Even the Königsbergian gospel, with
its "Sublime Moral Law," and its "Categorical
Imperative," has allied and adjusted itself to the
Kirkcaldyan gospel of universal, insatiable, ex-
clusivelyindividualistic, and absolutely unscrupulous
Mammonism.
its "Sublime Moral Law," and its "Categorical
Imperative," has allied and adjusted itself to the
Kirkcaldyan gospel of universal, insatiable, ex-
clusivelyindividualistic, and absolutely unscrupulous
Mammonism.
Nietzsche - v12 - Beyond Good and Evil
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Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
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Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
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PHY
TY OP
OF
TOWA.
RY.
3. 1. Por
46. . .
12
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6. 2
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UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
3 1858 021 658 475
DATE DUE
JUN 2007
TTTT
200
607 2005
APR 08 2009
JAN 31 2011
GAYLORD
Printed
in USA
0
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## p. i (#7) ################################################
*
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
EDITED BY
DR OSCAR LEVY
110-26
VOLUME TWELVE
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
## p. ii (#8) ###############################################
First Edition, Two Thousand Copies, published 1907
Second Edition, Two Thousand Copies, published 1909
Of the Third Edition of
One Thousand Five Hundred
Copies this is
No. 1341
}
3
## p. iii (#9) ##############################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
BEYO
GOOD AND EVIL
PRELUDE 10 A PHILOSOPHY
OF THE FUTURE
1196
26
TRANSLATED BY
HELEN ZIMMERN
T. N. FOULIS
13 S 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1911
## p. iv (#10) ##############################################
LLL RIGHTS RESERVED
" sr
Printed at The DARIEN PRESS, Edinburgis
## p. v (#11) ###############################################
53317
EELG
V. 12
cap. ? .
CONTENTS.
bil tills
PAGE
PREFACE
I
CHAP.
I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
5
II. THE FREE SPIRIT
35
III. THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
63
IV. APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
85
V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
103
VI. WE SCHOLARS
133
Gall & Posed
VII. OUR VIRTUES
159
VIII. PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
191
IX. WHAT IS NOBLE ?
223
O
NEPODE: FROM THE HEIGHTS
265
en 24
39. 85%
## p. vi (#12) ##############################################
## p. vii (#13) #############################################
INTRODUCTION TO THE
TRANSLATION.
HERE, in spite of its name, is one of the most
serious, profound, and original philosophical works.
It offers a feast of good things to the morally and
intellectually fastidious, which will take long to
exhaust. There is really something new in the
book-much that is new ! Burke says, in his
Reflections on the Revolution in France” (p. 128),
“We [Englishmen] know that we have made no
discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to
be made in morality. ” The latter statement, which
still represents the general views of Englishmen, is
now proved to be entirely mistaken. Discoveries
have now been made in the realm of morals, which
are perhaps even more practically important than
all the discoveries in physical science; and it is to
Nietzsche especially that we are indebted for those
discoveries, which are set forth, in part at least, in
this volume—the very discoveries, in fact, which
Burke himself required, in order to give a satis-
factory answer to the French Revolutionists.
As, however, many who might otherwise ap-
preciate the book, may stumble over its name
at the threshold, it should perhaps be explained
that the astounding and portentous designation,
Beyond Good and Evil,” applies to it properly
66
## p. viii (#14) ############################################
viii
INTRODUCTION.
a
on the
only from the false point of view of its pseudo-
moral opponents ; as, however, it is a very striking
expression, such as is always wanted for the title of
a book, it has been appropriated for the purpose,
notwithstanding the fact that to ordinary minds,
and in ordinary language, it implies the very reverse
of what the book teaches. Of course, there is a
certain amount of truth in the designation, and
therefore a justification for it: Nietzsche's position
is beyond the spurious "good" and the spurious
“evil” of the prevalent slave-morality, which
deteriorates humanity ; but he takes a firm stand
genuine “good” and the genuine“ bad” of
master-morality, which promotes the advancement
of the human race. This is so obvious from a
glance at the book that it is scarcely necessary to
refer to Nietzsche's express statement of the fact in
the “Genealogy of Morals," i. 17. He there says
expressly, with reference to “the dangerous watch-
word inscribed on the outside of his last book :
*Beyond Good and Evil""_" at any rate, it does
”.
-
not mean, 'Beyond Good and Bad. '”
(When so many reproaches have been unjustly
heaped upon Nietzsche and his disciples, under the
false pretence that they repudiate true morality, it
is difficult to resist the opportunity to turn round
upon those maligners parenthetically, and point
out who it is that is really beyond good and bad
from the true moral standpoint-is it perhaps those
very maligners themselves, whom Nietzsche with
his acuteness has touched on the quick? The
Kirkcaldyan gospel of “The Wealth of Nations,"
under which we all live more or less, and which in
## p. ix (#15) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION.
ix
>
)
puerile fashion the political economists still repeat
almost by rote, not only implicitly disregards
morals, but on many occasions boldly and explicitly
professes to have nothing to do with them, in fact,
professes to be altogether beyond good and bad
in the ordinary sense of these words. [See, for
example, Walker's works on “Political Economy,"
and many other writers on the subject. ] And is
not this “Political Economy” the unquestioned
creed of almost all the non-Socialists who condemn
Nietzsche? Even the Königsbergian gospel, with
its "Sublime Moral Law," and its "Categorical
Imperative," has allied and adjusted itself to the
Kirkcaldyan gospel of universal, insatiable, ex-
clusivelyindividualistic, and absolutely unscrupulous
Mammonism. The Benthamites, the Spencerites,
and the Neo-Hegelianites or Greenites, have had
still less difficulty in forming an alliance with
Mammonism, even in its worst aspects. All those
'good people," therefore, who are so ready to
condemn others, have actually themselves taken up
a position beyond good and bad in the disreputable
sense of these terms, unlike Nietzsche, who occupies
the only justifiable position from the true moral
standpoint. )
One or two of the leading points in Nietzsche's
philosophy should perhaps be mentioned—but we
cannot touch on the numerous details, which
may,
however, often be deduced from the leading
principles here indicated :-
1. Nietzsche especially makes the highest ex-
cellence of society the ethical end; whereas almost
all other moralists adopt "ends” which lead directly
## p. x (#16) ###############################################
X
INTRODUCTION.
or indirectly, to the degeneration of society. As a
necessary consequence, he favours a true aristocracy
as the best means for elevating the human race to
supermen.
2. Instead of advocating “equal and inalienable
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,”
for which there is at present such an outcry (a regime
which necessarily elevates fools and knaves, and
lowers the honest and intelligent), Nietzsche
advocates simple justice-to individuals and families
according to their merits, according to their worth
to society; not equal rights, therefore, but unequal
rights, and inequality in advantages generally,
approximately proportionate to deserts : con-
sequently therefore, a genuinely superior ruling
class at one end of the social scale, and an actually
inferior ruled class, with slaves at its basis, at the
opposite social extreme.
3. Unlike social evolutionists generally, who
either stop short in their quest, or neglect Newton's
rule of philosophising, which prohibits the assigning
of superfluous, unknown, or imaginary causes,
Nietzsche explains social phenomena by familiar,
natural causes, assigning to them a human, all-too-
human origin, and accounting for them especially,
like Larochefoucauld, as a result of the self-interest
and self-preservative instinct of individuals and
classes--that is to say, practically, in conformity to
the true principles of evolution, which recognise in
everything a conscious or sub-conscious will to
persist and evolve-a matter which Darwin certainly
overlooked too much in his imperfect attempts to
explain moral and social evolution.
## p. xi (#17) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION.
xi
4. One of Nietzsche's inost important services
has been to furnish a true philosophy of the more
modern period of history, during the last 2,000
years. As" the first psychologist of Christianity,"
he has successfully accounted for the anomalous
phenomenon of the Christian religion—the special
embodiment of slave-morality-by showing that it
is an artful device, consciously and sub-consciously
evolved for the self-preservation and advantage of
the inferior classes of society, who have thus, to the
detriment of the race, gained an abnormal and
temporary ascendency over the better class of men,
to whom the mastership belongs, under the sway
of the normally prevailing pagan or master-morality
which favours the advance of mankind.
Nietzsche, therefore, differs radically from most
of the leaders of English thought with regard to
the great questions of ethics and religion. Spencer,
Huxley, Alfred R. Wallace, Leslie Stephen, A. J.
Balfour, Benjamin Kidd, Frederic Harrison, Grant
Allen, T. H. Green, Andrew Lang, and their
followers, though differing in many points among
themselves, seem all to have a strong instinctive
aversion to recognise self-interest as a leading
factor in the evolution of morals and religion ;
indeed, some of the mystifiers among them, es-
pecially Green's time-serving followers, with their
fixed idea of a dotard Deity (or God-aping devil ? )
devolving himself as fast as possible into constitu-
tionalism, democracy, and anarchy, would almost
sooner gaze on the Gorgon's head than contemplate
the possibility of such an illuminating, ready, and
natural explanation. Most of those leaders of
1
## p. xii (#18) #############################################
xii
INTRODUCTION.
