No More Learning

" inc uria sui " — with
~whaLt thoroughness and expert subtlety have all



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 17S

these methods been exploited by the ascetic priest
in his war with pain !

When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower
orders, slaves, or prisoners (or women, who for the
most part are a compound of labour-slave and
prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little
with the names, and to rechristen, so as to make
them see henceforth a benefit, a comparative
happiness, in objects which they hated — the slave's
discontent with his lot was at any rate not invented
by the priests. An even more popular means of
fighting depression is the ordaining of a little joy,
which is easily accessible and can be made into a
rule; this medication is frequently used in con-
junction with the former ones. The most frequent]
form in vjiich joy is prescribed as a cure is the
joy in producing joy (such as doing good, giving
presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting,
praising, treating with distinction) ; together with
the prescription of " love your neighbo ur. " | The
ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most
cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation
of the strongest and most life-assertive impulse —
the Will for Power. The happiness involved in
the " smallest superiority " which is the con-
comitant of all benefiting, helping, extolling,
making one's self useful, is the most ample consola-
tion, of which, if they are well-advised, physio-
logical distortions avail themselves : in other
cases they hurt each other, and naturally in obedi-
ence to the same radical instinct. An investiga-
tion of the origin of Christianity in the Roman
world shows that co-operative unions for poverty,



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176 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

sickness, and burial sprang up in the lowest stratum
of contemporary society, amid which the chief
antidote against depression, the little joy experi-
enced in mutual benefits, was deliberately fostered.
Perchance this was then a novelty, a real dis-
covery ? This conjuring up of the will for co-opera-
tion, for family organisation, for communal life,
for " Ccenacula" necessarily brought the Will
for Power, which had been already infinitesimally
stimulated, to a new and much fuller manifesta-
tion. The herd organisation is a genuine advance
and triumph in the fight with depression. With
the growth of the community there matures even
to individuals a new interest, which often enough
takes him out of the more personal element in his
discontent, his aversion to himself, the ," despectus
sui" of Geulincx. f^U sick and diseased people
strive instinctively after a herd-organisation, out
of a desire to shake off their sense of oppressive
discomfort and weakness ; the ascetic priest
divines this instinct and promotes it ; wherever a
herd exists it is the instinct of weakness which
has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the
priests /which has organised it, for, mark this: by
an equally natural necessity the strong strive as
much for isolation as the weak for union : when
the former bind themselves it is only with a view
to an aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction
of their Will for Power, much against the wishes
of their individual consciences ; the latter, on the
contrary, range themselves together with positive
delight in such a muster — their instincts are as
much gratified thereby as the instincts of the



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 77

"born master" (that is, the solitary beast-of-prey
species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the
quick by organisatio n. | There is always lurking
beneath every oligarchy — such is the universal
lesson of history — the desire for tyranny. Every
oligarchy is continually quivering with the tension
of the effort required by each individual to keep
mastering this desire. (Such, e. g. , was the Greek ;
Plato shows it in a hundred places, Plato, who
knew his contemporaries — and himself^

19.

I The methods employed by the ascetic priest,
which we have already learnt to know — stifling
of all vitality, mechanical energy, the little joy,
and especially the method of " love your neigh-
bour" herd-organisation, the awaking of the
communal consciousness of power, to such a pitch
that the individual's disgust with himself becomes
eclipsed by his delight in the thriving of the
community — these are, according to modern
standards, the " innocent " methods employed in
the fight with depressi on ;^ let us turn now to
the more interesting topic of the '' guilty "
methods. The guilty methods spell one thing :
to produce emotional excess — which is used as the
most efficacious anaesthetic against their depress-
ing state of protracted pain ; this is why priestly
ingenuity has proved quite inexhaustible in
thinking out this one question : " By what means
can you produce an emotional excess ? " This
sounds harsh : it is manifest that it would sound
M



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178 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

nicer and would grate on one's ears less, if I
were to say, forsooth : " The ascetic priest made
use at all times of the enthusiasm contained in
all strong emotions. " But what is the good of
still soothing the delicate ears of our modern
effeminates ? What is the good on our side of
budging one single inch before their verbal
Pecksniffianism. For us psychologists to do that
would be at once practical Pecksniffianism, apart
from the fact of its nauseating us. The good
taste (others might say, the righteousness) of a
psychologist nowadays consists, if at all, in com-
bating the shamefully moralised language with
which all modern judgments on men and things
are smeared. For, do not deceive yourself: what
constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls
and of modern books is not the lying, but the
innocence which is part and parcel of their intel-
lectual dishonesty. The inevitable running up
against this "innocence" everywhere constitutes
the most distasteful feature of the somewhat
dangerous business which a modern psychologist
has to undertake: it is a part of our great
danger — it is a road which perhaps leads us
straight to the great nausea — I know quite well
the purpose which all modern books will and can
serve (granted that they last, which I am not
afraid of, and granted equally that there is to
be at some future day a generation with a more
rigid, more severe, and healthier taste) — the
function which all modernity generally will serve
with posterity: that of an emetic, — and this by
reason of its moral sugariness and falsity, its



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 79

ingrained feminism, which it is pleased to call
" Idealism," and at any rate believes to be
idealism. Our cultured men of to-day, our
" good " men, do not lie — that is true ; but it does
not redound to their honour ! The real lie, the
genuine, determined, " honest " lie (on whose
value you can listen to Plato) would prove too
tough and strong an article for them by a long
way ; it would be asking them to do what people
have been forbidden to ask them to do, to open
their eyes to their own selves, and to learn to
distinguish between " true " and " false " in their
own selves. The dishonest lie alone suits them :
everything which feels a good man is perfectly
incapable of any other attitude to anything than
that of a dishonourable liar, an absolute liar, but
none the less an innocent liar, a blue-eyed liar,
a virtuous liar. These " good men," they are
all now tainted with morality through and
through, and as far as honour is concerned they
are disgraced and corrupted for all eternity.
Which of them could stand a further truth '■ about
man"? or, put more tangibly, which of them
could put up with a true biography? One or
two instances : Lord Byron composed a most
personal autobiography, but Thomas Moore was
" too good " for it ; he burnt his friend's papers.
Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer's executor, is said
to have done the same ; for Schopenhauer as well
wrote much about himself, and perhaps also
«(g"amj^ himself (ei? eavrov). The virtuous Ameri-
can Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, suddenly
stopped his work : he had come to a certain



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l8o THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

point in that honourable and simple life, and
could stand it no longer. Moral : What sensible
man nowadays writes one honest word about
himself? He must already belong to the Order
of Holy Foolhardiness. We are promised an
autobiography of Richard Wagner ; who doubts
but that it would be a clever autobiography?
Think, forsooth, of the grotesque horror which
the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in Germany
with his inconceivably square and harmless
pictures of the German Reformation ; what
wouldn't people do if some real psychologist
were to tell us about a genuine Luther, tell us,
not with the moralist simplicity of a country
priest or the sweet and cautious modesty of a
Protestant historian, but say with the fearlessness
of a Taine, that springs from force of character
and not from a prudent toleration of force. (The
Germans, by the bye, have already produced the
classic specimen of this toleration — they may
well be allowed to reckon him as one of their
own, in Leopold Ranke, that bom classical
advocate of every causa fortior, that cleverest
of all the clever opportunists. )

20.

