"
Certain it is that, for a rapid survey of the whole
of Nietzsche's doctrine, no book, save perhaps the
section entitled “Of Old and New Tables" in Thus
Spake Zarathustra, could be of more real value than
The Twilight of the Idols.
Certain it is that, for a rapid survey of the whole
of Nietzsche's doctrine, no book, save perhaps the
section entitled “Of Old and New Tables" in Thus
Spake Zarathustra, could be of more real value than
The Twilight of the Idols.
Nietzsche - v16 - Twilight of the Idols
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Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
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## p. (#1) ##################################################
## p. (#2) ##################################################
## p. i (#3) ################################################
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
First Complete and Authorised English Translation
in Eighteen Volumes
EDITED BY
DR OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME SIXTEEN
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS.
## p. ii (#4) ###############################################
First Edition,
One Thousand Five Hundred Copies,
Of the Second Edition of
One Thousand Five Hundred Copies
this is
155
No.
## p. iii (#5) ##############################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THE TWILIGHT OF
THE IDOLS
Or, How to Philosophise with the Hammer
THE ANTICHRIST
NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA, AND
ETERNAL RECURRENCE
TRANSLATED BY
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
T. N. FOULIS
EDINBURGH & LONDON
1915
## p. iv (#6) ###############################################
PRINTED AT
The DARIEN PRESS
EDINBURGH
## p. v (#7) ################################################
CONTENTS
PAGE
TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS—
vii
xvii
I
9
17
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
PREFACE
MaximS AND MISSILES
THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES
“REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY -
How THE "TRUE WORLD" ULTIMATELY BE-
CAME A FABLE -
MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE
THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS-
THE “IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND
THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE
THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS -
24
26
33
44
50
60
1
II2
THE ANTICHRIST
125,
ETERNAL RECURRENCE
237
NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA
.
259
;
UN 29 1916 401K srecher
'I' 11 DURY
47
DEC 31
V
008
## p. vi (#8) ###############################################
.
ఒక
## p. vii (#9) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
THE Twilight of the Idols was written towards the
end of the summer of 1888. Its composition seems to
have occupied only a few days,—so few indeed that,
in Ecce Homo (p. 118), Nietzsche says he hesitates
to give their number ; but, in any case, we know it
was completed on the 3rd of September in Sils
Maria. The manuscript which was dispatched to
the printers on the 7th of September bore the title:
“ Idle Hours of a Psychologist"; this, however, was
abandoned in favour of the present title, while the
work was going through the press. During Septem-
ber and the early part of October 1888, Nietzsche
added to the original contents of the book by insert-
ing the whole section entitled “Things the Germans
Lack,” and aphorisms 32-43 of “Skirmishes in a
War with the Age"; and the book, as it now stands,
represents exactly the form in which Nietzsche in-
tended to publish it in the course of the year 1889.
Unfortunately its author was already stricken down
with illness when the work first appeared at the end
of January 1889, and he was denied the joy of seeing
it run into nine editions, of one thousand each, before
his death in 1900.
Of The Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche says in
Ecce Homo (p. 118):-“If anyone should desire to
obtain a rapid sketch of how everything before my
vi
## p. viii (#10) ############################################
viii
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
time was standing on its head, he should begin read-
ing me in this book. That which is called 'Idols'
on the title-page is simply the old truth that has been
believed in hitherto. In plain English, The Twilight
of the Idols means that the old truth is on its last
legs. "
Certain it is that, for a rapid survey of the whole
of Nietzsche's doctrine, no book, save perhaps the
section entitled “Of Old and New Tables" in Thus
Spake Zarathustra, could be of more real value than
The Twilight of the Idols. Here Nietzsche is quite
at his best. He is ripe for the marvellous feat of
the transvaluation of all values. Nowhere is his
language—that marvellous weapon which in his
hand became at once so supple and so murderous-
more forcible and more condensed. Nowhere are
his thoughts more profound. But all this does not
by any means imply that this book is the easiest of
Nietzsche's works. On the contrary, I very much
fear that, unless the reader is well prepared, not only
in Nietzscheism, but also in the habit of grappling
with uncommon and elusive problems, a good deal
of the contents of this work will tend rather to
confuse than to enlighten him in regard to what
Nietzsche actually wishes to make clear in these
pages.
How much prejudice, for instance, how many
traditional and deep-seated opinions, must be up-
rooted, if we are to see even so much as an important
note of interrogation in the section entitled “The
Problem of Socrates”—not to speak of such sections
as “Morality as the Enemy of Nature," "The Four
Great Errors,” &c. The errors exposed in these
## p. ix (#11) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
ix
sections have a tradition of two thousand years
behind them; and only a fantastic dreamer could
expect them to be eradicated by a mere casual study
of these pages. Indeed, Nietzsche himself looked
forward only to a gradual change in the general
view of the questions he discussed; he knew only
too well what the conversion of “light heads” was
worth, and what kind of man would probably be the
first to rush into his arms; and, grand psychologist
that he was, he guarded himself beforehand against
bad company by means of his famous warning:-
“ The first adherents of a creed do not prove any-
thing against it. "
To the aspiring student of Nietzsche, however, it
ought not to be necessary to become an immediate
convert in order to be interested in the treasure of
thought which Nietzsche here lavishes upon us. For
such a man it will be quite difficult enough to regard
the questions raised in this work as actual problems.
Once, however, he has succeeded in doing this, and
has given his imagination time to play round these
questions as problems, the particular turn or twist
that Nietzsche gives to their elucidation, may then
perhaps strike him, not only as valuable, but as
absolutely necessary.
With regard to the substance of The Twilight of
the Idols, Nietzsche says in Ecce Homo (p. 119):
“There is the waste of an all-too-rich autumn in
this book: you trip over truths. You even crush
some to death, there are too many of them. ”
And what are these truths? They are things that
are not yet held to be true. They are the utterances
of a man who, as a single exception, escaped for a
a
## p. x (#12) ###############################################
X
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
while the general insanity of Europe, with its blind
idealism in the midst of squalor, with its unscrupu-
lous praise of so-called “Progress” while it stood
knee-deep in the belittlement of “Man,” and with
its vulgar levity in the face of effeminacy and decay;
—they are the utterances of one who voiced the
hopes, the aims, and the realities of another world,
not of an ideal world, not of a world beyond, but
of a real world, of this world regenerated and re-
organised upon a sounder, a more virile, and a more
orderly basis,-in fact, of a perfectly possible world,
one that has already existed in the past, and could
exist again, if only the stupendous revolution of a
transvaluation of all values were made possible.
This then is the nature of the truths uttered by
this one sane man in the whole of Europe at the end
of last century; and when, owing to his unequal
struggle against the overwhelming hostile forces of
his time, his highly sensitive personality was at last
forced to surrender itself to the enemy and become
one with them—that is to say, insane! —at least the
record of his sanity had been safely stored away,
beyond the reach of time and change, in the volumes
which constitute his life-work.
-
*
*
*
*
Nietzsche must have started upon the “Anti-
christ," immediately after having dispatched the
“ Idle Hours of a Psychologist” to the printers, and
the work appears to have been finished at the end
of September 1888. It was intended by Nietzsche
to form the first book of a large work entitled “The
Transvaluation of all Values”; but, though this
work was never completed, we can form some idea
## p. xi (#13) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
xi
from the substance of the “ Antichrist” and from
the titles of the remaining three books, which alas!
were never written, of what its contents would have
been. These titles are:- Book II.
Book II. The Free
Spirit. A Criticism of Philosophy as a Nihilistic
Movement. Book III. The Immoralist. A Criti-
cism of the most Fatal Kind of Ignorance,
Morality. Book IV. Dionysus. The Philosophy
of Eternal Recurrence.
Nietzsche calls this book “An Attempted Criti-
cism of Christianity. ” Modest as this sub-title is,
it will probably seem not quite modest enough to
those who think that Nietzsche fell far short of
doing justice to their Holy Creed. Be this as it
may, there is the solution of a certain profound
problem in this book, which, while it is the key to
all Nietzscheism, is also the justification and the
sanctification of Nietzsche's cause. The problem
stated quite plainly is this : “To what end did
Christianity avail itself of falsehood ? ”
Many readers of this amazing little work, who
happen to be acquainted with Nietzsche's doctrine
of Art and of Ruling, will probably feel slightly
confused at the constant deprecation of falsehood,
of deception, and of arbitrary make-believe, which
seems to run through this book like a litany in
praise of a certain Absolute Truth.
Remembering Nietzsche's utterance in volume
ii. (p. 26) of the Will to Power, to wit:-“The pre-
requisite of all living things and of their lives is :
that there should be a large amount of faith, that it
should be possible to pass definite judgments on
things, and that there should be no doubt at all con-
1
## p. xii (#14) #############################################
xii
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
1
cerning values. Thus it is necessary that something
should be assumed to be true, not that it is true ;”
remembering these words, as I say, the reader may
I
stand somewhat aghast before all those passages in
the second half of this volume, where the very
false-
hoods of Christianity, its assumptions, its unwarrant-
able claims to Truth, are declared to be pernicious,
base and corrupt.