English thought are also equally averse to recognise
that the true ethical end must be the highest ex-
cellence of society. It would involve in many
people such an upsetting of their intellectual furni-
ture to admit Nietzsche's new ideas—it would also
involve ultimately the upsetting of cherished in-
stitutions which are profitable to them, or to which
they have become satisfactorily adjusted : many
responsible people, therefore, prefer to barricade
their intellects against such new and danger-
threatening ideas, which are far more revolutionary,
or rather counter-revolutionary, than Socialism !
The great mass even of cultured people in England
seem unable to cross the pontes asinorum of morals :
they cannot grasp the related facts that what is
good for one is not necessarily good for society at
large, and that many people, in spite of Socrates,
instinctively choose the bad, when it is most profit-
able to themselves. All popular and superficial
writers, however, and all demagogues, take for
granted the opposite doctrines-namely, that what-
ever is advantageous to any person, be he the most
wicked and worthless creature on the face of the
earth, is therefore necessarily for the good of the
whole community ; and that every one instinctively
chooses the right course as soon as he knows it.
Some English writers, however, approximate
pretty closely to Nietzsche on some of the points
in his philosophy: for example, Emerson, Carlyle,
Kingdon Clifford, Samuel Butler, Sir Alfred Lyall,
Stuart-Glennie, Karl Pearson, and doubtless many
others. None of these writers have, however, elabo-
rated the whole subject as Nietzsche has done.
## p. xiii (#19) ############################################
INTRODUCTION.
xiii
6
Bernard Shaw, as is well known, has also many
points in common with Nietzsche. F. C. S. Schiller
should likewise be named here, whose “Prag-
matism,” about which there is so much noise at
present, has obviously been largely influenced by
Nietzsche's writings. H. G. Wells's semi-serious
writings seem like a coarse and crooked refraction
of the ideas of Nietzsche.
To be sure, all prudent, worldly wise men follow
more or less approximately the practice which
Nietzsche teaches, notwithstanding the opposite
principles which they perhaps profess to hold:
they do not willingly allow equal rights to knaves
and fools to do as they like, much less are they
willing to practise self-sacrifice for the sake of the
most worthless specimens of humanity. Not even
the special champions and forlorn hope of these
ideas-the secularists, " rationalists," ethiculturists
and “philanthropists”—are inclined to practise
themselves to any great extent, the slave-morality
which they preach to others. There is nowadays,
also, a healthy tendency in the clergy of the
established churches to send people to hell for
wickedness, rather than for unbelief as was done
formerly, and is still done by the evangelical party.
The great majority of people, however, hold, or
pretend to hold, principles which are altogether in-
consistent with their practice in fact they are not
rational beings in the realm of morals (or are their
" principles” meant only for the practice of other
people but not for themselves ? ). The great advance
which Nietzsche has made is that he has harmonised
moral theory nd practice, and rationalised morality.
## p. xiv (#20) #############################################
xiv
INTRODUCTION.
»
As regards its relation to Nietzsche's other works,
this book was meant on the one hand to explain
more clearly in prose form the ideas expressed
poetically and somewhat obscurely in his previous
book, “ Thus Spake Zarathustra "; and on the other
hand, as its sub-title indicates, it was meant as a
prologue or prelude to his great, never-completed
work on which he was then engaged, “The Will to
Power : An Attempt at a Transvaluation of all
Values. " The circumstances under which the work
was written are very fully set forth in Chapter XXX.
(pp. 588-635) of Das Leben Nietzsches. With the
exception of the epode, the book was written partly
in the summer of 1885 at Sils-Maria, and partly in
the following winter at Nice. It was during this
period that Nietzsche's sister was married and went
with her husband to Paraguay, thus leaving her
brother more solitary than ever. The spirit of
solitude which broods over the book, discloses
itself especially in the last chapter. The manu-
script was sent to the printer in June 1886, and the
book was published in the September following at
Nietzsche's own expense.
Nietzsche was personally acquainted with Miss
Helen Zimmern-her important book on Schopen-
hauer brought her under his notice-and, as appears
from his letters, he had her in view as a translator
of his works: this led her to undertake the task of
rendering this volume into English. A good deal
of labour has been spent in making the version as
satisfactory as possible by further revision. We
here take the opportunity to thank Mr Alfred E.
Zimmern of New College, Oxford, and a German
## p. xv (#21) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION.
XV
friend of his, Mr W. Drechsler, Rhodes Scholar of
Worcester College, for reading very carefully some
of the first proofs and suggesting improvements.
Dr Oscar Levy has also read many of the proofs
and made valuable suggestions,
The friends of the cause are, however, still further
indebted to Dr Oscar Levy-whose name is well
known to students of Nietzschean literature by his
book, “The Revival of Aristocracy”—for enabling
the publication of Nietzsche's works to be resumed
His patronage of the cause stands out
in pleasing contrast to the indifference and hostility
to Nietzsche of some of the English professional
philosophers," who should have been the first to
welcome the new knowledge, had they been true
men.
THOMAS COMMON.
once more.
23rd August 1907.
## p. xvi (#22) #############################################
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
a vesti
PREFACE.
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman-what then?
Is there not ground for suspecting that all philo-
sophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists,
have failed to understand women--that the terrible
seriousness and clumsy importunity with which
they have usually paid their addresses to Truth,
have been unskilled and unseemly methods for
winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed
herself to be won; and at present every kind of
dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien-if,
indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers
who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies
on the ground—nay more, that it is at its last gasp.
But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for
hoping that all dogmatising in philosophy, whatever
solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has
assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism
and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand
when it will be once and again understood what
has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing
and absolute philosophical edifices as the dog-
matists have hitherto reared : perhaps some popular
superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-
superstition, which, in the form of subject- and ego-
superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief);
A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2
PREFACE.
C
а
perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the
part of grammar, or an audacious generalisation
of very restricted, very personal, very human-all-
too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogma-
tists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for
thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in
still earlier times, in the service of which probably
more labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have
been spent than on any actual science hitherto :
we owe to it, and to its “super-terrestrial” preten-
sions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of
architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe
themselves upon the heart of humanity with ever-
lasting claims, all great things have first to wander
about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring
caricatures : dogmatic philosophy has been
:
caricature of this kind—for instance, the Vedanta
doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us
not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly
be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and
the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a
dogmatist error-namely, Plato's invention of Pure
Spirit and the Good in Itself. But now when it
has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this
nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at
least enjoy a healthier-sleep, we, whose duty is
wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all the strength
which the struggle against this error has fostered.
It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the
denial of the perspective—the fundamental condition
-of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato
spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician:
“How did such a malady attack that finest product
>
6
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE.
3
6
"
of antiquity, Plato ? Had the wicked Socrates
really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a
corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock ? ”
But the struggle against Plato, or - to speak
-
plainer, and for the “people"—the struggle against
the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of
Christianity (for Christianity is Platonism for the
"people"), produced in Europe a magnificent
tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere
previously; with such a tensely-strained bow one
can now aim at the furthest goals. As a matter of
fact, the European feels this tension as a state of
distress, and twice attempts have been made in
grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of
Jesuitism, and the second time by means of demo-
cratic enlightenment—which, with the aid of liberty
of the press and newspaper-reading, might, in fact,
bring it about that the spirit would not so easily
find itself in “distress”! (The Germans invented
gunpowder—all credit to them! but they again
made things square—they invented printing. )
But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats,
nor even sufficiently Germans, we good Europeans,
and free, very free spirits—we have it still, all the
distress of spirit and all the tension of its bow!
And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who
knows? the goal to aim at.
>
.
Sils:MARIA, UPPER ENGADINI,
June 1885
## p. 4 (#26) ###############################################
## p. 5 (#27) ###############################################
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
FIRST CHAPTER.
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
I.
THE Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many
a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness
of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken
with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth
not laid before us! What strange, perplexing,
questionable questions! It is already a long story ;
yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced.
Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose
patience, and turn impatiently away?
Even the Königsbergian gospel, with
its "Sublime Moral Law," and its "Categorical
Imperative," has allied and adjusted itself to the
Kirkcaldyan gospel of universal, insatiable, ex-
clusivelyindividualistic, and absolutely unscrupulous
Mammonism. The Benthamites, the Spencerites,
and the Neo-Hegelianites or Greenites, have had
still less difficulty in forming an alliance with
Mammonism, even in its worst aspects. All those
'good people," therefore, who are so ready to
condemn others, have actually themselves taken up
a position beyond good and bad in the disreputable
sense of these terms, unlike Nietzsche, who occupies
the only justifiable position from the true moral
standpoint. )
One or two of the leading points in Nietzsche's
philosophy should perhaps be mentioned—but we
cannot touch on the numerous details, which
may,
however, often be deduced from the leading
principles here indicated :-
1. Nietzsche especially makes the highest ex-
cellence of society the ethical end; whereas almost
all other moralists adopt "ends” which lead directly
## p. x (#16) ###############################################
X
INTRODUCTION.
or indirectly, to the degeneration of society. As a
necessary consequence, he favours a true aristocracy
as the best means for elevating the human race to
supermen.