But you will soon understand me. — Putting it
shortly, t here is reason enough, is t here n ot, for
JUS___ps. yd^o^sts nowadays never getting^~a^^

from a, certain . . . miatrust of out own selves^^

Probably even we ourselves are still " too good "
for our ^ work • probably, whatever contempt we



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? (l8 1

feel for this popular craze^ for morality, we
7wsRlves_jfe_perhaps none the iess-its victims^
v rsy\~3. nd slay ggj_. prQbaMy_Jt_jnfects_even us.
Of what was that diplomat warning us, when
he said to his colleagues : " Let us especially mis-
trust our first impulses, gentlemen ! tkey are
almost always gvod" t So should nowadays every
psychologist talk to his colleagues. And thus
we get back to our problem, which in point of
fact does require from us a certain severity, a
certain mistrust especially against " first impulses. "
The ascetic ideal in the__servj££. — qf—p-mfected
^emotio nal excess T- — hewho remembers the previous
essay will already partially anticipate the essential
meaning compressed into these above ten words.
The thorough unswitching of t hgJruman_§Qul,_thg
plungi ng of it into terror, frost, ardour, rapture,
so as to free"Tt^"as through ~som^JightnIi^]JEock7
from all the smallness and pettiness of unhappi-
ness, depression, and discomfort : what waysHead"
to ^w_goal? AnJ which ol these ways"does~s6
inost safely ? . . . At b ottom all great emotio ns
^^MgJhisjiQHgcjpro vided that they find a sudde n
o utlet — emotions such as rage, fear, lust, revenge,
hope, triumph, despair, cruelty ^ and, in sooth, the
ascetic priest has had no scruples in taking into
his service the whole pack of hounds that rage
in the human kennel, unleashing now these and
now those, with the same constant object of
waking man out of his protracted melancholy,
of chasing away, at any rate for a time, his dull
pain, his shrinking misery, but always under the
sanction of a religious^ interpretation and justifica-



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1 82 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

tion. This emotional excess has subsequently to
be paid /or~ this is self-evident — it makes "The
tlt^more in^:^^^ana~'EEeretore tEis~Tan3~~oT remedy
for pain is~ according to moderrT stanHarcls^a
" guilty ^nong . "

The dictates of fairness, however, require that
we should all the more emphasise the fact that
this remedy is applied with a good conscience,
that the ascetic priest has prescribed it in the
most implicit belief in its utility and indispens-
ability; — often enough almost collapsing in the
presence of the pain which he created ;— that we
should similarly emphasise the fact that the
violent physiological revenges of such excesses,
even perhaps the mental disturbances, are not
absolutely inconsistent with the general tenor of
this kind of remedy ; this remedy, which, as we
have shown previously, is not for the purpose of
healing diseases, but of fighting the unhappiness
of that depression, the alleviation and deadening
of which was its object. The object was conse-
quently achieved. /The keynote by which the
ascetic priest was enabled to get every kind of
agonising and ecstatic music to play on the
fibres of the human soul — was, as every one knows,
the exploitation of the feeling of "guilt. "] I
have already indicated in the pf'evious essay the
origin of this feeling — as a piece of animal
psychology and nothing else : we were thus con-
fronted with the feeling of " guilt," in its crude
state, as it were. It was first in the hands of
the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of
guilt, that it took shape — oh, what a shape !



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 83

r ^Sin " — for that is the name of the new priestly
versi on of the anim al " bad-conscience " (the in-
verted cruelty) — has up to the present been the
Efreate st event in the history of the diseased soul :
in " sin " we find the most perilous and fatal master-
piece of religious interpretation,^ \ Imagine_^ man,
s uffering from himself, some way or other but at any
r ate phy siologically, perhaps like an animal shut
up in a cage, norcleaFas to the why and the
wheretore ! Tmagme him iri~TTis"desire for reasons
—reasons briiig'' relief — in his desire again for
re medies , n^xqtics at last, consulting one, who
knows even the occult — ^an3^~see71o~an3~^beH51(f,Tie
gets a hmt trom his wizard, the ascetic priest, hi^
first hint on the " cause " of his trouble : he iriiisl
search tor it in himself. , in his guiltiness, in a piece
"oTthe past, he must understand his very suffering
as a state ojT^unishmentT^Y^ hzs, heard, he has
understood, has the unfortunate : he is now in the
plight of a hen round which a line has been drawn.
He never gets out of the circle of lines. The sick
man has been turned into " the sinner " — and now
for a few thousand years we never get away from
the sight of this new invalid, of " a sinner " — shall
we ever get away from it ? — wherever we just look,
everywhere the hypnotic gaze of the sinner always
moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt,
the only cause of suffering) ; everywhere the evil
conscience, this ^^ greuliche thier" * to use Luther's
language ; everywhere rumination over the past, a
distorted view of action, the gaze of the "green-eyed

* " Horrible beast. "



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184 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

monster" turned on all action; everywhere thewilful
misunderstanding of suffering, its transvaluation
into feelings of guilt, fear of retribution ; every-
where the scourge, the hairy shirt, the starving body,
contrition ; everywhere the sinner breaking himself
on the ghastly wheel of a restless and morbidly
eager conscience ; leverywhere mute pain, extreme
fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the spasms of
an unknown happiness, the shriek for "r edemp tion," J
In point of fact, thanks to this system of procedure,
the old depression, dullnesSj andjati^ue were abso-
l. uSiv:. £Qnq5e£e3ZI ife itsel f became verfj ntsrestius
again, awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing,
~Bi5rnraway, exhausted and yet not tired — ^^suSiwas"
the figure cut by man, "the siriner,"'wKo was initi-
ated into these mysteries. This grand old wizard
of an ascetic priest fighting with depression — he
had clearly triumphed, Ms kingdom had come :
men no longer grumbled at pain, men panted after
pain : '^_^oy£_ ^ciin ! M ore pain ! " So for
centuries on end shrieked the demand of his
acolytes and initiates. Every emotional excess
which hurt ; eve rything which_ broke,~b vertfirew/
crushe d. trans porTgdj^avished ; the mystery of
tortu re-cham bers, the i nggaiutyloILheirjtgglf — ^all
this was now discovered, divined, exploited, all
this was at the service of the wizard, all this served
to promote the triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal.
" My kingdom is not of this world" quoth he, both
at the beginning and at the end : had he still the
right to talk like that? — Goethe has maintained
that there are only thirty-six tragic situations : we
would infer from that, did we not know otherwise



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 85

that Goethe was no ascetic priest. He — knows
more.