Again and again, if we commit the error of sup-
posing that Nietzsche believed in a truth that was
absolute, we shall find throughout his works reasons
for charging him with apparently the very same
crimes that he here lays at the door of Christianity.
What then is the explanation of his seeming incon-
sistency?
It is simple enough. Nietzsche's charge of false-
hood against Christianity is not a moral one,-in
fact it may be taken as a general rule that Nietzsche
scrupulously avoids making moral charges, and that
heremains throughout faithful to his position Beyond
Good and Evil (see, for instance Aph. 6 (Antichrist)
where he repudiates all moral prejudice in charging
humanity with corruption). A man who maintained
that “truth is that form of error which enables a
particular species to prevail,” could not make a moral
charge of falsehood against any one, or any institu-
tion ; but he could do so from another standpoint.
He could well say, for instance, “ falsehood is that
kind of error which causes a particular species to
degenerate and to decay. "
Thus the fact that Christianity “lied ” becomes a
subject of alarm to Nietzsche, not owing to the fact
that it is immoral to lie, but because in this particular
## p. xiii (#15) ############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
xiii
instance, the lie was harmful, hostile to life, and
dangerous to humanity; for “a belief might be false
and yet life-preserving” (Beyond Good and Evil,
pp. 8, 9).
Suppose, therefore, we say with Nietzsche that
there is no absolute truth, but that all that has been
true in the past which has been the means of making
the "plant man flourish best”-or, since the meaning
of“ best ”is open to some debate, let us say, flourish
in a Nietzschean sense, that is to say, thanks to a
mastery of life, and to a preponderance of all those
qualities which say yea to existence, and which
suggest no flight from this world and all its pleasure
and pain. And suppose we add that, wherever we
may find the plant man flourishing, in this sense,
we should there suspect the existence of truth? —
If we say this with Nietzsche, any sort of assumption
or arbitrary valuation which aims at a reverse order
of things, becomes a dangerous lie in a super-moral
and purely physiological sense.
With these preparatory remarks we are now pre-
pared to read aphorism 56 with a complete under-
standing of what Nietzsche means, and to recognise
in this particular aphorism the key to the whole of
Nietzsche's attitude towards Christianity. It is at
once a solution of our problem, and a justification
of its author's position. Naturally, it still remains
open to Nietzsche's opponents to argue, if they
choose, that man has flourished best under the sway
of nihilistic religions—religions which deny life,-
and that consequently the falsehoods of Christianity
are not only warrantable but also in the highest
degree blessed; but in any case, the aphorism in
## p. xiv (#16) #############################################
xiy
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
question completely exonerates Nietzsche from a
charge of inconsistency in the use of the terms
“truth” and “falsehood” throughout his works,
and it moreover settles once and for all the exact
altitude from which our author looked down upon
the religions of the world, not only to criticise them,
but also to place them in the order of their merit as
disciplinary systems aiming at the cultivation of
particular types of men.
Nietzsche
says in aphorism 56:—“After all, the
question is, to what end are falsehoods perpetrated ?
The fact that, in Christianity, 'holy' ends are
entirely absent, constitutes my objection to the
means it employs. Its ends are only bad ends :
the poisoning, the calumniation and the denial of
life, the contempt of the body, the degradation and
self-pollution of man by virtue of the concept sin,-
consequently its means are bad as well. ”
Thus, to repeat it once more, it is not because
Christianity availed itself of all kinds of lies that
Nietzsche condemns it; for the Book of Manu-
which he admires—is just as full of falsehood as
the Semitic Book of Laws; but, in the Book of
Manu the lies are calculated to preserve and to
create a strong and noble type of man, whereas in
Christianity the opposite type was the aim,-
-an aim
which has been achieved in a manner far exceeding
even the expectations of the faithful.
This then is the main argument of the book and
its conclusion ; but, in the course of the general
elaboration of this argument, many important side-
issues are touched upon and developed, wherein
Nietzsche reveals himself as something very much
## p. xv (#17) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
XV
more valuable than a mere iconoclast. Of course,
on every page of his philosophy, — whatever his
enemies may maintain to the contrary,—he never
once ceases to construct, since he is incessantly
enumerating and emphasising those qualities and
types which he fain would rear, as against those he
fain would see destroyed ; but it is in aphorism 57
of this book that Nietzsche makes the plainest and
most complete statement of his actual taste in
Sociology, and it is upon this aphorism that all his
followers and disciples will ultimately have to
build, if Nietzscheism is ever to become something
more than a merely intellectual movement.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
## p. xvi (#18) #############################################
## p. xvii (#19) ############################################
1
PREFACE
-
a
-
To maintain a cheerful attitude of mind in the midst
of a gloomy and exceedingly responsible task, is no
slight artistic feat. And yet, what could be more
necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing ever succeeds
which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce.
Surplus power, alone, is the proof of power. —A
transvaluation of all values,—this note of interroga-
tion which is so black, so huge, that it casts a shadow
even upon him who affixes it,-is a task of such
fatal import, that he who undertakes it is compelled
every now and then to rush out into the sunlight
in order to shake himself free from an earnestness
that becomes crushing, far too crushing. This end
justifies every means, every event on the road to it
is a windfall. Above all war. War has always
been the great policy of all spirits who have pene-
trated too far into themselves or who have grown
too deep; a wound stimulates the recuperative
powers. For many years, a maxim, the origin of
which I withhold from learned curiosity, has been
my motto:
increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus.
At other times another means of recovery which
is even more to my taste, is to cross-examine idols.
There are more idols than realities in the world :
xvii
## p. xviii (#20) ###########################################
xviii
PREFACE
this constitutes my "evil eye” for this world : it is
also my “evil ear. ” To put questions in this quarter
with a hammer, and to hear perchance that well-
known hollow sound which tells of blown-out frogs,
—what a joy this is for one who has ears even behind
his ears, for an old psychologist and Pied Piper like
myself in whose presence precisely that which would
fain be silent, must betray itself.
Even this treatise—as its title shows/is above all
a recreation, a ray of sunshine, a leap sideways of
a psychologist in his leisure moments. Maybe, too,
a new war?
And are we again cross-examining
new idols? This little work is a great declaration
of war ; and with regard to the cross-examining of
idols, this time it is not the idols of the age but
eternal idols which are here struck with a hammer
as with a tuning fork,—there are certainly no idols
which are older, more convinced, and more inflated.
Neither are there any more hollow. This does not
alter the fact that they are believed in more than
any others, besides they are never called idols,-at
least, not the most exalted among their number.
ܪ
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
Turin, the 30th September 1888,
on the day when the first
book of the Transvaluation
of all Values was finished
## p. 1 (#21) ###############################################
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
I
IDLENESS is the parent of all psychology. What? ?
Is psychology then a-vice?
2
Even the pluckiest among us has but seldom the
courage of what he really knows.
3
Aristotle says that in order to live alone, a man
must be either an animal or a god. The third alter-
native is lacking: a man must be both—a philo-
sopher.
4
“ All truth is simple. ”—Is not this a double lie?
5
Once for all I wish to be blind to many things
-Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.
6
A man recovers best from his exceptional nature
- his intellectuality—by giving his animal instincts
a chance.
I
## p. 2 (#22) ###############################################
2
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
2
7
Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or
is God only a blunder of man?
8
From the military school of life. That which does
not kill me, makes me stronger.
9
Help thyself, then everyone will help thee. A
principle of neighbour-love.
IO
A man should not play the coward to his deeds.
He should not repudiate them once he has performed
them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.
II
Can a donkey be tragic? —To perish beneath a
load that one can neither bear nor throw off? This
is the case of the Philosopher.
I2
If a man knows the wherefore of his existence,
then the manner of it can take care of itself. Man
does not aspire to happiness; only the Englishman
does that.
13
Man created woman-out of what? Out of a rib
of his god,- of his “ideal. ”
14
What? Art thou looking for something? Thou
## p. 3 (#23) ###############################################
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
3
wouldst fain multiply thyself tenfold, a hundredfold?
Thou seekest followers ? Seek ciphers !
11
i
15
Posthumous men, like myself, are not so well
understood as men who reflect their age, but they
are heard with more respect. In plain English: we
are never understood-hence our authority.
16
Among women. —“Truth? Oh, you do not know
truth! Is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs ? ”–
17
There is an artist after my own heart, modest in
his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread
and his art-panem et Circen.