2. Instead of advocating “equal and inalienable
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,”
for which there is at present such an outcry (a regime
which necessarily elevates fools and knaves, and
lowers the honest and intelligent), Nietzsche
advocates simple justice-to individuals and families
according to their merits, according to their worth
to society; not equal rights, therefore, but unequal
rights, and inequality in advantages generally,
approximately proportionate to deserts : con-
sequently therefore, a genuinely superior ruling
class at one end of the social scale, and an actually
inferior ruled class, with slaves at its basis, at the
opposite social extreme.
3. Unlike social evolutionists generally, who
either stop short in their quest, or neglect Newton's
rule of philosophising, which prohibits the assigning
of superfluous, unknown, or imaginary causes,
Nietzsche explains social phenomena by familiar,
natural causes, assigning to them a human, all-too-
human origin, and accounting for them especially,
like Larochefoucauld, as a result of the self-interest
and self-preservative instinct of individuals and
classes--that is to say, practically, in conformity to
the true principles of evolution, which recognise in
everything a conscious or sub-conscious will to
persist and evolve-a matter which Darwin certainly
overlooked too much in his imperfect attempts to
explain moral and social evolution.
## p. xi (#17) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION.
xi
4. One of Nietzsche's inost important services
has been to furnish a true philosophy of the more
modern period of history, during the last 2,000
years. As" the first psychologist of Christianity,"
he has successfully accounted for the anomalous
phenomenon of the Christian religion—the special
embodiment of slave-morality-by showing that it
is an artful device, consciously and sub-consciously
evolved for the self-preservation and advantage of
the inferior classes of society, who have thus, to the
detriment of the race, gained an abnormal and
temporary ascendency over the better class of men,
to whom the mastership belongs, under the sway
of the normally prevailing pagan or master-morality
which favours the advance of mankind.
Nietzsche, therefore, differs radically from most
of the leaders of English thought with regard to
the great questions of ethics and religion. Spencer,
Huxley, Alfred R. Wallace, Leslie Stephen, A. J.
Balfour, Benjamin Kidd, Frederic Harrison, Grant
Allen, T. H. Green, Andrew Lang, and their
followers, though differing in many points among
themselves, seem all to have a strong instinctive
aversion to recognise self-interest as a leading
factor in the evolution of morals and religion ;
indeed, some of the mystifiers among them, es-
pecially Green's time-serving followers, with their
fixed idea of a dotard Deity (or God-aping devil ? )
devolving himself as fast as possible into constitu-
tionalism, democracy, and anarchy, would almost
sooner gaze on the Gorgon's head than contemplate
the possibility of such an illuminating, ready, and
natural explanation. Most of those leaders of
1
## p. xii (#18) #############################################
xii
INTRODUCTION.
English thought are also equally averse to recognise
that the true ethical end must be the highest ex-
cellence of society. It would involve in many
people such an upsetting of their intellectual furni-
ture to admit Nietzsche's new ideas—it would also
involve ultimately the upsetting of cherished in-
stitutions which are profitable to them, or to which
they have become satisfactorily adjusted : many
responsible people, therefore, prefer to barricade
their intellects against such new and danger-
threatening ideas, which are far more revolutionary,
or rather counter-revolutionary, than Socialism !
The great mass even of cultured people in England
seem unable to cross the pontes asinorum of morals :
they cannot grasp the related facts that what is
good for one is not necessarily good for society at
large, and that many people, in spite of Socrates,
instinctively choose the bad, when it is most profit-
able to themselves. All popular and superficial
writers, however, and all demagogues, take for
granted the opposite doctrines-namely, that what-
ever is advantageous to any person, be he the most
wicked and worthless creature on the face of the
earth, is therefore necessarily for the good of the
whole community ; and that every one instinctively
chooses the right course as soon as he knows it.
Some English writers, however, approximate
pretty closely to Nietzsche on some of the points
in his philosophy: for example, Emerson, Carlyle,
Kingdon Clifford, Samuel Butler, Sir Alfred Lyall,
Stuart-Glennie, Karl Pearson, and doubtless many
others. None of these writers have, however, elabo-
rated the whole subject as Nietzsche has done.
## p. xiii (#19) ############################################
INTRODUCTION.
xiii
6
Bernard Shaw, as is well known, has also many
points in common with Nietzsche. F. C. S. Schiller
should likewise be named here, whose “Prag-
matism,” about which there is so much noise at
present, has obviously been largely influenced by
Nietzsche's writings. H. G. Wells's semi-serious
writings seem like a coarse and crooked refraction
of the ideas of Nietzsche.
To be sure, all prudent, worldly wise men follow
more or less approximately the practice which
Nietzsche teaches, notwithstanding the opposite
principles which they perhaps profess to hold:
they do not willingly allow equal rights to knaves
and fools to do as they like, much less are they
willing to practise self-sacrifice for the sake of the
most worthless specimens of humanity. Not even
the special champions and forlorn hope of these
ideas-the secularists, " rationalists," ethiculturists
and “philanthropists”—are inclined to practise
themselves to any great extent, the slave-morality
which they preach to others. There is nowadays,
also, a healthy tendency in the clergy of the
established churches to send people to hell for
wickedness, rather than for unbelief as was done
formerly, and is still done by the evangelical party.
The great majority of people, however, hold, or
pretend to hold, principles which are altogether in-
consistent with their practice in fact they are not
rational beings in the realm of morals (or are their
" principles” meant only for the practice of other
people but not for themselves ? ). The great advance
which Nietzsche has made is that he has harmonised
moral theory nd practice, and rationalised morality.
## p. xiv (#20) #############################################
xiv
INTRODUCTION.
»
As regards its relation to Nietzsche's other works,
this book was meant on the one hand to explain
more clearly in prose form the ideas expressed
poetically and somewhat obscurely in his previous
book, “ Thus Spake Zarathustra "; and on the other
hand, as its sub-title indicates, it was meant as a
prologue or prelude to his great, never-completed
work on which he was then engaged, “The Will to
Power : An Attempt at a Transvaluation of all
Values. " The circumstances under which the work
was written are very fully set forth in Chapter XXX.
(pp. 588-635) of Das Leben Nietzsches. With the
exception of the epode, the book was written partly
in the summer of 1885 at Sils-Maria, and partly in
the following winter at Nice. It was during this
period that Nietzsche's sister was married and went
with her husband to Paraguay, thus leaving her
brother more solitary than ever. The spirit of
solitude which broods over the book, discloses
itself especially in the last chapter. The manu-
script was sent to the printer in June 1886, and the
book was published in the September following at
Nietzsche's own expense.
Nietzsche was personally acquainted with Miss
Helen Zimmern-her important book on Schopen-
hauer brought her under his notice-and, as appears
from his letters, he had her in view as a translator
of his works: this led her to undertake the task of
rendering this volume into English. A good deal
of labour has been spent in making the version as
satisfactory as possible by further revision. We
here take the opportunity to thank Mr Alfred E.
Zimmern of New College, Oxford, and a German
## p. xv (#21) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION.
XV
friend of his, Mr W. Drechsler, Rhodes Scholar of
Worcester College, for reading very carefully some
of the first proofs and suggesting improvements.
Dr Oscar Levy has also read many of the proofs
and made valuable suggestions,
The friends of the cause are, however, still further
indebted to Dr Oscar Levy-whose name is well
known to students of Nietzschean literature by his
book, “The Revival of Aristocracy”—for enabling
the publication of Nietzsche's works to be resumed
His patronage of the cause stands out
in pleasing contrast to the indifference and hostility
to Nietzsche of some of the English professional
philosophers," who should have been the first to
welcome the new knowledge, had they been true
men.
THOMAS COMMON.
once more.
23rd August 1907.
## p. xvi (#22) #############################################
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
a vesti
PREFACE.
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman-what then?
Is there not ground for suspecting that all philo-
sophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists,
have failed to understand women--that the terrible
seriousness and clumsy importunity with which
they have usually paid their addresses to Truth,
have been unskilled and unseemly methods for
winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed
herself to be won; and at present every kind of
dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien-if,
indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers
who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies
on the ground—nay more, that it is at its last gasp.
But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for
hoping that all dogmatising in philosophy, whatever
solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has
assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism
and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand
when it will be once and again understood what
has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing
and absolute philosophical edifices as the dog-
matists have hitherto reared : perhaps some popular
superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-
superstition, which, in the form of subject- and ego-
superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief);
A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2
PREFACE.
C
а
perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the
part of grammar, or an audacious generalisation
of very restricted, very personal, very human-all-
too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogma-
tists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for
thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in
still earlier times, in the service of which probably
more labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have
been spent than on any actual science hitherto :
we owe to it, and to its “super-terrestrial” preten-
sions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of
architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe
themselves upon the heart of humanity with ever-
lasting claims, all great things have first to wander
about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring
caricatures : dogmatic philosophy has been
:
caricature of this kind—for instance, the Vedanta
doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us
not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly
be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and
the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a
dogmatist error-namely, Plato's invention of Pure
Spirit and the Good in Itself. But now when it
has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this
nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at
least enjoy a healthier-sleep, we, whose duty is
wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all the strength
which the struggle against this error has fostered.