21.

So far as all this kind of priestly medicine-
mongering, the " guilty " kind, is concerned, every
word of criticism is superfluous. As for the sug-
gestion that emotional excess of the type, which
in these cases the ascetic priest is fain to order to
his sick patients (under the most sacred euphemism,
as is obvious, and equally impregnated with the
sanctity of his purpose)' has ever really been of
use to any sick man, who, forsooth, would feel in-
clined to maintain a proposition of that character ?
At any rate, some understanding should, be come
to as to the expression " be of use. " Ilf you only
wish to express that such a system of treatment
has reformed man, I do not gainsay it : I merely
add that " reformed " conveys to my mind as
much as "tamed," "weakened," "discouraged," "re-
fined," " daintified," " emasculated " (and thus it
means almost as much as injured^ But when you
have to deal principally with sick, depressed, and
oppressed creatures, such a system, even granted
that it makes the ill " better," under any circum-
stances also makes them more ill : ask the mad-
doctors the invariable result of a methodical appli-
cation of penance-torture, contrition, and salvation
ecstasies. Similarly ask history, fin every body
politic where the ascetic priest has established
this treatment of the sick, disease has on every
occasion spread with sinister speed throughout



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1 86 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

its length and breadthj What was always the
"result"? A shattered nervous system, in addition
to the existing malady, and this in the greatest
as in the smallest, in the individuals as in masses.
We find, in consequence of the penance and re-
demption-training, awful epileptic epidemics, the
greatest known to history, such as the St. Vitus and
St. John dances of the Middle Ages ; we find, as
another phase of its after-effect, frightful mutila-
tions and chronic depressions, by means of which
the temperament of a nation or a city (Geneva,
Bale) is turned once for all into its opposite ; —
this training, again, is responsible for the witch-
hysteria, a phenomenon analogous to somnambul-
ism (eight great epidemic outbursts of this only
between i 564 and 1605) ; — we find similarly in its
train those delirious death-cravings of large masses,
whose awful "shriek," "evvivala morte! " was heard
over the whole of Europe, now interrupted by volup-
tuous variations and anon by a rage for destruc-
tion, just as the same emotional sequence with the
same intermittencies and sudden changes is now
universally observed in every case where the ascetic
doctrine of sin scores once more a great success
(religious neurosis appears as a manifestation of the
devil,thereis no doubt of it. What is it? QucBritur).
I Speaking generally, the ascetic ideal and its sublime-
moral cult, this most ingenious, reckless, and peril-
ous systematisation of all methods of emotional
excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable
fashion on the whole history of man, and unfortun-
ately not only on historyj^ I was scarcely able to
put forward any other element which attacked the



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 87

and race efficiency of Europeans with more
destructive power than did this ideal ; it can be
dubbed, without exaggeration, the real fatality in the
history of the health of the European man. At the
most you can merely draw a comparison with the
specifically German influence : I mean the alcohol
poisoning of Europe, which up to the present has
kept pace exactly with the political and racial pre-
dominance of the Germans (where they inoculated
their blood, there too did they inoculate their vice).
Third in the series comes syphilis — magno sed
proximo intervallo.

22.

The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained
the mastery, corrupted the health of the soul, he
has consequently also corrupted taste in artibus
et litteris — he corrupts it still. " Consequently ? "
I hope I shall be granted this " consequently " ;
at any rate, I am not going to prove it first. One
solitary indication, it concerns the arch-book of
Christian literature, their real model, their " book-
in-itself. " In the very midst of the Grseco-Roman
splendour, which was also a splendour of books,
face to face with an ancient world of writings
which had not yet fallen into decay and ruin, at a
time when certain books were still to be read, to
possess which we would give nowadays half our
literature in exchange, at that time the simplicity
and vanity of Christian agitators (they are gener-
ally called Fathers of the Church) dared to declare :
"We too have our classical literature, we do not
need that of the Greeks" — and meanwhile they



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1 88 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

proudly pointed to their books of legends, their
letters of apostles, and their apologetic tractlets,
just in the same way that to-day the English
" Salvation Army " wages its fight against Shake-
speare and other " heathens " with an analogous
literature. You already guess it, I do not like the
" New Testament " ; it almost upsets me that I
stand so isolated in my taste so far as concerns
this valued, this over-valued Scripture ; the taste of
two thousand years is against me ; but what
boots it ! " Here I stand ! I cannot help my-
self " * — I have the courage of my bad taste. The
Old Testament — yes, that is something quite
different, all honour to the Old Testament ! I find
therein great men, an heroic landscape, and one
of the rarest phenomena in the world, the in-
comparable naivete of the strong heart; further
still, I find a people. In the New, on the contrary,
just a hostel of petty sects, pure rococo of the
soul, twisting angles and fancy touches, nothing but
conventicle air, not to forget an occasional whiff of
bucolic sweetness which appertains to the epoch
{and the Roman province) and is less Jewish than
Hellenistic. Meekness and braggadocio cheek by
jowl ; an emotional garrulousness that almost
deafens ; passionate hysteria, but no passion ; pain-
ful pantomime ; here manifestly every one lacked
good breeding. How dare any one make so much
fuss about their little failings as do these pious
little fellows ! No one cares a straw about it — let

* " Here I stand ! I cannot help myself. God help me !
Amen" — were Luther's words before the Reichstag at
Worms. — H. B. S.