18
He who knows not how to plant his will in things
at least endows them with some meaning : that is
to say, he believes that a will is already present in
them. (A principle of faith. )
19
What? Ye chose virtue and the heaving breast,
and at the same time ye squint covetously at the
advantages of the unscrupulous. —But with virtue
ye renounce all “ advantages" (to be nailed to
an Antisemite's door).
20
The perfect woman perpetrates literature as if it
were a petty vice : as an experiment, en passant,
.
## p.
"
Certain it is that, for a rapid survey of the whole
of Nietzsche's doctrine, no book, save perhaps the
section entitled “Of Old and New Tables" in Thus
Spake Zarathustra, could be of more real value than
The Twilight of the Idols. Here Nietzsche is quite
at his best. He is ripe for the marvellous feat of
the transvaluation of all values. Nowhere is his
language—that marvellous weapon which in his
hand became at once so supple and so murderous-
more forcible and more condensed. Nowhere are
his thoughts more profound. But all this does not
by any means imply that this book is the easiest of
Nietzsche's works. On the contrary, I very much
fear that, unless the reader is well prepared, not only
in Nietzscheism, but also in the habit of grappling
with uncommon and elusive problems, a good deal
of the contents of this work will tend rather to
confuse than to enlighten him in regard to what
Nietzsche actually wishes to make clear in these
pages.
How much prejudice, for instance, how many
traditional and deep-seated opinions, must be up-
rooted, if we are to see even so much as an important
note of interrogation in the section entitled “The
Problem of Socrates”—not to speak of such sections
as “Morality as the Enemy of Nature," "The Four
Great Errors,” &c. The errors exposed in these
## p. ix (#11) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
ix
sections have a tradition of two thousand years
behind them; and only a fantastic dreamer could
expect them to be eradicated by a mere casual study
of these pages. Indeed, Nietzsche himself looked
forward only to a gradual change in the general
view of the questions he discussed; he knew only
too well what the conversion of “light heads” was
worth, and what kind of man would probably be the
first to rush into his arms; and, grand psychologist
that he was, he guarded himself beforehand against
bad company by means of his famous warning:-
“ The first adherents of a creed do not prove any-
thing against it. "
To the aspiring student of Nietzsche, however, it
ought not to be necessary to become an immediate
convert in order to be interested in the treasure of
thought which Nietzsche here lavishes upon us. For
such a man it will be quite difficult enough to regard
the questions raised in this work as actual problems.
Once, however, he has succeeded in doing this, and
has given his imagination time to play round these
questions as problems, the particular turn or twist
that Nietzsche gives to their elucidation, may then
perhaps strike him, not only as valuable, but as
absolutely necessary.
With regard to the substance of The Twilight of
the Idols, Nietzsche says in Ecce Homo (p. 119):
“There is the waste of an all-too-rich autumn in
this book: you trip over truths. You even crush
some to death, there are too many of them. ”
And what are these truths? They are things that
are not yet held to be true. They are the utterances
of a man who, as a single exception, escaped for a
a
## p. x (#12) ###############################################
X
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
while the general insanity of Europe, with its blind
idealism in the midst of squalor, with its unscrupu-
lous praise of so-called “Progress” while it stood
knee-deep in the belittlement of “Man,” and with
its vulgar levity in the face of effeminacy and decay;
—they are the utterances of one who voiced the
hopes, the aims, and the realities of another world,
not of an ideal world, not of a world beyond, but
of a real world, of this world regenerated and re-
organised upon a sounder, a more virile, and a more
orderly basis,-in fact, of a perfectly possible world,
one that has already existed in the past, and could
exist again, if only the stupendous revolution of a
transvaluation of all values were made possible.
This then is the nature of the truths uttered by
this one sane man in the whole of Europe at the end
of last century; and when, owing to his unequal
struggle against the overwhelming hostile forces of
his time, his highly sensitive personality was at last
forced to surrender itself to the enemy and become
one with them—that is to say, insane! —at least the
record of his sanity had been safely stored away,
beyond the reach of time and change, in the volumes
which constitute his life-work.
-
*
*
*
*
Nietzsche must have started upon the “Anti-
christ," immediately after having dispatched the
“ Idle Hours of a Psychologist” to the printers, and
the work appears to have been finished at the end
of September 1888. It was intended by Nietzsche
to form the first book of a large work entitled “The
Transvaluation of all Values”; but, though this
work was never completed, we can form some idea
## p. xi (#13) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
xi
from the substance of the “ Antichrist” and from
the titles of the remaining three books, which alas!
were never written, of what its contents would have
been. These titles are:- Book II.
Book II. The Free
Spirit. A Criticism of Philosophy as a Nihilistic
Movement. Book III. The Immoralist. A Criti-
cism of the most Fatal Kind of Ignorance,
Morality. Book IV. Dionysus. The Philosophy
of Eternal Recurrence.
Nietzsche calls this book “An Attempted Criti-
cism of Christianity. ” Modest as this sub-title is,
it will probably seem not quite modest enough to
those who think that Nietzsche fell far short of
doing justice to their Holy Creed. Be this as it
may, there is the solution of a certain profound
problem in this book, which, while it is the key to
all Nietzscheism, is also the justification and the
sanctification of Nietzsche's cause. The problem
stated quite plainly is this : “To what end did
Christianity avail itself of falsehood ? ”
Many readers of this amazing little work, who
happen to be acquainted with Nietzsche's doctrine
of Art and of Ruling, will probably feel slightly
confused at the constant deprecation of falsehood,
of deception, and of arbitrary make-believe, which
seems to run through this book like a litany in
praise of a certain Absolute Truth.
Remembering Nietzsche's utterance in volume
ii. (p. 26) of the Will to Power, to wit:-“The pre-
requisite of all living things and of their lives is :
that there should be a large amount of faith, that it
should be possible to pass definite judgments on
things, and that there should be no doubt at all con-
1
## p. xii (#14) #############################################
xii
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
1
cerning values. Thus it is necessary that something
should be assumed to be true, not that it is true ;”
remembering these words, as I say, the reader may
I
stand somewhat aghast before all those passages in
the second half of this volume, where the very
false-
hoods of Christianity, its assumptions, its unwarrant-
able claims to Truth, are declared to be pernicious,
base and corrupt.
Again and again, if we commit the error of sup-
posing that Nietzsche believed in a truth that was
absolute, we shall find throughout his works reasons
for charging him with apparently the very same
crimes that he here lays at the door of Christianity.
What then is the explanation of his seeming incon-
sistency?
It is simple enough. Nietzsche's charge of false-
hood against Christianity is not a moral one,-in
fact it may be taken as a general rule that Nietzsche
scrupulously avoids making moral charges, and that
heremains throughout faithful to his position Beyond
Good and Evil (see, for instance Aph. 6 (Antichrist)
where he repudiates all moral prejudice in charging
humanity with corruption). A man who maintained
that “truth is that form of error which enables a
particular species to prevail,” could not make a moral
charge of falsehood against any one, or any institu-
tion ; but he could do so from another standpoint.
He could well say, for instance, “ falsehood is that
kind of error which causes a particular species to
degenerate and to decay. "
Thus the fact that Christianity “lied ” becomes a
subject of alarm to Nietzsche, not owing to the fact
that it is immoral to lie, but because in this particular
## p. xiii (#15) ############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
xiii
instance, the lie was harmful, hostile to life, and
dangerous to humanity; for “a belief might be false
and yet life-preserving” (Beyond Good and Evil,
pp. 8, 9).
Suppose, therefore, we say with Nietzsche that
there is no absolute truth, but that all that has been
true in the past which has been the means of making
the "plant man flourish best”-or, since the meaning
of“ best ”is open to some debate, let us say, flourish
in a Nietzschean sense, that is to say, thanks to a
mastery of life, and to a preponderance of all those
qualities which say yea to existence, and which
suggest no flight from this world and all its pleasure
and pain. And suppose we add that, wherever we
may find the plant man flourishing, in this sense,
we should there suspect the existence of truth? —
If we say this with Nietzsche, any sort of assumption
or arbitrary valuation which aims at a reverse order
of things, becomes a dangerous lie in a super-moral
and purely physiological sense.
With these preparatory remarks we are now pre-
pared to read aphorism 56 with a complete under-
standing of what Nietzsche means, and to recognise
in this particular aphorism the key to the whole of
Nietzsche's attitude towards Christianity. It is at
once a solution of our problem, and a justification
of its author's position. Naturally, it still remains
open to Nietzsche's opponents to argue, if they
choose, that man has flourished best under the sway
of nihilistic religions—religions which deny life,-
and that consequently the falsehoods of Christianity
are not only warrantable but also in the highest
degree blessed; but in any case, the aphorism in
## p. xiv (#16) #############################################
xiy
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
question completely exonerates Nietzsche from a
charge of inconsistency in the use of the terms
“truth” and “falsehood” throughout his works,
and it moreover settles once and for all the exact
altitude from which our author looked down upon
the religions of the world, not only to criticise them,
but also to place them in the order of their merit as
disciplinary systems aiming at the cultivation of
particular types of men.