It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the
denial of the perspective—the fundamental condition
-of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato
spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician:
“How did such a malady attack that finest product
>
6
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE.
3
6
"
of antiquity, Plato ? Had the wicked Socrates
really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a
corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock ? ”
But the struggle against Plato, or - to speak
-
plainer, and for the “people"—the struggle against
the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of
Christianity (for Christianity is Platonism for the
"people"), produced in Europe a magnificent
tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere
previously; with such a tensely-strained bow one
can now aim at the furthest goals. As a matter of
fact, the European feels this tension as a state of
distress, and twice attempts have been made in
grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of
Jesuitism, and the second time by means of demo-
cratic enlightenment—which, with the aid of liberty
of the press and newspaper-reading, might, in fact,
bring it about that the spirit would not so easily
find itself in “distress”! (The Germans invented
gunpowder—all credit to them! but they again
made things square—they invented printing. )
But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats,
nor even sufficiently Germans, we good Europeans,
and free, very free spirits—we have it still, all the
distress of spirit and all the tension of its bow!
And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who
knows? the goal to aim at.
>
.
Sils:MARIA, UPPER ENGADINI,
June 1885
## p. 4 (#26) ###############################################
## p. 5 (#27) ###############################################
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
FIRST CHAPTER.
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
I.
THE Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many
a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness
of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken
with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth
not laid before us! What strange, perplexing,
questionable questions! It is already a long story ;
yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced.
Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose
patience, and turn impatiently away? That this
Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves ?
Who is it really that puts questions to us here?
What really is this. “Will to Truth” in us? In
fact we made a long halt at the question as to the
origin of this Will—until at last we came to an
absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental
question. We inquired about the value of this Will.
Granted that we want the truth: why not rather
untruth? And uncertainty ? Even ignorance? The
## p. 6 (#28) ###############################################
6
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
problem of the value of truth presented itself before
us--or was it we who presented ourselves before
the problem? Which of us is the Edipus here?
Which the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendez-
vous of questions and notes of interrogation. And
could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if
the problem had never been propounded before, as
if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it,
and risk raising it. For there is risk in raising it,
perhaps there is no greater risk.
a
2.
“ How could anything originate out of its op-
posite? For example, truth out of error? or the
Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the
generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure
sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetous-
ness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams
of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the
highest value must have a different origin, an origin
of their own—in this transitory, seductive, illusory,
paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity,
they cannot have their source. But rather in the
lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed
God, in the ‘Thing-in-itself'—there must be their
source, and nowhere else! ”—This mode of reason-
ing discloses the typical prejudice by which meta-
physicians of all times can be recognised, this mode
of valuation is at the back of all their logical proce-
dure; through this “belief” of theirs, they exert
themselves for their “knowledge,” for something
that is in the end solemnly christened “the Truth. "
The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the
"
## p. 7 (#29) ###############################################
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
7
belief in antitheses of values. It never occurred even
to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very
threshold (where doubt, however, was most neces-
sary); though they had made a solemn vow, “de
omnibus dubitandum. ” For it may be doubted,
firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly,
whether the popular valuations and antitheses of
value upon which metaphysicians have set their
seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates,
merely provisional perspectives, besides being
probably made from some corner, perhaps from
below—“frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow
an expression current among painters. In spite of
all the value which may belong to the true, the
positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible
that a higher and more fundamental value for life
generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will
to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might
even be possible that what constitutes the value of
those good and respected things, consists precisely
in their being insidiously related, knotted, and
crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed
things—perhaps even in being essentially identical
with them. Perhaps! But who wishes to concern
himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"! For
that investigation one must await the advent of a
new order of philosophers, such as will have other
tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto
prevalent-philosophers of the dangerous
“ Per-
haps” in every sense of the term. And to speak
in all seriousness, I see such new philosophers
beginning to appear.
## p. 8 (#30) ###############################################
8
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
<
3.
Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and
having read between their lines long enough, I now
say to myself that the greater part of conscious
thinking must be counted amongst the instinctive
functions, and it is so even in the case of philo-
sophical thinking; one has here to learn anew, as
one learned anew about heredity and “innateness. ”
As little as the act of birth comes into con-
sideration in the whole process and procedure of
heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" opposed
to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater
part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is
secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into
definite channels. And behind all logic and its
seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valua-
tions, or to speak more plainly, physiological de-
mands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of
life. For example, that the certain is worth more
than the uncertain, that illusion is less valuable
than “truth": such valuations, in spite of their
regulative importance for us, might notwithstanding
be only superficial valuations, special kinds of
niaiserie, such as may be necessary for the main-
tenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing,
in effect, that man is not just the measure of
things. "
4.
The falseness of an opinion is not for us any
objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new
language sounds most strangely. The question is,
how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving,
## p. 9 (#31) ###############################################
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
9
species-preserving, perhaps_speeies Fearing; and
we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the
falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments
a priori betong), are the most indispensable to us;
that without a recognition of logical fictions, with-
out a comparison of reality with the purely imagined
world of the absolute and immutable, without a
constant counterfeiting of the world by means of
numbers, man could not live—that the renuncia-
tion of false opinions would be a renunciation of
life, a negation of life. To recognise untruth as a
condition of life: that is certainly to impugn the call you to
:
question
traditionat ideas of value in a dangerous manner,
and a philosophy which ventures to do so,
thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.
5.
That which causes philosophers to be regarded
half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the
oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are-
how often and easily they make mistakes and lose
their way, in short, how childish and childlike they
are,-but that there is not enough honest dealing
with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous
outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even
hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose
as though their real opinions had been discovered
and attained through the self-evolving of a cold,
pure, divinely indifferent dialectic in contrast to
all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk
of “inspiration"); whereas, in fact, a prejudiced pro-
position, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally
their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is de-
"
## p. 10 (#32) ##############################################
10
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
fended by them with arguments sought out after
the event. They are all advocates who do not wish
to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders,
also, of their prejudices, which they dub “truths,"
-and very far from having the conscience which
bravely admits this to itself; very far from having
the good taste of the courage which goes so far
as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend
or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.
The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally
stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the
dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead)
to his “categorical imperative"-makes us fastidious
ones smile, we who find no small amusement in
spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and
ethical preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-
pocus in mathematical form, by means of which
Spinoza has as it were clad his philosophy in mail
and mask-in fact, the "love of his wisdom," to
translate the term fairly and squarely-in order
thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of
the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on
that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene :-how
much of personal timidity and vulnerability does
this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray !
6.
It has gradually become clear to me what every
great philosophy up till now has consisted of
namely, the confession of its originator, and a species
of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and
moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in
every philosophy has constituted the true vital
## p. 11 (#33) ##############################################
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
II
germ out of which the entire plant has always
grown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest
metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been
arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask
oneself: "What_morality do they (or does he)
aim at? " Accordingly, I do not believe that an
"impulse to knowledge” is the father of philosophy;
but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only
made use of knowledge and mistaken knowledge! )
as an instrument. But whoever considers the funda-
mental impulses of man with a view to determining
how far they may have here acted as inspiring genii
(or as demons and cobolds), will find that they
have all practised philosophy at one time or another,
and that each one of them would have been only
too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of
existence and the legitimate lord over all the other
impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as
such, attempts to philosophise. To be sure, in the
case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men,
it may be otherwise—"better,” if you will ; there
there may really be such a thing as an “impulse to
knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-
work, which, when well wound up, works away in-
dustriously to that end, without the rest of the
scholarly impulses taking any material part therein.
The actual “interests" of the scholar, therefore, are
generally in quite another direction in the family,
perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is,
in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research
his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful
young worker becomes a good philologist, a mush-
room specialist, or a chemist; he is not characterised
>
6
## p. 12 (#34) ##############################################
12
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on
the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal;
and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and
decisive testimony as to who he is,—that is to say, in
what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand
to each other.
-
7.
How malicious philosophers can be! I know of
nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurus took
the liberty of making on Plato and the Platonists:
he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original
sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies
“Flatterers of Dionysius”-consequently, tyrants'
accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however,
it is as much as to say, “ They are all actors, there
is nothing genuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax
was a popular name for an actor). And the latter
is really the malignant reproach that Epicurus cast
upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose
manner, the mise en scène style of which Plato and
his scholars were masters-of which Epicurus was
not a master! He, the old school teacher of Samos,
who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens
and wrote three hundred books, perhaps out of rage
and ambitious envy of Plato, who knows! Greece
!
took a hundred years to find out who the garden-
god Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out?
8
There is a point in every philosophy at which
“conviction" of the philosopher appears on the
»
## p. 13 (#35) ##############################################
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
13
scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient
mystery :
Adventavit asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus.
9.