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 89

alone God. Finally they actually wish to have
"the crown of eternal life," do all these little
provincials ! In return for what, in sooth ? For
what end? It is impossible to carry insolence
any further. An immortal Peter ! who could
stand him ! They have an ambition which makes
one laugh: the thing dishes up cut and dried his
most personal life, his melancholies, and common-
or-garden troubles, as though the Universe itself
were under an obligation to bother itself about
them, for it never gets tired of wrapping up God
Himself in the petty misery in which its troubles
are involved. And how about the atrocious form of
this chronic hobnobbing with God ? This Jewish,
and not merely Jewish, slobbering and clawing
importunacy towards God ! — There exist little
despised " heathen nations " in East Asia, from
whom these first Christians could have learnt
something worth learning, a little tact in worship-
ing ; these nations do not allow themselves to say
aloud the name of their God. This seems to me
delicate enough, it is certain that it is too delicate,
and not only for primitive Christians ; to take a
contrast, just recollect Luther, the most " eloquent "
and insolent peasant whom Germany has had,
think of the Lutherian tone, in which he felt quite
the most in his element during his tite-d-tites
with God. Luther's opposition to the mediaeval
saints of the Church (in particular, against " that
devil's hog, the Pope "), was, there is no doubt, at
bottom the opposition of a boor, who was offended
at the good etiquette of the Church, that worship-
etiquette of the sacerdotal code, which only admits



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1 90 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

to the holy of holies the initiated and the silent,
and shuts the door against the boors. These
definitely were not to be allowed a hearing in this
planet — but Luther the peasant simply wished it
otherwise ; as it was, it was not German enough for
him. He personally wished himself to talk direct,
to talk personally, to talk " straight from the
shoulder" with his God. Well, he's done it.
The ascetic ideal, you will guess, was at no time
and in no place, a school of good taste, still less of
good manners — at the best it was a school for
sacerdotal manners : that is, it contains in itself
something which was a deadly enemy to all good
manners. Lack of measure, opposition to measure
it is itself a " non plus ultra"

23-

The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health
and taste, there are also third, fourth, fifth, and
sixth things which it has corrupted — I shall take
care not to go through the catalogue (when should
I get to the end ? ). I have here to expose not
what this ideal effected ; but rather only what it
means, on what it is based, what lies lurking
behind it and under it, that of which it is the pro-
visional expression, an obscure expression bristling
with queries and misunderstandings. And with
this object only in view I presumed " not to spare "
my readers a glance at the awfulness of its results,
a glance at its fatal results ; I did this to prepare
them for the final and most awful aspect presented
to me by the question of the significance of that



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 191

ideal. Vyh^t is the significance pX. . the„ power of
that idealjJbe_monstjousness_ofjts ^ower ? Why-
is it given such an amount of scope? Why is
not a better resistance offered against it ? The
ascetic ideal expresses one will : where is the
opposition will, in which an opposition ideal
expresses itself? The ascetic ideal has an aim- —
this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other
interests of human life should, measured by its
standard, appear petty and narrow ; it explains
epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end ;
it forbids any other interpretation, any other end ;
it repudiates, denies, affirms, confirms, only in the
sense of its own interpretation (and was there ever
a more thoroughly elaborated system of interpre-
tation ? ) ; it subjects itself to no power, rather does
it believe In its own precedence over everjr"power
^^^^it~believes that nothing~p6w^firl exists "in-the
world that has not first got to receive~fronr""it""~a
meaningj_a_j;ight_to^^^exist,_a^ Y^^, as ^eing an
i nstrument in its w ork,_a-. . wa-V-and_means^tQ_iis,
end, to one end. Where is the counte rpart o{
tS 5~"complete sys te m of will, end, and interpreta-
t ion ? Why is the counterpart lacking WKere
is the other " one aim " ? But I am told it is not
lacking, tnat not "only has it fought a long and
fortunate fight with that ideal, but that further ^
has _ already won the mastery o ver th at ideal in
a1] ^sppntialc ■ Ipf- ni^r w^^"le_iiiodern scjmce^ attest
_this — that modern science, which, like th e genuin e
reality-philosophy which i t is, manifestly believes
in it self alone, manifestlyT ias the courage to"l3e
itSelf, the will to be itself, and has got oiTwell



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192 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

enough without God, another world, and nega-
tive virtues. " —
WltR~all their noisy agitator-babble, however,
they effect nothing with me ; these trumpeters of
reality are bad musicians, their voices do not come
from the deeps with sufificient audibility, t hey are no t

I the mouthpie ce for the ab YSS,ofscientificiaiQwledge

I -—for to-day scientific k52^? ^S5_i^ ^" abyss — the
word " science," in such trumpeter-niquths, is a pros"
titution, an abuse^ an impertinence. The truth is

\ j usT tTie~oppositg ^from what is maintainej _jn~lEe"
asceHcjEiory. . Scienc e ha s to-day absolutely no
beli ef in itself, let alone m aiTTdeal superior" to
It self, a nd wherever science still consistTorpassidiT7

/ love, ardour, suffering, it is not the opposition to
that ascetic ideal, but rather the incarnation of its

\ latest and noblest form. Does that ring strange ?
'There are enough brave and decent working people,
even among the learned men of to-day, who like
their little corner, and who, just because they are
pleased so to do, become at times indecently loud
with their demand, that people to-day should be
quite content, especially in science — for in science
there is so much useful work to do. I do not deny
it — -there is nothing I should like less than to spoil
the delight of these honest workers in their handi-
work ; for I rejoice in their work.
But the fact of
science requiring hard work, the fact of its having contented workers, is absolutely no proof of science
as a whole having to-day one end, one will, one
ideal, one passion for a great faith ; the contrary, as
I have said, is the case. When science is not the
latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal — but these



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 93

are cases of such rarity, selectness, and exquisite-
ness, as to preclude the general judgment being
affected thereby — science is a hiding-place for every
kind of cowardice, disbelief, remorse, despectio sui,
bad conscience — it is the very anxiety that springs
from having no ideal, the suffering from the lack
of a great love, the discontent with an enforced
moderation. Oh, what does all science not cover
to-day? How mucETara nvTate. does itlnoF try
Jfo^oxer ? The diligence of our best scholars, their
senseless industry, their burning the candle of their
brain at both ends — their very mastery in their
handiwork — how often is the real meaning of all
that to prevent themselves conTiiiumg to see a
cer tain thing ? Science as a self-a naesthetic : do you
Unow that? You wound them — every one who
consorts with scholars experiences this — you wound
them sometimes to the quick through just a harm-
less word ; when you think you are paying them a
compliment you embitter them beyond all bounds,
simply because you didn't have {he finesse to infer
the real kind of customers you had to tackle,
the sufferer kind (who won't own up even to
themselves what they really are), the dazed and
iinrni;ifjriniis ki'nij jyho have on ly one' fear — coming
to consciousness.