Nietzsche
says in aphorism 56:—“After all, the
question is, to what end are falsehoods perpetrated ?
The fact that, in Christianity, 'holy' ends are
entirely absent, constitutes my objection to the
means it employs. Its ends are only bad ends :
the poisoning, the calumniation and the denial of
life, the contempt of the body, the degradation and
self-pollution of man by virtue of the concept sin,-
consequently its means are bad as well. ”
Thus, to repeat it once more, it is not because
Christianity availed itself of all kinds of lies that
Nietzsche condemns it; for the Book of Manu-
which he admires—is just as full of falsehood as
the Semitic Book of Laws; but, in the Book of
Manu the lies are calculated to preserve and to
create a strong and noble type of man, whereas in
Christianity the opposite type was the aim,-
-an aim
which has been achieved in a manner far exceeding
even the expectations of the faithful.
This then is the main argument of the book and
its conclusion ; but, in the course of the general
elaboration of this argument, many important side-
issues are touched upon and developed, wherein
Nietzsche reveals himself as something very much
## p. xv (#17) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
XV
more valuable than a mere iconoclast. Of course,
on every page of his philosophy, — whatever his
enemies may maintain to the contrary,—he never
once ceases to construct, since he is incessantly
enumerating and emphasising those qualities and
types which he fain would rear, as against those he
fain would see destroyed ; but it is in aphorism 57
of this book that Nietzsche makes the plainest and
most complete statement of his actual taste in
Sociology, and it is upon this aphorism that all his
followers and disciples will ultimately have to
build, if Nietzscheism is ever to become something
more than a merely intellectual movement.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
## p. xvi (#18) #############################################
## p. xvii (#19) ############################################
1
PREFACE
-
a
-
To maintain a cheerful attitude of mind in the midst
of a gloomy and exceedingly responsible task, is no
slight artistic feat. And yet, what could be more
necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing ever succeeds
which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce.
Surplus power, alone, is the proof of power. —A
transvaluation of all values,—this note of interroga-
tion which is so black, so huge, that it casts a shadow
even upon him who affixes it,-is a task of such
fatal import, that he who undertakes it is compelled
every now and then to rush out into the sunlight
in order to shake himself free from an earnestness
that becomes crushing, far too crushing. This end
justifies every means, every event on the road to it
is a windfall. Above all war. War has always
been the great policy of all spirits who have pene-
trated too far into themselves or who have grown
too deep; a wound stimulates the recuperative
powers. For many years, a maxim, the origin of
which I withhold from learned curiosity, has been
my motto:
increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus.
At other times another means of recovery which
is even more to my taste, is to cross-examine idols.
There are more idols than realities in the world :
xvii
## p. xviii (#20) ###########################################
xviii
PREFACE
this constitutes my "evil eye” for this world : it is
also my “evil ear. ” To put questions in this quarter
with a hammer, and to hear perchance that well-
known hollow sound which tells of blown-out frogs,
—what a joy this is for one who has ears even behind
his ears, for an old psychologist and Pied Piper like
myself in whose presence precisely that which would
fain be silent, must betray itself.
Even this treatise—as its title shows/is above all
a recreation, a ray of sunshine, a leap sideways of
a psychologist in his leisure moments. Maybe, too,
a new war?
And are we again cross-examining
new idols? This little work is a great declaration
of war ; and with regard to the cross-examining of
idols, this time it is not the idols of the age but
eternal idols which are here struck with a hammer
as with a tuning fork,—there are certainly no idols
which are older, more convinced, and more inflated.
Neither are there any more hollow. This does not
alter the fact that they are believed in more than
any others, besides they are never called idols,-at
least, not the most exalted among their number.
ܪ
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
Turin, the 30th September 1888,
on the day when the first
book of the Transvaluation
of all Values was finished
## p. 1 (#21) ###############################################
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
I
IDLENESS is the parent of all psychology. What? ?
Is psychology then a-vice?
2
Even the pluckiest among us has but seldom the
courage of what he really knows.
3
Aristotle says that in order to live alone, a man
must be either an animal or a god. The third alter-
native is lacking: a man must be both—a philo-
sopher.
4
“ All truth is simple. ”—Is not this a double lie?
5
Once for all I wish to be blind to many things
-Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.
6
A man recovers best from his exceptional nature
- his intellectuality—by giving his animal instincts
a chance.
I
## p. 2 (#22) ###############################################
2
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
2
7
Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or
is God only a blunder of man?
8
From the military school of life. That which does
not kill me, makes me stronger.
9
Help thyself, then everyone will help thee. A
principle of neighbour-love.
IO
A man should not play the coward to his deeds.
He should not repudiate them once he has performed
them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.
II
Can a donkey be tragic? —To perish beneath a
load that one can neither bear nor throw off? This
is the case of the Philosopher.
I2
If a man knows the wherefore of his existence,
then the manner of it can take care of itself. Man
does not aspire to happiness; only the Englishman
does that.
13
Man created woman-out of what? Out of a rib
of his god,- of his “ideal. ”
14
What? Art thou looking for something? Thou
## p. 3 (#23) ###############################################
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
3
wouldst fain multiply thyself tenfold, a hundredfold?
Thou seekest followers ? Seek ciphers !
11
i
15
Posthumous men, like myself, are not so well
understood as men who reflect their age, but they
are heard with more respect. In plain English: we
are never understood-hence our authority.
16
Among women. —“Truth? Oh, you do not know
truth! Is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs ? ”–
17
There is an artist after my own heart, modest in
his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread
and his art-panem et Circen.
18
He who knows not how to plant his will in things
at least endows them with some meaning : that is
to say, he believes that a will is already present in
them. (A principle of faith. )
19
What? Ye chose virtue and the heaving breast,
and at the same time ye squint covetously at the
advantages of the unscrupulous. —But with virtue
ye renounce all “ advantages" (to be nailed to
an Antisemite's door).
20
The perfect woman perpetrates literature as if it
were a petty vice : as an experiment, en passant,
.
## p. 4 (#24) ###############################################
4
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
and looking about her all the while to see whether
anybody is noticing her, hoping that somebody is
noticing her.
21
One should adopt only those situations in which
one is in no need of sham virtues, but rather, like
the tight-rope dancer on his tight rope, in which one
must either fall or stand—or escape.
22
“Evil men have no songs. ”*_How is it that the
Russians have songs ?
23
“German intellect”; for eighteen years this has
been a contradictio in adjecto.
.
· 24
By seeking the beginnings of things, a man be-
comes a crab. The historian looks backwards : in
the end he also believes backwards.
* This is a reference to Seume's poem “ Die Gesänge," the
first verse of which is :
“Wo man singet, lass dich ruhig nieder,
Ohne Furcht, was man im Lande glaubt ;
Wo man singet, wird kein Mensch beraubt:
Bösewichter haten keine Lieder. "
(Wherever people sing thou canst safely settle down with-
out a qualm as to what the general faith of the land may be.
Wherever people sing, no man is ever robbed ; rascals have
no songs. ) Popular tradition, however, renders the lines
thus :-
“Wo man singt, da lass dich ruhig nieder;
Böse Menschen (evil men) haben keine Lieder. "
-TR.
## p. 5 (#25) ###############################################
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
5
25
Contentment preserves one even from catching
cold. Has a woman who knew that she was well-
dressed ever caught cold ? —No, not even when
she had scarcely a rag to her back.
26
I distrust all systematisers, and avoid them. The
will to a system, shows a lack of honesty.
!
27
Man thinks woman profound—why? Because he
?
can never fathom her depths. Woman is not even
shallow.
28
When woman possesses masculine virtues, she is
enough to make you run away. When she possesses
no masculine virtues, she herself runs away.
29
“ How often conscience had to bite in times gone
by! !
What good teeth it must have had! And to-
day, what is amiss ? "-A dentist's question
30
Errors of haste are seldom committed singly. The
first time a man always does too much. And pre-
cisely on that account he commits a second error,
and then he does too little.
31
The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its
caution. It thus reduces its chances of being trod-
## p. 6 (#26) ###############################################
6
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
den upon again. In the language of morality:
Humility. —
32
There is such a thing as a hatred of lies and dis-
simulation, which is the outcome of a delicate sense
of humour; there is also the selfsame hatred but as
the result of cowardice, in so far as falsehood is for-
bidden by Divine law. Too cowardly to lie. . .
a
a
33
What trifles constitute happiness! The sound of
a bagpipe. Without music life would be a mistake.
The German imagines even God as a songster.
34
On ne peut penser et écrire qu'assis (G. Flaubert).
Here I have got you, you nihilist! A sedentary
life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only
those thoughts that come by walking have any value.
