inspiring spirit which had
founded the Church still lives in it, still builds it,
still goes on building its house, does the conception
of "the Church” retain its power. He gave back


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tion to communal and gregarious utility that it
is finely developed; and that consequently each
of us, in spite of the best intention of understanding
himself as individually as possible, and of" knowing
himself," will always just call into consciousness
the non-individual in him, namely, his "average-
ness ";—that our thought itself is continuously as it
were outvoted by the character of consciousness—
by the imperious "genius of the species" therein—
and is translated back into the perspective of the
herd. Fundamentally our actions are in an incom-
parable manner altogether personal, unique and
absolutely individual—there is no doubt about it;
but as soon as we translate them into conscious-
ness, they do not appear so any longer.