-^ 24

And now look at the other side, at those rare
cases, of which I spoke, the most supreme idealists
to be found nowadays among philosophers and
scholars. Have we, perchance, found in them the
sought-for opponents of the ascetic ideal, its anti-
N



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194 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

idealists} In fact, they believe themselves to be
such, these " unbelievers " (for they are all of them
that) : It seeriisThat this ideaj s their last remn ant
of faith, tEe~i3ea of being opponents of this ideal,
so earnest are they on this subject, so passionate
in word and gesture; — but does it follow that
what they believe must necessarily be truel We
" knowers " have grown by degrees suspicious of
all kinds of believers, our suspicion has step by
step habituated us to draw just the opposite con-
clusions to what people have drawn before ; that
is to say, wherever the strength of a belief is parti-
cularly prominent to draw the conclusion of the
difficulty of proving what is believed, the conclusion
of its actual improbability. f We do no t again deny
that " faith produces salvation " Vfor~iMf^very
'^«/5«Jwe. _d^'3enyJ:hat faith /roz'4J_anytHingjJ^~
a . strong faith, which produces ha ppiness, causes
suspicion of the object of that faith, it does no t
"establish ~its " truth," it does establish a certain
prob ability of — illusiou^ What is now the~posi-
tion in these cases ? These solitaries and deniers
of to-day; these fanatics in one thing, in their claim
to intellectual cleanness ; these hard, stern, contin-
ent, heroic spirits, who constitute the glory of our
time ; all these pale atheists, anti- Christians, im-
moralists. Nihilists; these sceptics, " ephectics," and
" hectics " of the intellect (in a certain sense they
are the latter, both collectively and individually);
these supreme idealists of knowledge, in whom
alone nowadays the intellectual conscience dwells
and is alive — in point of fact they believe them-
selves as far away as possible from the ascetic



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 195

ideal, do these " free, very free spirits " : and yet,
if I may reveal what they themselves cannot see
— for they stand too near themselves : this ideal is
simply their ideal, they represent it nowadays and
perhaps no one else, they themselves are its most
spiritualised product, its most advanced picket of
skirmishers and scouts, its most insidious delicate
and elusive form of seduction. — If I am in any
way a reader of riddles, then I will be one with this
sentence : for some time past there have been no
free spirits ; for they siiir~BeUeve in WufK. ~ When
the Christian TS'usaSers in the East came into
collision with that invincible order of assassins,
that order of free spirits /ar excellence, whose lowest
grade lives in a state of discipline such as no order
of monks has ever attained, then in some way or
other they managed to get an inkling of that
symbol and tally-word, that was reserved for the
highest grade alone as their secretum, " Nothing is"
true, everything is allowed," — in sooth, that was
freedom of thought, thereby was taking leave of the
very belief in truth. Has indeed any European,
any Christian freethinker, ever yet wandered into
this proposition and its labyrinthine consequences ?
Does he know from experience the Minotauros of
this den. — I doubt it — nay, I know otherwise.
Nothing is more really alien to these " mono-
fanatics," these so-called " free spirits," than freedom
and unfettering in that sense ; in no respect are
they more closely tied, the absolute fanaticism of
their belief in truth is unparalleled. I know all this
perhaps too much from experience at close quarters
— that dignified philosophic abstinence to which



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196 ^ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

-subelief like that binds its adherents, that stoicism
of the intellect, which eventually vetoes negation
as rigidly as it does affirmation, that wish for
standing still in front of the actual, the factum
brutum, that fatalism in "fetitsfaits" [ce petit faital-
ism, as I call it), in which French Science now
attempts a kind of moral superiority over German,
this renunciation of interpretation generally (that
is, of forcing, doctoring, abridging, omitting, sup-
pressing, inventing, falsifying, and all the other
essential attributes of interpretation) — all this, con-
sidered broadly, expresses the asceticism of virtue,
quite as efficiently as does any repudiation of the
senses (it is at bottom only a modus of that repudia-
tion). But what forces it intq^that unqualified
will_for truth is iihe faith in the ascetic ideal itself,
even_thougH"Tf "taKe~tEeTorm of its unconscious
iniperatives,-— make lio"' mistake about it, it is~tEe~
faith, I repeat, in a ■metaphysica l valu ej^nintrinsic^
j^"ueortruth, of a cKaracter which is only w^ranted_
and guaranteed in this ideal (it stands and falls with
thartd"eal)7~ Judged strictly, there does not exist
a science without its " hypotheses," the thought of
such a science is inconceivable, illogical : a philo-
sophy, a faith, must always exist first to enable
science to gain thereby a direction, a meaning, a
limit and method, a ri£:ht to existence. (He who
holds a contrary opinion on the subject — ^he, for ex-
ample, who takes it upon himself to establish philo-
sophy " upon a strictly scientific basis " — has first
got to " turn up-side-down " not only philosophy
but also truth itself — the gravest insult which
could possibly be offered to two such respectable



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 197

females ! ) Yes, there is no doubt about it — and
here I quote my Joyful Wisdom, cp. Book V. Aph.
344 : " The tnan who is truthful in that daring
and extreme f ashion, which is the presupposition
of the faith in science, asserts thereby a different'
-world fro m that of life, na ture, and history ; and In
soTaTas he asserts the existence ofjhat^different
world, come, must he notsinularly repudiate jts
counterpartT^rs" world , oar w orld? Th e belief on
whi ch our faith in scien ce is based has remained to
this ^y a me taphysjcaLbelief — even we knowers
of to-day, we godless foes of metaphysics, we too
take our fire from that conflagration which was
kindled by a thousand-year-old faith, from that
C hristian belief, which was also Plato's benef7tHe
beli ef that God is truth, that truth is Siyine. . . .
But what if this belief becomes more and more in-
credible, what if nothing proves itself tob^ divine,
unless It be error, blindness, lies-— -what if God
Himse^^roved_Himself_. to- be^our oldest lie? " —
It is necessary to stop at this point and to consider
the situation carefully. Science itself now needs a
j ustification (which is not for a minute to say that
there is such a justification). Turn in this context
to the most ancient and the most modern philo-
sophers : they all fail to realise the extent of the
need of a justification on the part of the Will for
Truth — here is a gap in every philosophy — what
is it caused by ? Because up to the present the
ascetic ideal dominated all philosophy, because
Truth was fixed as Being, as God, as the Supreme
Court of Appeal, because Truth was not allowed
to be a problem. Do you understand this



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(igS \ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

" allowed " ? 1 F rom the minute that the belief in
the God of t he ascetic ideal is repudiatedTth ere "
exTsts a ite w^odlem : the problem of the vaTueoT^^
truth. [ The Will for Truth needed a critiq ^ue^^^r'
us "define b y these words-QUt-DisoLlask^iJhe value
of truth is tentatively toJbe_ccMedin_^uestionr7y~:^
' (If this seems too laconically expressed, I recom-
mend the reader to peruse again that passage from
the Joyful Wisdom which bears the title, " How far
we also are still pious," Aph. 344, and best of all
the whole fifth book of that work, cis well as the
Preface to The Dawn of Day! )

25.