You desire to live "according to Nature"? Oh,
you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to
yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extra-
vagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or
consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruit-
ful and barren and uncertain : imagine to yourselves
indifference as a power-how could you live in accord-
ance with such indifference? To live-is not that
just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature?
Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being
limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted
that your imperative, “living according to Nature,”
means actually the same as “living according to
life”-how could you do differently? Why should
you make a principle out of what you yourselves are,
and must be? In reality, however, it is quite other-
wise with you: while you pretend to read with
rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want
something quite the contrary, you extraordinary
stage-players and self-deluders!
Find more books at https://www. hathitrust. org.
Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
and authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
Publisher: [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
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UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
3 1858 021 658 475
DATE DUE
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607 2005
APR 08 2009
JAN 31 2011
GAYLORD
Printed
in USA
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*
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
EDITED BY
DR OSCAR LEVY
110-26
VOLUME TWELVE
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
## p. ii (#8) ###############################################
First Edition, Two Thousand Copies, published 1907
Second Edition, Two Thousand Copies, published 1909
Of the Third Edition of
One Thousand Five Hundred
Copies this is
No. 1341
}
3
## p. iii (#9) ##############################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
BEYO
GOOD AND EVIL
PRELUDE 10 A PHILOSOPHY
OF THE FUTURE
1196
26
TRANSLATED BY
HELEN ZIMMERN
T. N. FOULIS
13 S 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1911
## p. iv (#10) ##############################################
LLL RIGHTS RESERVED
" sr
Printed at The DARIEN PRESS, Edinburgis
## p. v (#11) ###############################################
53317
EELG
V. 12
cap. ? .
CONTENTS.
bil tills
PAGE
PREFACE
I
CHAP.
I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
5
II. THE FREE SPIRIT
35
III. THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
63
IV. APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
85
V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
103
VI. WE SCHOLARS
133
Gall & Posed
VII. OUR VIRTUES
159
VIII. PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
191
IX. WHAT IS NOBLE ?
223
O
NEPODE: FROM THE HEIGHTS
265
en 24
39. 85%
## p. vi (#12) ##############################################
## p. vii (#13) #############################################
INTRODUCTION TO THE
TRANSLATION.
HERE, in spite of its name, is one of the most
serious, profound, and original philosophical works.
It offers a feast of good things to the morally and
intellectually fastidious, which will take long to
exhaust. There is really something new in the
book-much that is new ! Burke says, in his
Reflections on the Revolution in France” (p. 128),
“We [Englishmen] know that we have made no
discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to
be made in morality. ” The latter statement, which
still represents the general views of Englishmen, is
now proved to be entirely mistaken. Discoveries
have now been made in the realm of morals, which
are perhaps even more practically important than
all the discoveries in physical science; and it is to
Nietzsche especially that we are indebted for those
discoveries, which are set forth, in part at least, in
this volume—the very discoveries, in fact, which
Burke himself required, in order to give a satis-
factory answer to the French Revolutionists.
As, however, many who might otherwise ap-
preciate the book, may stumble over its name
at the threshold, it should perhaps be explained
that the astounding and portentous designation,
Beyond Good and Evil,” applies to it properly
66
## p. viii (#14) ############################################
viii
INTRODUCTION.
a
on the
only from the false point of view of its pseudo-
moral opponents ; as, however, it is a very striking
expression, such as is always wanted for the title of
a book, it has been appropriated for the purpose,
notwithstanding the fact that to ordinary minds,
and in ordinary language, it implies the very reverse
of what the book teaches. Of course, there is a
certain amount of truth in the designation, and
therefore a justification for it: Nietzsche's position
is beyond the spurious "good" and the spurious
“evil” of the prevalent slave-morality, which
deteriorates humanity ; but he takes a firm stand
genuine “good” and the genuine“ bad” of
master-morality, which promotes the advancement
of the human race. This is so obvious from a
glance at the book that it is scarcely necessary to
refer to Nietzsche's express statement of the fact in
the “Genealogy of Morals," i. 17. He there says
expressly, with reference to “the dangerous watch-
word inscribed on the outside of his last book :
*Beyond Good and Evil""_" at any rate, it does
”.
-
not mean, 'Beyond Good and Bad. '”
(When so many reproaches have been unjustly
heaped upon Nietzsche and his disciples, under the
false pretence that they repudiate true morality, it
is difficult to resist the opportunity to turn round
upon those maligners parenthetically, and point
out who it is that is really beyond good and bad
from the true moral standpoint-is it perhaps those
very maligners themselves, whom Nietzsche with
his acuteness has touched on the quick? The
Kirkcaldyan gospel of “The Wealth of Nations,"
under which we all live more or less, and which in
## p. ix (#15) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION.
ix
>
)
puerile fashion the political economists still repeat
almost by rote, not only implicitly disregards
morals, but on many occasions boldly and explicitly
professes to have nothing to do with them, in fact,
professes to be altogether beyond good and bad
in the ordinary sense of these words. [See, for
example, Walker's works on “Political Economy,"
and many other writers on the subject. ] And is
not this “Political Economy” the unquestioned
creed of almost all the non-Socialists who condemn
Nietzsche? Even the Königsbergian gospel, with
its "Sublime Moral Law," and its "Categorical
Imperative," has allied and adjusted itself to the
Kirkcaldyan gospel of universal, insatiable, ex-
clusivelyindividualistic, and absolutely unscrupulous
Mammonism. The Benthamites, the Spencerites,
and the Neo-Hegelianites or Greenites, have had
still less difficulty in forming an alliance with
Mammonism, even in its worst aspects. All those
'good people," therefore, who are so ready to
condemn others, have actually themselves taken up
a position beyond good and bad in the disreputable
sense of these terms, unlike Nietzsche, who occupies
the only justifiable position from the true moral
standpoint. )
One or two of the leading points in Nietzsche's
philosophy should perhaps be mentioned—but we
cannot touch on the numerous details, which
may,
however, often be deduced from the leading
principles here indicated :-
1. Nietzsche especially makes the highest ex-
cellence of society the ethical end; whereas almost
all other moralists adopt "ends” which lead directly
## p. x (#16) ###############################################
X
INTRODUCTION.
or indirectly, to the degeneration of society. As a
necessary consequence, he favours a true aristocracy
as the best means for elevating the human race to
supermen.
2. Instead of advocating “equal and inalienable
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,”
for which there is at present such an outcry (a regime
which necessarily elevates fools and knaves, and
lowers the honest and intelligent), Nietzsche
advocates simple justice-to individuals and families
according to their merits, according to their worth
to society; not equal rights, therefore, but unequal
rights, and inequality in advantages generally,
approximately proportionate to deserts : con-
sequently therefore, a genuinely superior ruling
class at one end of the social scale, and an actually
inferior ruled class, with slaves at its basis, at the
opposite social extreme.
3. Unlike social evolutionists generally, who
either stop short in their quest, or neglect Newton's
rule of philosophising, which prohibits the assigning
of superfluous, unknown, or imaginary causes,
Nietzsche explains social phenomena by familiar,
natural causes, assigning to them a human, all-too-
human origin, and accounting for them especially,
like Larochefoucauld, as a result of the self-interest
and self-preservative instinct of individuals and
classes--that is to say, practically, in conformity to
the true principles of evolution, which recognise in
everything a conscious or sub-conscious will to
persist and evolve-a matter which Darwin certainly
overlooked too much in his imperfect attempts to
explain moral and social evolution.
## p. xi (#17) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION.
xi
4. One of Nietzsche's inost important services
has been to furnish a true philosophy of the more
modern period of history, during the last 2,000
years. As" the first psychologist of Christianity,"
he has successfully accounted for the anomalous
phenomenon of the Christian religion—the special
embodiment of slave-morality-by showing that it
is an artful device, consciously and sub-consciously
evolved for the self-preservation and advantage of
the inferior classes of society, who have thus, to the
detriment of the race, gained an abnormal and
temporary ascendency over the better class of men,
to whom the mastership belongs, under the sway
of the normally prevailing pagan or master-morality
which favours the advance of mankind.
Nietzsche, therefore, differs radically from most
of the leaders of English thought with regard to
the great questions of ethics and religion. Spencer,
Huxley, Alfred R. Wallace, Leslie Stephen, A. J.
Balfour, Benjamin Kidd, Frederic Harrison, Grant
Allen, T. H. Green, Andrew Lang, and their
followers, though differing in many points among
themselves, seem all to have a strong instinctive
aversion to recognise self-interest as a leading
factor in the evolution of morals and religion ;
indeed, some of the mystifiers among them, es-
pecially Green's time-serving followers, with their
fixed idea of a dotard Deity (or God-aping devil ? )
devolving himself as fast as possible into constitu-
tionalism, democracy, and anarchy, would almost
sooner gaze on the Gorgon's head than contemplate
the possibility of such an illuminating, ready, and
natural explanation. Most of those leaders of
1
## p. xii (#18) #############################################
xii
INTRODUCTION.