35
There are times when we psychologists are like
horses, and grow fretful. We see our own shadow
,
rise and fall before us. The psychologist must look
away from himself if he wishes to see anything at all.
36
Do we immoralists injure virtue in any way? Just
as little as the anarchists injure royalty.
Find more books at https://www. hathitrust. org.
Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
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Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
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## p. (#1) ##################################################
## p. (#2) ##################################################
## p. i (#3) ################################################
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
First Complete and Authorised English Translation
in Eighteen Volumes
EDITED BY
DR OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME SIXTEEN
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS.
## p. ii (#4) ###############################################
First Edition,
One Thousand Five Hundred Copies,
Of the Second Edition of
One Thousand Five Hundred Copies
this is
155
No.
## p. iii (#5) ##############################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THE TWILIGHT OF
THE IDOLS
Or, How to Philosophise with the Hammer
THE ANTICHRIST
NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA, AND
ETERNAL RECURRENCE
TRANSLATED BY
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
T. N. FOULIS
EDINBURGH & LONDON
1915
## p. iv (#6) ###############################################
PRINTED AT
The DARIEN PRESS
EDINBURGH
## p. v (#7) ################################################
CONTENTS
PAGE
TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS—
vii
xvii
I
9
17
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
PREFACE
MaximS AND MISSILES
THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES
“REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY -
How THE "TRUE WORLD" ULTIMATELY BE-
CAME A FABLE -
MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE
THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS-
THE “IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND
THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE
THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS -
24
26
33
44
50
60
1
II2
THE ANTICHRIST
125,
ETERNAL RECURRENCE
237
NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA
.
259
;
UN 29 1916 401K srecher
'I' 11 DURY
47
DEC 31
V
008
## p. vi (#8) ###############################################
.
ఒక
## p. vii (#9) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
THE Twilight of the Idols was written towards the
end of the summer of 1888. Its composition seems to
have occupied only a few days,—so few indeed that,
in Ecce Homo (p. 118), Nietzsche says he hesitates
to give their number ; but, in any case, we know it
was completed on the 3rd of September in Sils
Maria. The manuscript which was dispatched to
the printers on the 7th of September bore the title:
“ Idle Hours of a Psychologist"; this, however, was
abandoned in favour of the present title, while the
work was going through the press. During Septem-
ber and the early part of October 1888, Nietzsche
added to the original contents of the book by insert-
ing the whole section entitled “Things the Germans
Lack,” and aphorisms 32-43 of “Skirmishes in a
War with the Age"; and the book, as it now stands,
represents exactly the form in which Nietzsche in-
tended to publish it in the course of the year 1889.
Unfortunately its author was already stricken down
with illness when the work first appeared at the end
of January 1889, and he was denied the joy of seeing
it run into nine editions, of one thousand each, before
his death in 1900.
Of The Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche says in
Ecce Homo (p. 118):-“If anyone should desire to
obtain a rapid sketch of how everything before my
vi
## p. viii (#10) ############################################
viii
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
time was standing on its head, he should begin read-
ing me in this book. That which is called 'Idols'
on the title-page is simply the old truth that has been
believed in hitherto. In plain English, The Twilight
of the Idols means that the old truth is on its last
legs. "
Certain it is that, for a rapid survey of the whole
of Nietzsche's doctrine, no book, save perhaps the
section entitled “Of Old and New Tables" in Thus
Spake Zarathustra, could be of more real value than
The Twilight of the Idols. Here Nietzsche is quite
at his best. He is ripe for the marvellous feat of
the transvaluation of all values. Nowhere is his
language—that marvellous weapon which in his
hand became at once so supple and so murderous-
more forcible and more condensed. Nowhere are
his thoughts more profound. But all this does not
by any means imply that this book is the easiest of
Nietzsche's works. On the contrary, I very much
fear that, unless the reader is well prepared, not only
in Nietzscheism, but also in the habit of grappling
with uncommon and elusive problems, a good deal
of the contents of this work will tend rather to
confuse than to enlighten him in regard to what
Nietzsche actually wishes to make clear in these
pages.
How much prejudice, for instance, how many
traditional and deep-seated opinions, must be up-
rooted, if we are to see even so much as an important
note of interrogation in the section entitled “The
Problem of Socrates”—not to speak of such sections
as “Morality as the Enemy of Nature," "The Four
Great Errors,” &c. The errors exposed in these
## p. ix (#11) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
ix
sections have a tradition of two thousand years
behind them; and only a fantastic dreamer could
expect them to be eradicated by a mere casual study
of these pages. Indeed, Nietzsche himself looked
forward only to a gradual change in the general
view of the questions he discussed; he knew only
too well what the conversion of “light heads” was
worth, and what kind of man would probably be the
first to rush into his arms; and, grand psychologist
that he was, he guarded himself beforehand against
bad company by means of his famous warning:-
“ The first adherents of a creed do not prove any-
thing against it. "
To the aspiring student of Nietzsche, however, it
ought not to be necessary to become an immediate
convert in order to be interested in the treasure of
thought which Nietzsche here lavishes upon us. For
such a man it will be quite difficult enough to regard
the questions raised in this work as actual problems.
Once, however, he has succeeded in doing this, and
has given his imagination time to play round these
questions as problems, the particular turn or twist
that Nietzsche gives to their elucidation, may then
perhaps strike him, not only as valuable, but as
absolutely necessary.
With regard to the substance of The Twilight of
the Idols, Nietzsche says in Ecce Homo (p. 119):
“There is the waste of an all-too-rich autumn in
this book: you trip over truths. You even crush
some to death, there are too many of them. ”
And what are these truths? They are things that
are not yet held to be true. They are the utterances
of a man who, as a single exception, escaped for a
a
## p. x (#12) ###############################################
X
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
while the general insanity of Europe, with its blind
idealism in the midst of squalor, with its unscrupu-
lous praise of so-called “Progress” while it stood
knee-deep in the belittlement of “Man,” and with
its vulgar levity in the face of effeminacy and decay;
—they are the utterances of one who voiced the
hopes, the aims, and the realities of another world,
not of an ideal world, not of a world beyond, but
of a real world, of this world regenerated and re-
organised upon a sounder, a more virile, and a more
orderly basis,-in fact, of a perfectly possible world,
one that has already existed in the past, and could
exist again, if only the stupendous revolution of a
transvaluation of all values were made possible.
This then is the nature of the truths uttered by
this one sane man in the whole of Europe at the end
of last century; and when, owing to his unequal
struggle against the overwhelming hostile forces of
his time, his highly sensitive personality was at last
forced to surrender itself to the enemy and become
one with them—that is to say, insane! —at least the
record of his sanity had been safely stored away,
beyond the reach of time and change, in the volumes
which constitute his life-work.
-
*
*
*
*
Nietzsche must have started upon the “Anti-
christ," immediately after having dispatched the
“ Idle Hours of a Psychologist” to the printers, and
the work appears to have been finished at the end
of September 1888. It was intended by Nietzsche
to form the first book of a large work entitled “The
Transvaluation of all Values”; but, though this
work was never completed, we can form some idea
## p. xi (#13) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
xi
from the substance of the “ Antichrist” and from
the titles of the remaining three books, which alas!
were never written, of what its contents would have
been. These titles are:- Book II.
Book II. The Free
Spirit. A Criticism of Philosophy as a Nihilistic
Movement. Book III. The Immoralist. A Criti-
cism of the most Fatal Kind of Ignorance,
Morality. Book IV. Dionysus. The Philosophy
of Eternal Recurrence.
Nietzsche calls this book “An Attempted Criti-
cism of Christianity. ” Modest as this sub-title is,
it will probably seem not quite modest enough to
those who think that Nietzsche fell far short of
doing justice to their Holy Creed. Be this as it
may, there is the solution of a certain profound
problem in this book, which, while it is the key to
all Nietzscheism, is also the justification and the
sanctification of Nietzsche's cause. The problem
stated quite plainly is this : “To what end did
Christianity avail itself of falsehood ? ”
Many readers of this amazing little work, who
happen to be acquainted with Nietzsche's doctrine
of Art and of Ruling, will probably feel slightly
confused at the constant deprecation of falsehood,
of deception, and of arbitrary make-believe, which
seems to run through this book like a litany in
praise of a certain Absolute Truth.
Remembering Nietzsche's utterance in volume
ii. (p. 26) of the Will to Power, to wit:-“The pre-
requisite of all living things and of their lives is :
that there should be a large amount of faith, that it
should be possible to pass definite judgments on
things, and that there should be no doubt at all con-
1
## p. xii (#14) #############################################
xii
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
1
cerning values. Thus it is necessary that something
should be assumed to be true, not that it is true ;”
remembering these words, as I say, the reader may
I
stand somewhat aghast before all those passages in
the second half of this volume, where the very
false-
hoods of Christianity, its assumptions, its unwarrant-
able claims to Truth, are declared to be pernicious,
base and corrupt.