No ! You can't get round me with science, when
I search for the natural antagonists of the ascetic
ideal, when I put the question : " Where is the op-
posed will in which the opponent ideal expresses
itself? " Science is not, by a long way, independent
enough to fulfil this function ; in every depar tment
sci ence needs an id eal valu e, a p o wer whi ch creates
values,_aild. Jn__whose service it can believe in iSelf
— scie nce itself never creates value s. Its relation
to the aacet ic ideal js ^ot in itself antagOTiiSc";
speaking roughly, it r ather repre sents the progress-
ive force in the^ inner _ evolution of thaTTdealT
Tested more exactly, its o ppositi on and antagori^
isHL-are--XQncgnjM_XLQt_mtL_the ideal JtsafTlJat
only with that ideal's niitwnrks^'ts^ outer^arb, its
masquerade, with itstemporary harciening,stiffenm"g,
and_dogmatising;;-it_makes-the- life jE^the ideal
f ree on c e more, while it repudiates its superficial



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS

elements. These two phenomena, science and'lEe'
ascetic ideal, both rest on the same basis — I have
already made this clear — t he bas is,! s ay, oft he same
over-appreciation of truth (more accurately the
sSme beliet m tbElmpossibtlity of valuing and of
criticis ing tru5E J, and consequently they are neces-
sarily allies, so that, in the event of their being
attacked, they must always be attacked and called
into question together. A valuation of the ascetic
ideal inevita bly entails a~vaIu "ation '61 sclen'ce~as
wettT'lose no time in seeing this clearly, and be
sharp" to catch it ! { Art, I am speaking provision-
ally, for I will treat it on some other occasion in
greater detail, — art, I repeat, in which lying is
sanctified and the will for deception has good con-
science on its side, is much more fundamentally
opposed to the^ascetic Heal than is science : Plato's
instinctlelt this — Plato, the greatest enemy of art
which Europe has produced up to the present.
Plato versus Homer, that is the complete, the true
antagoni smr^on the oiTe ji de7Tfie~wHo le4iearted
" transcendental," t he great defamer of life ; on the
ot her, its involuntary panegyrist, t he golden nature.
An artistic subservi ence to the servj ce ofthe ascetic"
ideal is consequently the most absolute artistic
corrupt ion that there can be, though~unfortunaterv^
it is one of the most frequent phases, for nothing
is more corruptible than an artis t. ') Considered
physiologically, moreover, science rests on the samci
b asis as does the ascet ic ideal : a certain impovensh~\
mep,t of life is the pre suppositioEToTtEeTatter as of \
the former — add, frijjidity. of the emotions, slacken-
mg ol the tempo , the substitution of dialectic for



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200 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

instinct, seriousness impressed on mien and gesture
(^HTiousneis, that^most unmistakable sign of strenu-~"
ous metabolism, of struggling, toiling life). Con-
sider the periods in a nation in which the learned
man comes into prominence ; they are the periods
of exhaustion, often of sunset, of decay — the
effervescing strength, the confidence in life, the con-
fidence in the future are no more. The preponder-
ence of the mandarins never signifies any good, any
more than does the advent of democracy, or arbi-
tration instead of war, equal rights for women, the
religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of
declining life. (Science handled as a problem ! what
is the meaning of science ? — upon this point the
Preface to the Birth of Tragedy^ No ! this
" modern _ science " — mark you this we ll-— is at
times the best ally for the ascetic ideal, 3nd_S2Ee
very'Teason that_itJs_jLlk_ally^jvhicr^_mostjjn-
coriscious, most automatic, most secret, and most
subterranean ! They have been playing into each
'Other's" hands up to the present, have these "poor
in spirit" and the scientific opponents of that
ideal (take care, by the bye, not to think that
these opponents are the antithesis of this ideal,
that they are the rich in spirit — that they are
not; I have called them the hectic in spirit).
As for these celebrated victories of science;
there is no doubt that they are victories — but
victories over what ? There was not for a single
minute any victory among their list over the
ascetic ideal, rather was it made stronger, that is
to say, more elusive, more abstract, more insidious,
from the fact that a wall, an outwork, that had got



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 20I

built on to the main fortress and disfigured its
appearance, should from time to time be ruthlessly
destroyed and broken down by science. Does any
one seriously suggest that the downfall of the theo-
logical astronomy signified the downfall of that
ideal ? — Has, perchance, man grown /ess in need of
a transcendental solution of his riddle of existence,
because since that time this existence has become
more random, casual, and superfluous in the visible
order of the universe? Has there not been since
the time of Copernicus an unbroken progress in the
self-belittling of man and his will for belittling
himself? Alas, his belief in his dignity, his unique-
ness, his irreplaceableness in the scheme of existence,
is gone — he has become animal, literal, unqualified,
and unmitigated animal, he who in his earlier belief
was almost God (" child of God," " demi-God ").
Since Copernicus man seems to have fallen on to
a steep plane — he rolls faster and faster away from
the centre — whither ? into nothingness ? into the
"thrilling sensation of his own nothingness"! — Well !
this would be the straight way — to the o/<3f ideal ? —
All science (and by no means only astronomy, with
regard to the humiliating and deteriorating effect of
which Kant has made a remarkable confession, " it
annihilates my own importance"), all science, natural
as much as unnatural — by unnaturaT"! mean'fKe

^^^^^in^5j2iJ[^-? 3=^~"°^'^? :5i^l£f^°'^* tol:alk
man out of his present opinion ofhimself, as_thou^
tHat^oginion hadJBeen nothing Butabizarre piece
of conceit ; you might go so far as to say that science ""
finds its p eculiar pride, its peculiar bitter fcmnlSf"
stoical ataraxia, in preserving man's contempt of



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202 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

himself, that state which it took so much trouble

to bring about, as m an's final apd m ost serious claim
to self-a ppre ciation (rightly so, in point of fact, for
he who despises is always " one who has not for-
gotten how to appreciate "). But does all this
involve anyreal effort to counteract the ascetic ideal ?
Is it really seriously suggested that Kant's victory
over the theological dogmatism about "God,"
" Soul," " Freedom," " Immortality," has damaged
that ideal in any way (as the theologians have
imagined to be the case for a long time past) ? —
And in this connection it does not concern us for
a single minute, if Kant himself intended any such
consummation. It is certain that from the time
of Kant every type of transcendentalist is playing a
winning game — they are emancipated from the
theologians ; what luck ! — he has revealed to them
that secret art, by which they can now pursue their
" heart's desire " on their own responsibility, and
with all the respectability of science. Similarly,
who can grumble at the agnostics, reverers, as
they are, of the unknown and the absolute
mystery, if they now worship their very query as
God? (Xaver Doudan talks somewhere of the
ravages which I'habitude dadmirer rinintelligible
au lieu de rester tout simplement dans Vinconnu
has produced — the ancients, he thinks, must have
been exempt from those ravages. ) Supposing
that everything, " known " to man, lails to
^tisty_iiisj(ifiaEEs,_and^onjffie contrary contradicts"
ancL horrifies them, wh at a divine way out of all
this to be able to look for the responsibility, not
in jhe _iLdesJjdng-! ! -l)ut, ia "Jsnojving 'M;^-" There"~



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 203

knowledge. Consequentl y^^^&xe. _jg__„a
^wHaF'irn'ovel elegantia syllogismi\ what
a triumph for the ascetic ideal !

