No More Learning

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%


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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


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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


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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


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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.


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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


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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.


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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.


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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


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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.


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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


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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


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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
»


## 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! In your pride you
wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to
Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you
insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa,"
and would like everything to be made after your
own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and
generalisation of Stoicism! With all your love for
truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persist-


## p. 14 (#36) ##############################################

14
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
no
-
ently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature
falsely, that is to say, Stoically, that you are
longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all,
some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the
Bedlamite hope that because you are able to tyran-
nise over yourselves--Stoicism is self-tyranny-
Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannised over :
is not the Stoic a part of Nature ? . . . But this is
an old and everlasting story: what happened in old
times with the Stoics still happens to-day, as soon
as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It
always creates the world in its own image; it can-
not do otherwise ; philosophy is this tyrannical im-
pulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will
to creation of the world,” the will to the causa
prima.
<<
IO.
The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say
craftiness, with which the problem of “the real and
the apparent world” is dealt with at present
throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought and
attention; and he who hears only a "Will to
Truth” in the background, and nothing else, cannot
certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and
isolated cases, it may really have happened that
such a Will to Truth-a certain extravagant and
adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of
the forlorn hope-has participated therein : that
which in the end always prefers a handful of
“certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful possi-
bilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of
conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in a
"


## p. 15 (#37) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
15
sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain something.
But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despair-
ing, mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the
courageous bearing such a virtue may display. It
seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger and
livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In
that they side against appearance, and speak super-
ciliously of "perspective,” in that they rank the
credibility of their own bodies about as low as the
credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth
stands still,” and thus, apparently, allowing with
complacency their securest possession to escape
(for what does one at present believe in more
firmly than in one's body ? ),—who knows if they are
not really trying to win back something which
was formerly an even securer possession, something
of the old domain of the faith of former times,
perhaps the “immortal soul,” perhaps " the old God,”
in short, ideas by which they could live better, that
is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than
by “modern ideas"? There is distrust of these
modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a
disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday
and to-day; there is perhaps some slight admixture
of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure
the bric-d-brac of ideas of the most varied origin,
such as so-called Positivism at present throws on
the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at
the village-fair motleyness and patchiness of all
these reality-philosophasters, in whom there is
nothing either new or true, except this motleyness.
Therein it seems to me that we should agree
with those sceptical anti-realists and knowledge-
"


## p. 16 (#38) ##############################################

16
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
. .
microscopists of the present day; their instinct,
which repels them from modern reality, is unrefuted
what do their retrograde by-paths concern
us! The main thing about them is not that they
wish to go “ back,” but that they wish to get away
therefrom. A little more strength, swing, courage,
and artistic power, and they would be off--and not
back!
II.
It seems to me that there is everywhere an
attempt at present to divert attention from the
actual influence which Kant exercised on German
philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the
value which he set upon himself. Kant was first
and foremost proud of his Table of Categories;
with it in his hand he said: “This is the most
difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on
behalf of metaphysics. " Let us only understand
this “could be"! He was proud of having dis-
covered a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic
judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived
himself in this matter; the development and rapid
flourishing of German philosophy depended never-
theless on his pride, and on the eager rivalry of the
younger generation to discover if possible something
-at all events new faculties”-of which to be still
prouder! ”-But let us reflect for a moment—it is
high time to do so. “How are synthetic judgments
a priori possible ? " Kant asks himself—and what is
really his answer? “By means of a means (faculty)”
- but unfortunately not in five words, but so
circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display


## p. 17 (#39) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
17
»
6
of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that
one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie
allemande involved in such an answer. People
were beside themselves with delight over this new
faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when
Kant further discovered a moral faculty in man-
for at that time Germans were still moral, not yet
dabbling in the “ Politics of hard fact. " Then came
the honeymoon of German philosophy. All the
young theologians of the Tübingen institution
went immediately into the groves—all seeking for
“faculties. " And what did they not find in that
-
innocent, rich, and still youthful period of the
German spirit, to which Romanticism, the malicious
fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet
distinguish between "finding" and "inventing”!
Above all a faculty for the "transcendental”;
Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition, and
thereby gratified the most earnest longings of
the naturally pious - inclined Germans. One can
do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuber-
ant and eccentric movement (which was really
youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised
itself so boldly in hoary and senile conceptions),
than to take it seriously, or even treat it with
moral indignation. Enough, however-the world
grew older, and the dream vanished. A time
came when people rubbed their foreheads, and
they still rub them to-day. People had been
dreaming, and first and foremost-old Kant. “By
means of a means (faculty)”—he had said, or at
least meant to say. But, is that-an answer?
An
explanation? Or is it not rather merely a repetition
B