English thought are also equally averse to recognise
that the true ethical end must be the highest ex-
cellence of society. It would involve in many
people such an upsetting of their intellectual furni-
ture to admit Nietzsche's new ideas—it would also
involve ultimately the upsetting of cherished in-
stitutions which are profitable to them, or to which
they have become satisfactorily adjusted : many
responsible people, therefore, prefer to barricade
their intellects against such new and danger-
threatening ideas, which are far more revolutionary,
or rather counter-revolutionary, than Socialism !
The great mass even of cultured people in England
seem unable to cross the pontes asinorum of morals :
they cannot grasp the related facts that what is
good for one is not necessarily good for society at
large, and that many people, in spite of Socrates,
instinctively choose the bad, when it is most profit-
able to themselves. All popular and superficial
writers, however, and all demagogues, take for
granted the opposite doctrines-namely, that what-
ever is advantageous to any person, be he the most
wicked and worthless creature on the face of the
earth, is therefore necessarily for the good of the
whole community ; and that every one instinctively
chooses the right course as soon as he knows it.
Some English writers, however, approximate
pretty closely to Nietzsche on some of the points
in his philosophy: for example, Emerson, Carlyle,
Kingdon Clifford, Samuel Butler, Sir Alfred Lyall,
Stuart-Glennie, Karl Pearson, and doubtless many
others. None of these writers have, however, elabo-
rated the whole subject as Nietzsche has done.
## p. xiii (#19) ############################################
INTRODUCTION.
xiii
6
Bernard Shaw, as is well known, has also many
points in common with Nietzsche. F. C. S. Schiller
should likewise be named here, whose “Prag-
matism,” about which there is so much noise at
present, has obviously been largely influenced by
Nietzsche's writings. H. G. Wells's semi-serious
writings seem like a coarse and crooked refraction
of the ideas of Nietzsche.
To be sure, all prudent, worldly wise men follow
more or less approximately the practice which
Nietzsche teaches, notwithstanding the opposite
principles which they perhaps profess to hold:
they do not willingly allow equal rights to knaves
and fools to do as they like, much less are they
willing to practise self-sacrifice for the sake of the
most worthless specimens of humanity. Not even
the special champions and forlorn hope of these
ideas-the secularists, " rationalists," ethiculturists
and “philanthropists”—are inclined to practise
themselves to any great extent, the slave-morality
which they preach to others. There is nowadays,
also, a healthy tendency in the clergy of the
established churches to send people to hell for
wickedness, rather than for unbelief as was done
formerly, and is still done by the evangelical party.
The great majority of people, however, hold, or
pretend to hold, principles which are altogether in-
consistent with their practice in fact they are not
rational beings in the realm of morals (or are their
" principles” meant only for the practice of other
people but not for themselves ? ). The great advance
which Nietzsche has made is that he has harmonised
moral theory nd practice, and rationalised morality.
## p. xiv (#20) #############################################
xiv
INTRODUCTION.
»
As regards its relation to Nietzsche's other works,
this book was meant on the one hand to explain
more clearly in prose form the ideas expressed
poetically and somewhat obscurely in his previous
book, “ Thus Spake Zarathustra "; and on the other
hand, as its sub-title indicates, it was meant as a
prologue or prelude to his great, never-completed
work on which he was then engaged, “The Will to
Power : An Attempt at a Transvaluation of all
Values. " The circumstances under which the work
was written are very fully set forth in Chapter XXX.
(pp. 588-635) of Das Leben Nietzsches. With the
exception of the epode, the book was written partly
in the summer of 1885 at Sils-Maria, and partly in
the following winter at Nice. It was during this
period that Nietzsche's sister was married and went
with her husband to Paraguay, thus leaving her
brother more solitary than ever. The spirit of
solitude which broods over the book, discloses
itself especially in the last chapter. The manu-
script was sent to the printer in June 1886, and the
book was published in the September following at
Nietzsche's own expense.
Nietzsche was personally acquainted with Miss
Helen Zimmern-her important book on Schopen-
hauer brought her under his notice-and, as appears
from his letters, he had her in view as a translator
of his works: this led her to undertake the task of
rendering this volume into English. A good deal
of labour has been spent in making the version as
satisfactory as possible by further revision. We
here take the opportunity to thank Mr Alfred E.
Zimmern of New College, Oxford, and a German
## p. xv (#21) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION.
XV
friend of his, Mr W. Drechsler, Rhodes Scholar of
Worcester College, for reading very carefully some
of the first proofs and suggesting improvements.
Dr Oscar Levy has also read many of the proofs
and made valuable suggestions,
The friends of the cause are, however, still further
indebted to Dr Oscar Levy-whose name is well
known to students of Nietzschean literature by his
book, “The Revival of Aristocracy”—for enabling
the publication of Nietzsche's works to be resumed
His patronage of the cause stands out
in pleasing contrast to the indifference and hostility
to Nietzsche of some of the English professional
philosophers," who should have been the first to
welcome the new knowledge, had they been true
men.
THOMAS COMMON.
once more.
23rd August 1907.
## p. xvi (#22) #############################################
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
a vesti
PREFACE.
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman-what then?
Is there not ground for suspecting that all philo-
sophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists,
have failed to understand women--that the terrible
seriousness and clumsy importunity with which
they have usually paid their addresses to Truth,
have been unskilled and unseemly methods for
winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed
herself to be won; and at present every kind of
dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien-if,
indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers
who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies
on the ground—nay more, that it is at its last gasp.
But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for
hoping that all dogmatising in philosophy, whatever
solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has
assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism
and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand
when it will be once and again understood what
has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing
and absolute philosophical edifices as the dog-
matists have hitherto reared : perhaps some popular
superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-
superstition, which, in the form of subject- and ego-
superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief);
A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2
PREFACE.
C
а
perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the
part of grammar, or an audacious generalisation
of very restricted, very personal, very human-all-
too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogma-
tists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for
thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in
still earlier times, in the service of which probably
more labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have
been spent than on any actual science hitherto :
we owe to it, and to its “super-terrestrial” preten-
sions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of
architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe
themselves upon the heart of humanity with ever-
lasting claims, all great things have first to wander
about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring
caricatures : dogmatic philosophy has been
:
caricature of this kind—for instance, the Vedanta
doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us
not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly
be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and
the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a
dogmatist error-namely, Plato's invention of Pure
Spirit and the Good in Itself. But now when it
has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this
nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at
least enjoy a healthier-sleep, we, whose duty is
wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all the strength
which the struggle against this error has fostered.
It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the
denial of the perspective—the fundamental condition
-of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato
spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician:
“How did such a malady attack that finest product
>
6
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE.
3
6
"
of antiquity, Plato ? Had the wicked Socrates
really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a
corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock ? ”
But the struggle against Plato, or - to speak
-
plainer, and for the “people"—the struggle against
the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of
Christianity (for Christianity is Platonism for the
"people"), produced in Europe a magnificent
tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere
previously; with such a tensely-strained bow one
can now aim at the furthest goals. As a matter of
fact, the European feels this tension as a state of
distress, and twice attempts have been made in
grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of
Jesuitism, and the second time by means of demo-
cratic enlightenment—which, with the aid of liberty
of the press and newspaper-reading, might, in fact,
bring it about that the spirit would not so easily
find itself in “distress”! (The Germans invented
gunpowder—all credit to them! but they again
made things square—they invented printing. )
But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats,
nor even sufficiently Germans, we good Europeans,
and free, very free spirits—we have it still, all the
distress of spirit and all the tension of its bow!
And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who
knows? the goal to aim at.
>
.
Sils:MARIA, UPPER ENGADINI,
June 1885
## p. 4 (#26) ###############################################
## p. 5 (#27) ###############################################
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
FIRST CHAPTER.
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
I.
THE Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many
a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness
of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken
with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth
not laid before us! What strange, perplexing,
questionable questions! It is already a long story ;
yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced.
Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose
patience, and turn impatiently away?
Even the Königsbergian gospel, with
its "Sublime Moral Law," and its "Categorical
Imperative," has allied and adjusted itself to the
Kirkcaldyan gospel of universal, insatiable, ex-
clusivelyindividualistic, and absolutely unscrupulous
Mammonism. The Benthamites, the Spencerites,
and the Neo-Hegelianites or Greenites, have had
still less difficulty in forming an alliance with
Mammonism, even in its worst aspects. All those
'good people," therefore, who are so ready to
condemn others, have actually themselves taken up
a position beyond good and bad in the disreputable
sense of these terms, unlike Nietzsche, who occupies
the only justifiable position from the true moral
standpoint. )
One or two of the leading points in Nietzsche's
philosophy should perhaps be mentioned—but we
cannot touch on the numerous details, which
may,
however, often be deduced from the leading
principles here indicated :-
1. Nietzsche especially makes the highest ex-
cellence of society the ethical end; whereas almost
all other moralists adopt "ends” which lead directly
## p. x (#16) ###############################################
X
INTRODUCTION.
or indirectly, to the degeneration of society. As a
necessary consequence, he favours a true aristocracy
as the best means for elevating the human race to
supermen.