26.

Or, perchance, does the whole ol modem-history
show in its demeanouiL_greate r co nfi dence in li fe,
greater confidence in its ideals ? It s 1nftiest_. pre- ^
t ension is now to be a mirror \ it repudiates all
teleology: it will have no more " proving " ; it
disdains to play the judge, and thereby shows its
good taste — it asserts as little as it den ies, it
fixes, it " describes. " All this is to a high
de gree ascetic , b ut~aF the same time it~i s~"Ccr'a'
mnrVi frrpafpi- Ae-<^rc-f- ■n-! hiN<:fic ■ make no mistake
about this ! You see in the historian a gloomy,
hard, but determined gaze, — an eye that looks out
as an isolated North Pole explorer looks out
(perhaps so as not to look within, so as not to
look back ? ) — there is snow — here is life silenced,
the last crows which caw here are called
"whither? " "Vanity," "Nada" — here nothing
more flourishes and grows, at the most the
metapolitics of St. Petersburg and the " pity "
of Tolstoi. But as for that other school of
historians, a perhaps still more " modern " school,
a voluptuous and lascivious school which ogles
life and the ascetic ideal with equal fervour, which
uses. , the word " artist " as a glove, and has
nowadays established a " corner " for itself, in all
the praise given to contemplation ; oh, what a
thirst do these sweet intellectuals excite even for



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204 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

ascetics and winter landscapes ! Nay ! The
devil take these " contemplative " folk ! How
much liefer would I wander with those histoficaT"
Nihilists through the glooniiest, gr^7~ coi Tmist P:^ "---
nay, I shall not mind listening (supposing I have
To choosej to one who is_£ompletely u nhisto rical
and antUhistorical (a man, like Diihring for in-
""slance, over whose periods a hitherto shy and
unavowed species of " beautiful souls " has grown
intoxicated in contemporary Germany, the species
anarchistica within the educated proletariate).
T he "co ntemplative" are a hundred times worse
— I never knew anything which produced such
intense nausea as one of those " objective " chairs^
one of those scented mannikins - about - town
of history, a thing half-priest, half-satyr (Renan
parfuni), which betrays by the high, shrill falsetto
of his applause what he lacks and where he lacks
it, who betrays where in this case the Fates have
plied their ghastly shears, alas ! in too surgeon-
like a fashion ! This is distasteful to me, and
irritates my patience ; let him keep patient at such
sights who has nothing to lose thereby, — such a
sight enrages me, such spectators embitter me
against the " play," even more than does the play
itself (history itself, you understand) ; Anacreontic
moods imperceptibly come over me. This Nature,
who gave to the steer its horn, to the lion its
Xaay! oSovTcov, for what purpose did Nature give
me my foot ? — To kick, by St. Anacreon, and
not merely to run away ! To trample on all the

* E. ff. Lectureships.



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 205

worm-eaten " chairs," the cowardly contemglators,
tEe lascivious "eunuchs ^history, the . flir±er&„with^
ascetE"T(3eals,)the righteous hypocrites of im^
potenSTj All reverence on my part to the ascetic
ideal, tn so far as it is honourable ! So long as
irtielieves in Itseli" and plays no pranks on us !
But I like not all these coquettish bugs who have
an ' msati ate aiiTWtitm-"iT]r^ mell"~of'T he jflfinjte7-
until eventually the infinite smells of bugs ; I like
not the whited sepulchres with their stagey re-
production of life ; I likenot_the_,iii:gd_and^ the
used up who wra p the mselves in wisdom and look
'£oH^^^21^ like not the agitators dressed up
as B&oes, who hide their dummy-heads behind the
stalking-horse of an ideal ; I like not the ambitious
artists who would fain play the ascetic and the
priest, and are at bottom nothing but tragic
clowns ; I like not, again, these newest speculators
in idealism, the Anti-Semites, who nowadays roll
their eyes in the patent Christian-Aryan-man-of-
honour fashion, and by an abuse of moralist atti-
tudes and agitation dodges, so cheap as to exhaust
any patience, strive to excite all the blockhead
elements in the populace (the invariable success
of every kind of intellectual charlatanism in
present-day Germany hangs together with the
almost indisputable and already quite palpable
desolation of the German mind, whose cause I
look for in a too exclusive diet, of papers, politics,
beer, and Wagnerian music, not forgetting the
condition precedent of this diet, the national
exclusiveness and vanity, the strong but narrow
principle, " Germany, Germany above every-



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206 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

thing,"* and finally the paralysis agitans of
" modern ideas "). Europe nowadays is, above
all, wealthy and ingenious in means of excite-
ment; it apparently has no more crying necessity
than stimulantia and alcohol. Hence the enormous
counterfeiting of ideals, those most fiery spirits of
the mind ; hence too the repulsive, evil- smelling,
perjured, pseudo - alcoholic air everywhere. I
should like to know how many cargoes of imita-
tion idealism, of hero-costumes and high falutin'
clap-trap, how many casks of sweetened pity
liqueur (Firm : la religion de la souffrance), how
many crutches of righteous indignation for the help
of these flat-footed intellects/liow many comedians
of the Christian moral ideal would need to-day
to be exported from Europe, to enable its air to
smell pure againj It is obvious that, in regard
to this over-production, a new trade possibility
lies open ; it is obvious that there is a new
business to be done in little ideal idols and
obedient " idealists " — don't pass over this tip !
Who has sufficient courage? We have in our
hands the possibility of idealising the whole earth.
But what am I talking about courage ? we only
need one thing here — a hand, a free, a very free
hand.

27.