Again and again, if we commit the error of sup-
posing that Nietzsche believed in a truth that was
absolute, we shall find throughout his works reasons
for charging him with apparently the very same
crimes that he here lays at the door of Christianity.
What then is the explanation of his seeming incon-
sistency?
It is simple enough. Nietzsche's charge of false-
hood against Christianity is not a moral one,-in
fact it may be taken as a general rule that Nietzsche
scrupulously avoids making moral charges, and that
heremains throughout faithful to his position Beyond
Good and Evil (see, for instance Aph. 6 (Antichrist)
where he repudiates all moral prejudice in charging
humanity with corruption). A man who maintained
that “truth is that form of error which enables a
particular species to prevail,” could not make a moral
charge of falsehood against any one, or any institu-
tion ; but he could do so from another standpoint.
He could well say, for instance, “ falsehood is that
kind of error which causes a particular species to
degenerate and to decay. "
Thus the fact that Christianity “lied ” becomes a
subject of alarm to Nietzsche, not owing to the fact
that it is immoral to lie, but because in this particular
## p. xiii (#15) ############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
xiii
instance, the lie was harmful, hostile to life, and
dangerous to humanity; for “a belief might be false
and yet life-preserving” (Beyond Good and Evil,
pp. 8, 9).
Suppose, therefore, we say with Nietzsche that
there is no absolute truth, but that all that has been
true in the past which has been the means of making
the "plant man flourish best”-or, since the meaning
of“ best ”is open to some debate, let us say, flourish
in a Nietzschean sense, that is to say, thanks to a
mastery of life, and to a preponderance of all those
qualities which say yea to existence, and which
suggest no flight from this world and all its pleasure
and pain. And suppose we add that, wherever we
may find the plant man flourishing, in this sense,
we should there suspect the existence of truth? —
If we say this with Nietzsche, any sort of assumption
or arbitrary valuation which aims at a reverse order
of things, becomes a dangerous lie in a super-moral
and purely physiological sense.
With these preparatory remarks we are now pre-
pared to read aphorism 56 with a complete under-
standing of what Nietzsche means, and to recognise
in this particular aphorism the key to the whole of
Nietzsche's attitude towards Christianity. It is at
once a solution of our problem, and a justification
of its author's position. Naturally, it still remains
open to Nietzsche's opponents to argue, if they
choose, that man has flourished best under the sway
of nihilistic religions—religions which deny life,-
and that consequently the falsehoods of Christianity
are not only warrantable but also in the highest
degree blessed; but in any case, the aphorism in
## p. xiv (#16) #############################################
xiy
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
question completely exonerates Nietzsche from a
charge of inconsistency in the use of the terms
“truth” and “falsehood” throughout his works,
and it moreover settles once and for all the exact
altitude from which our author looked down upon
the religions of the world, not only to criticise them,
but also to place them in the order of their merit as
disciplinary systems aiming at the cultivation of
particular types of men.
Nietzsche
says in aphorism 56:—“After all, the
question is, to what end are falsehoods perpetrated ?
The fact that, in Christianity, 'holy' ends are
entirely absent, constitutes my objection to the
means it employs. Its ends are only bad ends :
the poisoning, the calumniation and the denial of
life, the contempt of the body, the degradation and
self-pollution of man by virtue of the concept sin,-
consequently its means are bad as well. ”
Thus, to repeat it once more, it is not because
Christianity availed itself of all kinds of lies that
Nietzsche condemns it; for the Book of Manu-
which he admires—is just as full of falsehood as
the Semitic Book of Laws; but, in the Book of
Manu the lies are calculated to preserve and to
create a strong and noble type of man, whereas in
Christianity the opposite type was the aim,-
-an aim
which has been achieved in a manner far exceeding
even the expectations of the faithful.
This then is the main argument of the book and
its conclusion ; but, in the course of the general
elaboration of this argument, many important side-
issues are touched upon and developed, wherein
Nietzsche reveals himself as something very much
## p. xv (#17) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
XV
more valuable than a mere iconoclast. Of course,
on every page of his philosophy, — whatever his
enemies may maintain to the contrary,—he never
once ceases to construct, since he is incessantly
enumerating and emphasising those qualities and
types which he fain would rear, as against those he
fain would see destroyed ; but it is in aphorism 57
of this book that Nietzsche makes the plainest and
most complete statement of his actual taste in
Sociology, and it is upon this aphorism that all his
followers and disciples will ultimately have to
build, if Nietzscheism is ever to become something
more than a merely intellectual movement.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
## p. xvi (#18) #############################################
## p. xvii (#19) ############################################
1
PREFACE
-
a
-
To maintain a cheerful attitude of mind in the midst
of a gloomy and exceedingly responsible task, is no
slight artistic feat. And yet, what could be more
necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing ever succeeds
which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce.
Surplus power, alone, is the proof of power. —A
transvaluation of all values,—this note of interroga-
tion which is so black, so huge, that it casts a shadow
even upon him who affixes it,-is a task of such
fatal import, that he who undertakes it is compelled
every now and then to rush out into the sunlight
in order to shake himself free from an earnestness
that becomes crushing, far too crushing. This end
justifies every means, every event on the road to it
is a windfall. Above all war. War has always
been the great policy of all spirits who have pene-
trated too far into themselves or who have grown
too deep; a wound stimulates the recuperative
powers. For many years, a maxim, the origin of
which I withhold from learned curiosity, has been
my motto:
increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus.
At other times another means of recovery which
is even more to my taste, is to cross-examine idols.
There are more idols than realities in the world :
xvii
## p. xviii (#20) ###########################################
xviii
PREFACE
this constitutes my "evil eye” for this world : it is
also my “evil ear. ” To put questions in this quarter
with a hammer, and to hear perchance that well-
known hollow sound which tells of blown-out frogs,
—what a joy this is for one who has ears even behind
his ears, for an old psychologist and Pied Piper like
myself in whose presence precisely that which would
fain be silent, must betray itself.
Even this treatise—as its title shows/is above all
a recreation, a ray of sunshine, a leap sideways of
a psychologist in his leisure moments. Maybe, too,
a new war?
And are we again cross-examining
new idols? This little work is a great declaration
of war ; and with regard to the cross-examining of
idols, this time it is not the idols of the age but
eternal idols which are here struck with a hammer
as with a tuning fork,—there are certainly no idols
which are older, more convinced, and more inflated.
Neither are there any more hollow. This does not
alter the fact that they are believed in more than
any others, besides they are never called idols,-at
least, not the most exalted among their number.
ܪ
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
Turin, the 30th September 1888,
on the day when the first
book of the Transvaluation
of all Values was finished
## p. 1 (#21) ###############################################
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
I
IDLENESS is the parent of all psychology. What? ?
Is psychology then a-vice?
2
Even the pluckiest among us has but seldom the
courage of what he really knows.
3
Aristotle says that in order to live alone, a man
must be either an animal or a god. The third alter-
native is lacking: a man must be both—a philo-
sopher.
4
“ All truth is simple. ”—Is not this a double lie?
5
Once for all I wish to be blind to many things
-Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.
6
A man recovers best from his exceptional nature
- his intellectuality—by giving his animal instincts
a chance.
I
## p. 2 (#22) ###############################################
2
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
2
7
Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or
is God only a blunder of man?
8
From the military school of life. That which does
not kill me, makes me stronger.
9
Help thyself, then everyone will help thee. A
principle of neighbour-love.
IO
A man should not play the coward to his deeds.
He should not repudiate them once he has performed
them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.
II
Can a donkey be tragic? —To perish beneath a
load that one can neither bear nor throw off? This
is the case of the Philosopher.
I2
If a man knows the wherefore of his existence,
then the manner of it can take care of itself. Man
does not aspire to happiness; only the Englishman
does that.
13
Man created woman-out of what? Out of a rib
of his god,- of his “ideal. ”
14
What? Art thou looking for something? Thou
## p. 3 (#23) ###############################################
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
3
wouldst fain multiply thyself tenfold, a hundredfold?
Thou seekest followers ? Seek ciphers !
11
i
15
Posthumous men, like myself, are not so well
understood as men who reflect their age, but they
are heard with more respect. In plain English: we
are never understood-hence our authority.
16
Among women. —“Truth? Oh, you do not know
truth! Is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs ? ”–
17
There is an artist after my own heart, modest in
his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread
and his art-panem et Circen.
18
He who knows not how to plant his will in things
at least endows them with some meaning : that is
to say, he believes that a will is already present in
them. (A principle of faith. )
19
What? Ye chose virtue and the heaving breast,
and at the same time ye squint covetously at the
advantages of the unscrupulous. —But with virtue
ye renounce all “ advantages" (to be nailed to
an Antisemite's door).