2. Instead of advocating “equal and inalienable
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,”
for which there is at present such an outcry (a regime
which necessarily elevates fools and knaves, and
lowers the honest and intelligent), Nietzsche
advocates simple justice-to individuals and families
according to their merits, according to their worth
to society; not equal rights, therefore, but unequal
rights, and inequality in advantages generally,
approximately proportionate to deserts : con-
sequently therefore, a genuinely superior ruling
class at one end of the social scale, and an actually
inferior ruled class, with slaves at its basis, at the
opposite social extreme.
3. Unlike social evolutionists generally, who
either stop short in their quest, or neglect Newton's
rule of philosophising, which prohibits the assigning
of superfluous, unknown, or imaginary causes,
Nietzsche explains social phenomena by familiar,
natural causes, assigning to them a human, all-too-
human origin, and accounting for them especially,
like Larochefoucauld, as a result of the self-interest
and self-preservative instinct of individuals and
classes--that is to say, practically, in conformity to
the true principles of evolution, which recognise in
everything a conscious or sub-conscious will to
persist and evolve-a matter which Darwin certainly
overlooked too much in his imperfect attempts to
explain moral and social evolution.
## p. xi (#17) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION.
xi
4. One of Nietzsche's inost important services
has been to furnish a true philosophy of the more
modern period of history, during the last 2,000
years. As" the first psychologist of Christianity,"
he has successfully accounted for the anomalous
phenomenon of the Christian religion—the special
embodiment of slave-morality-by showing that it
is an artful device, consciously and sub-consciously
evolved for the self-preservation and advantage of
the inferior classes of society, who have thus, to the
detriment of the race, gained an abnormal and
temporary ascendency over the better class of men,
to whom the mastership belongs, under the sway
of the normally prevailing pagan or master-morality
which favours the advance of mankind.
Nietzsche, therefore, differs radically from most
of the leaders of English thought with regard to
the great questions of ethics and religion. Spencer,
Huxley, Alfred R. Wallace, Leslie Stephen, A. J.
Balfour, Benjamin Kidd, Frederic Harrison, Grant
Allen, T. H. Green, Andrew Lang, and their
followers, though differing in many points among
themselves, seem all to have a strong instinctive
aversion to recognise self-interest as a leading
factor in the evolution of morals and religion ;
indeed, some of the mystifiers among them, es-
pecially Green's time-serving followers, with their
fixed idea of a dotard Deity (or God-aping devil ? )
devolving himself as fast as possible into constitu-
tionalism, democracy, and anarchy, would almost
sooner gaze on the Gorgon's head than contemplate
the possibility of such an illuminating, ready, and
natural explanation. Most of those leaders of
1
## p. xii (#18) #############################################
xii
INTRODUCTION.
English thought are also equally averse to recognise
that the true ethical end must be the highest ex-
cellence of society. It would involve in many
people such an upsetting of their intellectual furni-
ture to admit Nietzsche's new ideas—it would also
involve ultimately the upsetting of cherished in-
stitutions which are profitable to them, or to which
they have become satisfactorily adjusted : many
responsible people, therefore, prefer to barricade
their intellects against such new and danger-
threatening ideas, which are far more revolutionary,
or rather counter-revolutionary, than Socialism !
The great mass even of cultured people in England
seem unable to cross the pontes asinorum of morals :
they cannot grasp the related facts that what is
good for one is not necessarily good for society at
large, and that many people, in spite of Socrates,
instinctively choose the bad, when it is most profit-
able to themselves. All popular and superficial
writers, however, and all demagogues, take for
granted the opposite doctrines-namely, that what-
ever is advantageous to any person, be he the most
wicked and worthless creature on the face of the
earth, is therefore necessarily for the good of the
whole community ; and that every one instinctively
chooses the right course as soon as he knows it.
Some English writers, however, approximate
pretty closely to Nietzsche on some of the points
in his philosophy: for example, Emerson, Carlyle,
Kingdon Clifford, Samuel Butler, Sir Alfred Lyall,
Stuart-Glennie, Karl Pearson, and doubtless many
others. None of these writers have, however, elabo-
rated the whole subject as Nietzsche has done.
## p. xiii (#19) ############################################
INTRODUCTION.
xiii
6
Bernard Shaw, as is well known, has also many
points in common with Nietzsche. F. C. S. Schiller
should likewise be named here, whose “Prag-
matism,” about which there is so much noise at
present, has obviously been largely influenced by
Nietzsche's writings. H. G. Wells's semi-serious
writings seem like a coarse and crooked refraction
of the ideas of Nietzsche.
To be sure, all prudent, worldly wise men follow
more or less approximately the practice which
Nietzsche teaches, notwithstanding the opposite
principles which they perhaps profess to hold:
they do not willingly allow equal rights to knaves
and fools to do as they like, much less are they
willing to practise self-sacrifice for the sake of the
most worthless specimens of humanity. Not even
the special champions and forlorn hope of these
ideas-the secularists, " rationalists," ethiculturists
and “philanthropists”—are inclined to practise
themselves to any great extent, the slave-morality
which they preach to others. There is nowadays,
also, a healthy tendency in the clergy of the
established churches to send people to hell for
wickedness, rather than for unbelief as was done
formerly, and is still done by the evangelical party.
The great majority of people, however, hold, or
pretend to hold, principles which are altogether in-
consistent with their practice in fact they are not
rational beings in the realm of morals (or are their
" principles” meant only for the practice of other
people but not for themselves ? ). The great advance
which Nietzsche has made is that he has harmonised
moral theory nd practice, and rationalised morality.
## p. xiv (#20) #############################################
xiv
INTRODUCTION.
»
As regards its relation to Nietzsche's other works,
this book was meant on the one hand to explain
more clearly in prose form the ideas expressed
poetically and somewhat obscurely in his previous
book, “ Thus Spake Zarathustra "; and on the other
hand, as its sub-title indicates, it was meant as a
prologue or prelude to his great, never-completed
work on which he was then engaged, “The Will to
Power : An Attempt at a Transvaluation of all
Values. " The circumstances under which the work
was written are very fully set forth in Chapter XXX.
(pp. 588-635) of Das Leben Nietzsches. With the
exception of the epode, the book was written partly
in the summer of 1885 at Sils-Maria, and partly in
the following winter at Nice. It was during this
period that Nietzsche's sister was married and went
with her husband to Paraguay, thus leaving her
brother more solitary than ever. The spirit of
solitude which broods over the book, discloses
itself especially in the last chapter. The manu-
script was sent to the printer in June 1886, and the
book was published in the September following at
Nietzsche's own expense.
Nietzsche was personally acquainted with Miss
Helen Zimmern-her important book on Schopen-
hauer brought her under his notice-and, as appears
from his letters, he had her in view as a translator
of his works: this led her to undertake the task of
rendering this volume into English. A good deal
of labour has been spent in making the version as
satisfactory as possible by further revision. We
here take the opportunity to thank Mr Alfred E.
Zimmern of New College, Oxford, and a German
## p. xv (#21) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION.
XV
friend of his, Mr W. Drechsler, Rhodes Scholar of
Worcester College, for reading very carefully some
of the first proofs and suggesting improvements.
Dr Oscar Levy has also read many of the proofs
and made valuable suggestions,
The friends of the cause are, however, still further
indebted to Dr Oscar Levy-whose name is well
known to students of Nietzschean literature by his
book, “The Revival of Aristocracy”—for enabling
the publication of Nietzsche's works to be resumed
His patronage of the cause stands out
in pleasing contrast to the indifference and hostility
to Nietzsche of some of the English professional
philosophers," who should have been the first to
welcome the new knowledge, had they been true
men.
THOMAS COMMON.
once more.
23rd August 1907.
## p. xvi (#22) #############################################
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
a vesti
PREFACE.
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman-what then?
Is there not ground for suspecting that all philo-
sophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists,
have failed to understand women--that the terrible
seriousness and clumsy importunity with which
they have usually paid their addresses to Truth,
have been unskilled and unseemly methods for
winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed
herself to be won; and at present every kind of
dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien-if,
indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers
who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies
on the ground—nay more, that it is at its last gasp.
But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for
hoping that all dogmatising in philosophy, whatever
solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has
assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism
and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand
when it will be once and again understood what
has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing
and absolute philosophical edifices as the dog-
matists have hitherto reared : perhaps some popular
superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-
superstition, which, in the form of subject- and ego-
superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief);
A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2
PREFACE.
C
а
perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the
part of grammar, or an audacious generalisation
of very restricted, very personal, very human-all-
too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogma-
tists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for
thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in
still earlier times, in the service of which probably
more labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have
been spent than on any actual science hitherto :
we owe to it, and to its “super-terrestrial” preten-
sions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of
architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe
themselves upon the heart of humanity with ever-
lasting claims, all great things have first to wander
about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring
caricatures : dogmatic philosophy has been
:
caricature of this kind—for instance, the Vedanta
doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us
not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly
be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and
the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a
dogmatist error-namely, Plato's invention of Pure
Spirit and the Good in Itself. But now when it
has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this
nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at
least enjoy a healthier-sleep, we, whose duty is
wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all the strength
which the struggle against this error has fostered.