Enough ! enough ! let us leave these curiosities
and complexities of the modern spirit, which excite
as much laughter as disgust. Our problem can

* An allusion to the well-known patriotic song. — H. B. S



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 207

certainly do without them, the problem of the
meaning of the ascetic ideal — what has it got to
do with yesterday or to-day ? those things shall
be handled by me more thoroughly and severely
in another connection (under the title " A Contribu-
tion to the History of European Nihilism," I refer
for this to a work which I am preparing: The
Will to Power, an Attempt at a Transvaluation
of All Values). The only reason why I come to
allude to it here is this : the ^cetic ideal has at
times, even in the most intellgctuaLapherey^only
one real^^^;,of«iOTdes_jjTdj/«»2«^^rj„;,„ these are_

the comedians of this ideal — for they awake mis-
trust. PLyerywhere otherwi^j_w]^£g_the_ mind Is
at work seriously, powerfully, and without counter-
feiting, it dispenses altogether now wjth_an ideal
(the pSpnlar expression for this abstinence is
" Atheism ") — with the exception of the will for\
truth. But this will, this7i? iw«5«/'"of ^fTTdeal, is.
It you win believe~me, 'fEaF ideal itself in its
severest and cleverest formulation, esoteric through
and through, stripped of all outworks, and conse-
quently not so much its rernnant as its kernel.
UnqualiHed honest atheism (and its air only'cTo
we breathe, we, the most intellectual men of this
age) is not op posed to that ideal, to the extent
that "it appears to be; it is rather one of the final
p hases of its evolution , one of its syllogisms and ,
pieces of inherent logic — it _is the awe-inspiring
catastrophe of a two-thousand-year training ini
truth, Which"Trnally forbids itself the lie of the
^e[ief~in'God. l^The same course of development
m india-^quite independently, and consequently



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208 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

of some demonstrative value — the same ideal
driving to the same conclusion the decisive point
reached five hundred years before the European
era, or more precisely at the time of Buddha —
it started in the Sankhyam philosophy, and then
this was popularised through Buddha, and made
into a religion. )

What, I put the question with all strictness,
has really triumphed over the Christian God?
The answer stands in my Joyful Wisdom, Aph.
357: " the Christian morality itself, the idea of
truth, taken as it was with increasing seriousness,
the confessor-subtlety of the Christian conscience
translated and sublimated into the scientific con-
science into intellectual cleanness at any price.
Regarding Nature as though it were a proof of
the goodness and guardianship of God ; interpret-
ing history in honour of a divine reason, as a con-
stanF proof"6r~armbfal order of the world and a
moral teTeology : explaining our own personal ex-
periences, as pious men have for long enough ex-
plained them, as though every arrangement, every
nod, every single thing were invented and sent
out of love for the salvation of the soul ; all this
is now done away with, all this has the conscience
'Sgainst^-^^ a«d-is— regardeJ" By every subtler con-
science~as' disreputable, dishonourableTasTying,
feminism, w^akness,~cbwai^ice-^-^by"tneans of tliis
severity, if by means of anything at all, are we,
in sooth, good Europeans and heirs of^ Europe's
longest and bravest self-mastery. " . . 1 All great
things go to ruin by reasoji of themselves, by reason
ofiaiTact of self-dissolution : so wills the law of life,



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS Y 209

the law of nece ssary " self-masitery:-'Leven. Jn the
essence oOife-^^ver is the law-giver finally ex-
pbsedToThe^cry, " patere legem quam ipse tulisti" ;
in thus wise did Christianity go to ruin as a dogma,
through its own morality^ Tn 'tFus wise must
Christianity go" again to ruin to-day "as~a~m6rality
-^Wfe are standing on tRe lfhfeshold o f this evenj^
lX? te r^Christian _ truthfulness has^ drawn, oiie in-
clusion after the other, i t finally draws i ts strongest
cdndaston^'^s'^ncXusiow against itself; this, how-
BV5i7 happensTwhen it puts the question, "jsihat is
the meaning of every will for truth V^ And here
again do I touch on my problem, on our problem,
my unknown friends (for as yet / know of no
friends) : what sense has our whole being, if it
does not 'mean that in our own selv^that wTT
15r tr uth has'co'Hrg 'to its "o wn consciousness a s
problem}- — By reason of this attainment
""consciousness'Tifi th e part of the wTTT _

fiiorality Irom henceforward— ;4here js no doub t
about It — goes to pieces : this is that great
hundfeJ-act play that is reserved for the next two
centuries of Europe, the most terrible, the most
mysterious, and perhaps also the most hopeful of
all plays. ~~ ~"

28.

If you except the ascetic ideal, man, the animal
man had no meaning. His existence on earth
contained no end ; " What is the purpose of man
at all ? " was a question without an answer ; the
will ior man and the world was lacking; befilnd
every great human destiny rang as a refrain a still



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2IO -\ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

!

■gUgater " Vanity ! " The ascetic ideal s impW
means this rffiaFsomething was lacking, that^
trenrentfous^T^^ encircled man — he did not know"
how to justify himself, to explain himself, to afHrni
himself, Tie suffered Trom the problem'of his owir
memimg. He sufTered also in other ways, he wai
in the main a diseased animal ; but_Jiispro^leiH_^
was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer
to ~that~cryrng~questibri," " ~To'wEatpurpose^sP^^
suffer ? " \ Man7 the bravest animal and l:lie~one
most inured to suffering, does not repudiate suffer ing
in itself : he wills it, he even seeks it out, provIHed
that he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of
su ffering. (T^- A^'i'^ suffering , but the senselessness of
suffering was the curse whichtin_then lay spread
over humanity — -and the ascetic ideal gave~ii~a
meaning ! l ~rF was up till then the only meaning;
but any meaning~is~BeReF than no meaning; the
Ascetic ideaFwas in that connection the "fdute de
■mieux" par excellence that existed at that time.
In that ideal suffering found an explanation ; the
tremendous gap seemed filled ; the door to all
suicidal Nihilism was closed. The explanation —
there is no doubt about it — brought in its train
new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more
venomous, gnawing more brutally into lifeOt
brought all suffering under the_perspective oT"
"g ml t; b Pt'tn" spite of^ all that — ;man was saved
the'reby7Tle'^d a meaning, and from henceforth
vfantS'Tnore like a leaf in the wind, a shuttle-
cock of chance, of nonsense, hejcould now " will "
somethingj— absolutely immaterial to what end,
to what purpose, with what means he wished :



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 211

the will itself was saved. It is absolutely impos-
sible to disguise what in point of fact is made
clear by every complete will that has taken its
direction from the ascetic ideal : this hate of thel
human, and even more of the animal, and more
still of the material, this horror of the senses, of
reason itself, thi s fear of hap pin ess and b eauty,]
this desire to g et right away from all illusion,!
change, growth, death, wishing and even desiring
— airthis means- — -let us have the courage to
grasp it — a will for Nothingness, a wi ll oppose d
to life, a repudiation of the most fundam ental
.