20
The perfect woman perpetrates literature as if it
were a petty vice : as an experiment, en passant,
.
## p.
"
Certain it is that, for a rapid survey of the whole
of Nietzsche's doctrine, no book, save perhaps the
section entitled “Of Old and New Tables" in Thus
Spake Zarathustra, could be of more real value than
The Twilight of the Idols. Here Nietzsche is quite
at his best. He is ripe for the marvellous feat of
the transvaluation of all values. Nowhere is his
language—that marvellous weapon which in his
hand became at once so supple and so murderous-
more forcible and more condensed. Nowhere are
his thoughts more profound. But all this does not
by any means imply that this book is the easiest of
Nietzsche's works. On the contrary, I very much
fear that, unless the reader is well prepared, not only
in Nietzscheism, but also in the habit of grappling
with uncommon and elusive problems, a good deal
of the contents of this work will tend rather to
confuse than to enlighten him in regard to what
Nietzsche actually wishes to make clear in these
pages.
How much prejudice, for instance, how many
traditional and deep-seated opinions, must be up-
rooted, if we are to see even so much as an important
note of interrogation in the section entitled “The
Problem of Socrates”—not to speak of such sections
as “Morality as the Enemy of Nature," "The Four
Great Errors,” &c. The errors exposed in these
## p. ix (#11) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
ix
sections have a tradition of two thousand years
behind them; and only a fantastic dreamer could
expect them to be eradicated by a mere casual study
of these pages. Indeed, Nietzsche himself looked
forward only to a gradual change in the general
view of the questions he discussed; he knew only
too well what the conversion of “light heads” was
worth, and what kind of man would probably be the
first to rush into his arms; and, grand psychologist
that he was, he guarded himself beforehand against
bad company by means of his famous warning:-
“ The first adherents of a creed do not prove any-
thing against it. "
To the aspiring student of Nietzsche, however, it
ought not to be necessary to become an immediate
convert in order to be interested in the treasure of
thought which Nietzsche here lavishes upon us. For
such a man it will be quite difficult enough to regard
the questions raised in this work as actual problems.
Once, however, he has succeeded in doing this, and
has given his imagination time to play round these
questions as problems, the particular turn or twist
that Nietzsche gives to their elucidation, may then
perhaps strike him, not only as valuable, but as
absolutely necessary.
With regard to the substance of The Twilight of
the Idols, Nietzsche says in Ecce Homo (p. 119):
“There is the waste of an all-too-rich autumn in
this book: you trip over truths. You even crush
some to death, there are too many of them. ”
And what are these truths? They are things that
are not yet held to be true. They are the utterances
of a man who, as a single exception, escaped for a
a
## p. x (#12) ###############################################
X
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
while the general insanity of Europe, with its blind
idealism in the midst of squalor, with its unscrupu-
lous praise of so-called “Progress” while it stood
knee-deep in the belittlement of “Man,” and with
its vulgar levity in the face of effeminacy and decay;
—they are the utterances of one who voiced the
hopes, the aims, and the realities of another world,
not of an ideal world, not of a world beyond, but
of a real world, of this world regenerated and re-
organised upon a sounder, a more virile, and a more
orderly basis,-in fact, of a perfectly possible world,
one that has already existed in the past, and could
exist again, if only the stupendous revolution of a
transvaluation of all values were made possible.
This then is the nature of the truths uttered by
this one sane man in the whole of Europe at the end
of last century; and when, owing to his unequal
struggle against the overwhelming hostile forces of
his time, his highly sensitive personality was at last
forced to surrender itself to the enemy and become
one with them—that is to say, insane! —at least the
record of his sanity had been safely stored away,
beyond the reach of time and change, in the volumes
which constitute his life-work.
-
*
*
*
*
Nietzsche must have started upon the “Anti-
christ," immediately after having dispatched the
“ Idle Hours of a Psychologist” to the printers, and
the work appears to have been finished at the end
of September 1888. It was intended by Nietzsche
to form the first book of a large work entitled “The
Transvaluation of all Values”; but, though this
work was never completed, we can form some idea
## p. xi (#13) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
xi
from the substance of the “ Antichrist” and from
the titles of the remaining three books, which alas!
were never written, of what its contents would have
been. These titles are:- Book II.
Book II. The Free
Spirit. A Criticism of Philosophy as a Nihilistic
Movement. Book III. The Immoralist. A Criti-
cism of the most Fatal Kind of Ignorance,
Morality. Book IV. Dionysus. The Philosophy
of Eternal Recurrence.
Nietzsche calls this book “An Attempted Criti-
cism of Christianity. ” Modest as this sub-title is,
it will probably seem not quite modest enough to
those who think that Nietzsche fell far short of
doing justice to their Holy Creed. Be this as it
may, there is the solution of a certain profound
problem in this book, which, while it is the key to
all Nietzscheism, is also the justification and the
sanctification of Nietzsche's cause. The problem
stated quite plainly is this : “To what end did
Christianity avail itself of falsehood ? ”
Many readers of this amazing little work, who
happen to be acquainted with Nietzsche's doctrine
of Art and of Ruling, will probably feel slightly
confused at the constant deprecation of falsehood,
of deception, and of arbitrary make-believe, which
seems to run through this book like a litany in
praise of a certain Absolute Truth.
Remembering Nietzsche's utterance in volume
ii. (p. 26) of the Will to Power, to wit:-“The pre-
requisite of all living things and of their lives is :
that there should be a large amount of faith, that it
should be possible to pass definite judgments on
things, and that there should be no doubt at all con-
1
## p. xii (#14) #############################################
xii
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
1
cerning values. Thus it is necessary that something
should be assumed to be true, not that it is true ;”
remembering these words, as I say, the reader may
I
stand somewhat aghast before all those passages in
the second half of this volume, where the very
false-
hoods of Christianity, its assumptions, its unwarrant-
able claims to Truth, are declared to be pernicious,
base and corrupt.
Again and again, if we commit the error of sup-
posing that Nietzsche believed in a truth that was
absolute, we shall find throughout his works reasons
for charging him with apparently the very same
crimes that he here lays at the door of Christianity.
What then is the explanation of his seeming incon-
sistency?
It is simple enough. Nietzsche's charge of false-
hood against Christianity is not a moral one,-in
fact it may be taken as a general rule that Nietzsche
scrupulously avoids making moral charges, and that
heremains throughout faithful to his position Beyond
Good and Evil (see, for instance Aph. 6 (Antichrist)
where he repudiates all moral prejudice in charging
humanity with corruption). A man who maintained
that “truth is that form of error which enables a
particular species to prevail,” could not make a moral
charge of falsehood against any one, or any institu-
tion ; but he could do so from another standpoint.
He could well say, for instance, “ falsehood is that
kind of error which causes a particular species to
degenerate and to decay. "
Thus the fact that Christianity “lied ” becomes a
subject of alarm to Nietzsche, not owing to the fact
that it is immoral to lie, but because in this particular
## p. xiii (#15) ############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
xiii
instance, the lie was harmful, hostile to life, and
dangerous to humanity; for “a belief might be false
and yet life-preserving” (Beyond Good and Evil,
pp. 8, 9).
Suppose, therefore, we say with Nietzsche that
there is no absolute truth, but that all that has been
true in the past which has been the means of making
the "plant man flourish best”-or, since the meaning
of“ best ”is open to some debate, let us say, flourish
in a Nietzschean sense, that is to say, thanks to a
mastery of life, and to a preponderance of all those
qualities which say yea to existence, and which
suggest no flight from this world and all its pleasure
and pain. And suppose we add that, wherever we
may find the plant man flourishing, in this sense,
we should there suspect the existence of truth? —
If we say this with Nietzsche, any sort of assumption
or arbitrary valuation which aims at a reverse order
of things, becomes a dangerous lie in a super-moral
and purely physiological sense.
With these preparatory remarks we are now pre-
pared to read aphorism 56 with a complete under-
standing of what Nietzsche means, and to recognise
in this particular aphorism the key to the whole of
Nietzsche's attitude towards Christianity. It is at
once a solution of our problem, and a justification
of its author's position. Naturally, it still remains
open to Nietzsche's opponents to argue, if they
choose, that man has flourished best under the sway
of nihilistic religions—religions which deny life,-
and that consequently the falsehoods of Christianity
are not only warrantable but also in the highest
degree blessed; but in any case, the aphorism in
## p. xiv (#16) #############################################
xiy
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
question completely exonerates Nietzsche from a
charge of inconsistency in the use of the terms
“truth” and “falsehood” throughout his works,
and it moreover settles once and for all the exact
altitude from which our author looked down upon
the religions of the world, not only to criticise them,
but also to place them in the order of their merit as
disciplinary systems aiming at the cultivation of
particular types of men.
Nietzsche
says in aphorism 56:—“After all, the
question is, to what end are falsehoods perpetrated ?