It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the
denial of the perspective—the fundamental condition
-of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato
spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician:
“How did such a malady attack that finest product
>
6
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE.
3
6
"
of antiquity, Plato ? Had the wicked Socrates
really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a
corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock ? ”
But the struggle against Plato, or - to speak
-
plainer, and for the “people"—the struggle against
the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of
Christianity (for Christianity is Platonism for the
"people"), produced in Europe a magnificent
tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere
previously; with such a tensely-strained bow one
can now aim at the furthest goals. As a matter of
fact, the European feels this tension as a state of
distress, and twice attempts have been made in
grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of
Jesuitism, and the second time by means of demo-
cratic enlightenment—which, with the aid of liberty
of the press and newspaper-reading, might, in fact,
bring it about that the spirit would not so easily
find itself in “distress”! (The Germans invented
gunpowder—all credit to them! but they again
made things square—they invented printing. )
But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats,
nor even sufficiently Germans, we good Europeans,
and free, very free spirits—we have it still, all the
distress of spirit and all the tension of its bow!
And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who
knows? the goal to aim at.
>
.
Sils:MARIA, UPPER ENGADINI,
June 1885
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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
FIRST CHAPTER.
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
I.
THE Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many
a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness
of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken
with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth
not laid before us! What strange, perplexing,
questionable questions! It is already a long story ;
yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced.
Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose
patience, and turn impatiently away? That this
Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves ?
Who is it really that puts questions to us here?
What really is this. “Will to Truth” in us? In
fact we made a long halt at the question as to the
origin of this Will—until at last we came to an
absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental
question. We inquired about the value of this Will.
Granted that we want the truth: why not rather
untruth? And uncertainty ? Even ignorance? The
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6
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
problem of the value of truth presented itself before
us--or was it we who presented ourselves before
the problem? Which of us is the Edipus here?
Which the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendez-
vous of questions and notes of interrogation. And
could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if
the problem had never been propounded before, as
if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it,
and risk raising it. For there is risk in raising it,
perhaps there is no greater risk.
a
2.
“ How could anything originate out of its op-
posite? For example, truth out of error? or the
Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the
generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure
sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetous-
ness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams
of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the
highest value must have a different origin, an origin
of their own—in this transitory, seductive, illusory,
paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity,
they cannot have their source. But rather in the
lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed
God, in the ‘Thing-in-itself'—there must be their
source, and nowhere else! ”—This mode of reason-
ing discloses the typical prejudice by which meta-
physicians of all times can be recognised, this mode
of valuation is at the back of all their logical proce-
dure; through this “belief” of theirs, they exert
themselves for their “knowledge,” for something
that is in the end solemnly christened “the Truth. "
The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the
"
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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
7
belief in antitheses of values. It never occurred even
to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very
threshold (where doubt, however, was most neces-
sary); though they had made a solemn vow, “de
omnibus dubitandum. ” For it may be doubted,
firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly,
whether the popular valuations and antitheses of
value upon which metaphysicians have set their
seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates,
merely provisional perspectives, besides being
probably made from some corner, perhaps from
below—“frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow
an expression current among painters. In spite of
all the value which may belong to the true, the
positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible
that a higher and more fundamental value for life
generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will
to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might
even be possible that what constitutes the value of
those good and respected things, consists precisely
in their being insidiously related, knotted, and
crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed
things—perhaps even in being essentially identical
with them. Perhaps! But who wishes to concern
himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"! For
that investigation one must await the advent of a
new order of philosophers, such as will have other
tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto
prevalent-philosophers of the dangerous
“ Per-
haps” in every sense of the term. And to speak
in all seriousness, I see such new philosophers
beginning to appear.
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8
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
<
3.
Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and
having read between their lines long enough, I now
say to myself that the greater part of conscious
thinking must be counted amongst the instinctive
functions, and it is so even in the case of philo-
sophical thinking; one has here to learn anew, as
one learned anew about heredity and “innateness. ”
As little as the act of birth comes into con-
sideration in the whole process and procedure of
heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" opposed
to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater
part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is
secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into
definite channels. And behind all logic and its
seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valua-
tions, or to speak more plainly, physiological de-
mands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of
life. For example, that the certain is worth more
than the uncertain, that illusion is less valuable
than “truth": such valuations, in spite of their
regulative importance for us, might notwithstanding
be only superficial valuations, special kinds of
niaiserie, such as may be necessary for the main-
tenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing,
in effect, that man is not just the measure of
things. "
4.
The falseness of an opinion is not for us any
objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new
language sounds most strangely. The question is,
how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving,
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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
9
species-preserving, perhaps_speeies Fearing; and
we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the
falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments
a priori betong), are the most indispensable to us;
that without a recognition of logical fictions, with-
out a comparison of reality with the purely imagined
world of the absolute and immutable, without a
constant counterfeiting of the world by means of
numbers, man could not live—that the renuncia-
tion of false opinions would be a renunciation of
life, a negation of life. To recognise untruth as a
condition of life: that is certainly to impugn the call you to
:
question
traditionat ideas of value in a dangerous manner,
and a philosophy which ventures to do so,
thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.
5.
That which causes philosophers to be regarded
half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the
oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are-
how often and easily they make mistakes and lose
their way, in short, how childish and childlike they
are,-but that there is not enough honest dealing
with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous
outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even
hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose
as though their real opinions had been discovered
and attained through the self-evolving of a cold,
pure, divinely indifferent dialectic in contrast to
all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk
of “inspiration"); whereas, in fact, a prejudiced pro-
position, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally
their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is de-
"
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10
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
fended by them with arguments sought out after
the event. They are all advocates who do not wish
to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders,
also, of their prejudices, which they dub “truths,"
-and very far from having the conscience which
bravely admits this to itself; very far from having
the good taste of the courage which goes so far
as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend
or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.
The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally
stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the
dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead)
to his “categorical imperative"-makes us fastidious
ones smile, we who find no small amusement in
spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and
ethical preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-
pocus in mathematical form, by means of which
Spinoza has as it were clad his philosophy in mail
and mask-in fact, the "love of his wisdom," to
translate the term fairly and squarely-in order
thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of
the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on
that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene :-how
much of personal timidity and vulnerability does
this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray !
6.
It has gradually become clear to me what every
great philosophy up till now has consisted of
namely, the confession of its originator, and a species
of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and
moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in
every philosophy has constituted the true vital
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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
II
germ out of which the entire plant has always
grown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest
metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been
arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask
oneself: "What_morality do they (or does he)
aim at? " Accordingly, I do not believe that an
"impulse to knowledge” is the father of philosophy;
but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only
made use of knowledge and mistaken knowledge! )
as an instrument. But whoever considers the funda-
mental impulses of man with a view to determining
how far they may have here acted as inspiring genii
(or as demons and cobolds), will find that they
have all practised philosophy at one time or another,
and that each one of them would have been only
too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of
existence and the legitimate lord over all the other
impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as
such, attempts to philosophise. To be sure, in the
case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men,
it may be otherwise—"better,” if you will ; there
there may really be such a thing as an “impulse to
knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-
work, which, when well wound up, works away in-
dustriously to that end, without the rest of the
scholarly impulses taking any material part therein.
The actual “interests" of the scholar, therefore, are
generally in quite another direction in the family,
perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is,
in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research
his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful
young worker becomes a good philologist, a mush-
room specialist, or a chemist; he is not characterised
>
6
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12
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on
the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal;
and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and
decisive testimony as to who he is,—that is to say, in
what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand
to each other.
-
7.
How malicious philosophers can be! I know of
nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurus took
the liberty of making on Plato and the Platonists:
he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original
sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies
“Flatterers of Dionysius”-consequently, tyrants'
accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however,
it is as much as to say, “ They are all actors, there
is nothing genuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax
was a popular name for an actor). And the latter
is really the malignant reproach that Epicurus cast
upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose
manner, the mise en scène style of which Plato and
his scholars were masters-of which Epicurus was
not a master! He, the old school teacher of Samos,
who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens
and wrote three hundred books, perhaps out of rage
and ambitious envy of Plato, who knows! Greece
!
took a hundred years to find out who the garden-
god Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out?
8
There is a point in every philosophy at which
“conviction" of the philosopher appears on the
»
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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
13
scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient
mystery :
Adventavit asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus.
9.
You desire to live "according to Nature"? Oh,
you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to
yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extra-
vagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or
consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruit-
ful and barren and uncertain : imagine to yourselves
indifference as a power-how could you live in accord-
ance with such indifference? To live-is not that
just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature?
Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being
limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted
that your imperative, “living according to Nature,”
means actually the same as “living according to
life”-how could you do differently? Why should
you make a principle out of what you yourselves are,
and must be? In reality, however, it is quite other-
wise with you: while you pretend to read with
rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want
something quite the contrary, you extraordinary
stage-players and self-deluders!