The fact that, in Christianity, 'holy' ends are
entirely absent, constitutes my objection to the
means it employs. Its ends are only bad ends :
the poisoning, the calumniation and the denial of
life, the contempt of the body, the degradation and
self-pollution of man by virtue of the concept sin,-
consequently its means are bad as well. ”
Thus, to repeat it once more, it is not because
Christianity availed itself of all kinds of lies that
Nietzsche condemns it; for the Book of Manu-
which he admires—is just as full of falsehood as
the Semitic Book of Laws; but, in the Book of
Manu the lies are calculated to preserve and to
create a strong and noble type of man, whereas in
Christianity the opposite type was the aim,-
-an aim
which has been achieved in a manner far exceeding
even the expectations of the faithful.
This then is the main argument of the book and
its conclusion ; but, in the course of the general
elaboration of this argument, many important side-
issues are touched upon and developed, wherein
Nietzsche reveals himself as something very much
## p. xv (#17) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
XV
more valuable than a mere iconoclast. Of course,
on every page of his philosophy, — whatever his
enemies may maintain to the contrary,—he never
once ceases to construct, since he is incessantly
enumerating and emphasising those qualities and
types which he fain would rear, as against those he
fain would see destroyed ; but it is in aphorism 57
of this book that Nietzsche makes the plainest and
most complete statement of his actual taste in
Sociology, and it is upon this aphorism that all his
followers and disciples will ultimately have to
build, if Nietzscheism is ever to become something
more than a merely intellectual movement.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
## p. xvi (#18) #############################################
## p. xvii (#19) ############################################
1
PREFACE
-
a
-
To maintain a cheerful attitude of mind in the midst
of a gloomy and exceedingly responsible task, is no
slight artistic feat. And yet, what could be more
necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing ever succeeds
which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce.
Surplus power, alone, is the proof of power. —A
transvaluation of all values,—this note of interroga-
tion which is so black, so huge, that it casts a shadow
even upon him who affixes it,-is a task of such
fatal import, that he who undertakes it is compelled
every now and then to rush out into the sunlight
in order to shake himself free from an earnestness
that becomes crushing, far too crushing. This end
justifies every means, every event on the road to it
is a windfall. Above all war. War has always
been the great policy of all spirits who have pene-
trated too far into themselves or who have grown
too deep; a wound stimulates the recuperative
powers. For many years, a maxim, the origin of
which I withhold from learned curiosity, has been
my motto:
increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus.
At other times another means of recovery which
is even more to my taste, is to cross-examine idols.
There are more idols than realities in the world :
xvii
## p. xviii (#20) ###########################################
xviii
PREFACE
this constitutes my "evil eye” for this world : it is
also my “evil ear. ” To put questions in this quarter
with a hammer, and to hear perchance that well-
known hollow sound which tells of blown-out frogs,
—what a joy this is for one who has ears even behind
his ears, for an old psychologist and Pied Piper like
myself in whose presence precisely that which would
fain be silent, must betray itself.
Even this treatise—as its title shows/is above all
a recreation, a ray of sunshine, a leap sideways of
a psychologist in his leisure moments. Maybe, too,
a new war?
And are we again cross-examining
new idols? This little work is a great declaration
of war ; and with regard to the cross-examining of
idols, this time it is not the idols of the age but
eternal idols which are here struck with a hammer
as with a tuning fork,—there are certainly no idols
which are older, more convinced, and more inflated.
Neither are there any more hollow. This does not
alter the fact that they are believed in more than
any others, besides they are never called idols,-at
least, not the most exalted among their number.
ܪ
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
Turin, the 30th September 1888,
on the day when the first
book of the Transvaluation
of all Values was finished
## p. 1 (#21) ###############################################
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
I
IDLENESS is the parent of all psychology. What? ?
Is psychology then a-vice?
2
Even the pluckiest among us has but seldom the
courage of what he really knows.
3
Aristotle says that in order to live alone, a man
must be either an animal or a god. The third alter-
native is lacking: a man must be both—a philo-
sopher.
4
“ All truth is simple. ”—Is not this a double lie?
5
Once for all I wish to be blind to many things
-Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.
6
A man recovers best from his exceptional nature
- his intellectuality—by giving his animal instincts
a chance.
I
## p. 2 (#22) ###############################################
2
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
2
7
Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or
is God only a blunder of man?
8
From the military school of life. That which does
not kill me, makes me stronger.
9
Help thyself, then everyone will help thee. A
principle of neighbour-love.
IO
A man should not play the coward to his deeds.
He should not repudiate them once he has performed
them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.
II
Can a donkey be tragic? —To perish beneath a
load that one can neither bear nor throw off? This
is the case of the Philosopher.
I2
If a man knows the wherefore of his existence,
then the manner of it can take care of itself. Man
does not aspire to happiness; only the Englishman
does that.
13
Man created woman-out of what? Out of a rib
of his god,- of his “ideal. ”
14
What? Art thou looking for something? Thou
## p. 3 (#23) ###############################################
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
3
wouldst fain multiply thyself tenfold, a hundredfold?
Thou seekest followers ? Seek ciphers !
11
i
15
Posthumous men, like myself, are not so well
understood as men who reflect their age, but they
are heard with more respect. In plain English: we
are never understood-hence our authority.
16
Among women. —“Truth? Oh, you do not know
truth! Is it not an outrage on all our pudeurs ? ”–
17
There is an artist after my own heart, modest in
his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread
and his art-panem et Circen.
18
He who knows not how to plant his will in things
at least endows them with some meaning : that is
to say, he believes that a will is already present in
them. (A principle of faith. )
19
What? Ye chose virtue and the heaving breast,
and at the same time ye squint covetously at the
advantages of the unscrupulous. —But with virtue
ye renounce all “ advantages" (to be nailed to
an Antisemite's door).
20
The perfect woman perpetrates literature as if it
were a petty vice : as an experiment, en passant,
.
## p. 4 (#24) ###############################################
4
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
and looking about her all the while to see whether
anybody is noticing her, hoping that somebody is
noticing her.
21
One should adopt only those situations in which
one is in no need of sham virtues, but rather, like
the tight-rope dancer on his tight rope, in which one
must either fall or stand—or escape.
22
“Evil men have no songs. ”*_How is it that the
Russians have songs ?
23
“German intellect”; for eighteen years this has
been a contradictio in adjecto.
.
· 24
By seeking the beginnings of things, a man be-
comes a crab. The historian looks backwards : in
the end he also believes backwards.
* This is a reference to Seume's poem “ Die Gesänge," the
first verse of which is :
“Wo man singet, lass dich ruhig nieder,
Ohne Furcht, was man im Lande glaubt ;
Wo man singet, wird kein Mensch beraubt:
Bösewichter haten keine Lieder. "
(Wherever people sing thou canst safely settle down with-
out a qualm as to what the general faith of the land may be.
Wherever people sing, no man is ever robbed ; rascals have
no songs. ) Popular tradition, however, renders the lines
thus :-
“Wo man singt, da lass dich ruhig nieder;
Böse Menschen (evil men) haben keine Lieder. "
-TR.
## p. 5 (#25) ###############################################
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
5
25
Contentment preserves one even from catching
cold. Has a woman who knew that she was well-
dressed ever caught cold ? —No, not even when
she had scarcely a rag to her back.
26
I distrust all systematisers, and avoid them. The
will to a system, shows a lack of honesty.
!
27
Man thinks woman profound—why? Because he
?
can never fathom her depths. Woman is not even
shallow.
28
When woman possesses masculine virtues, she is
enough to make you run away. When she possesses
no masculine virtues, she herself runs away.
29
“ How often conscience had to bite in times gone
by! !
What good teeth it must have had! And to-
day, what is amiss ? "-A dentist's question
30
Errors of haste are seldom committed singly. The
first time a man always does too much. And pre-
cisely on that account he commits a second error,
and then he does too little.
31
The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its
caution. It thus reduces its chances of being trod-
## p. 6 (#26) ###############################################
6
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
den upon again. In the language of morality:
Humility. —
32
There is such a thing as a hatred of lies and dis-
simulation, which is the outcome of a delicate sense
of humour; there is also the selfsame hatred but as
the result of cowardice, in so far as falsehood is for-
bidden by Divine law. Too cowardly to lie. . .
a
a
33
What trifles constitute happiness! The sound of
a bagpipe. Without music life would be a mistake.
The German imagines even God as a songster.
34
On ne peut penser et écrire qu'assis (G. Flaubert).
Here I have got you, you nihilist! A sedentary
life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only
those thoughts that come by walking have any value.
35
There are times when we psychologists are like
horses, and grow fretful. We see our own shadow
,
rise and fall before us. The psychologist must look
away from himself if he wishes to see anything at all.
36
Do we immoralists injure virtue in any way? Just
as little as the anarchists injure royalty.