## p. 18 (#40) ##############################################

18
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
of the question? How does opium induce sleep?
"By means of a means (faculty)," namely the virtus
dormitiva, replies the doctor in Molière,
Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva,
Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.
But such replies belong to the realm of comedy,
and it is high time to replace the Kantian question,
“How are synthetic judgments a priori possible ? "
by another question, “Why is belief in such judg-
ments necessary ? ”-in effect, it is high time that
we should understand that such judgments must be
believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation
of creatures like ourselves; though they still might
naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly
spoken, and roughly and readily-synthetic judg-
ments a priori should not “ be possible” at all; we
have no right to them; in our mouths they are
nothing but false judgments. Only, of course, the
belief in their truth is necessary, as plausible belief
and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective
view of life. And finally, to call to mind the enor-
mous influence which “German philosophy”-I
hope you understand its right to inverted commas
(goosefeet)? —has exercised throughout the whole
of Europe, there is no doubt that a certain virtus
dormitiva had a share in it; thanks to German
philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the
virtuous, the mystics, the artists, the three-fourths
Christians, and the political obscurantists of all
nations, to find an antidote to the still overwhelming
sensualism which overflowed from the last century
into this, in short—"sensus assoupire. "


## p. 19 (#41) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
19
12.
As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the
best refuted theories that have been advanced, and
in Europe there is now perhaps no one in the
learned world so unscholarly as to attach serious sig-
nification to it, except for convenient everyday use
(as an abbreviation of the means of expression)-
thanks chiefly to the Pole Boscovich: he and the
Pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest and
most successful opponents of ocular evidence. For
whilst Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, con-
trary to all the senses, that the earth does not stand
fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in
the last thing that “stood fast” of the earth-the
belief in “substance," in "matter," in the earth-
residuum, and particle - atom: it is the greatest
triumph over the senses that has hitherto been
gained on earth. One must, however, go still
further, and also declare war, relentless war to the
knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which
still lead a dangerous after-life in places where no
one suspects them, like the more celebrated “meta-
physical requirements”: one must also above all
give the finishing stroke to that other and more
portentous atomism which Christianity has taught
best and longest, the soul-atomism. Let it be per-
mitted to designate by this expression the belief
which regards the soul as something indestructible,
eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon : this
belief ought to be expelled from science! Between
ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of “the
soul" thereby, and thus renounce one of the oldest
C
L


## p. 20 (#42) ##############################################

20
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
and most venerated hypotheses—as happens fre-
quently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can
hardly touch on the soul without immediately
losing it. But the way is open for new acceptations
and refinements of the soul-hypothesis ; and such
conceptions as “mortal soul,” and “soul as subjec-
tive multiplicity," and "soul as social structure of
the instincts and passions," want henceforth to have
legitimate rights in science. In that the new psy-
chologist is about to put an end to the supersti-
tions which have hitherto flourished with almost
tropical luxuriance around the idea of the soul,
he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a
new desert and a new distrust-it is possible that
the older psychologists had a merrier and more
comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he
finds that precisely thereby he is also condemned
to invent—and, who knows? perhaps to discover the
new.
13.
Psychologists should bethink themselves before
putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the
cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living
thing seeks above all to discharge its strength-life
itself is Will to Power; self-preservation is only
One of the indirect and most frequent results thereof.
In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of
superfluous teleological principles ! —one of which is
the instinct of self - preservation (we owe it to
Spinoza's inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that
method ordains, which must be essentially economy
of principles.


## p. 21 (#43) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
21
89707
14
It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds
that natural philosophy is only a world-exposition
and world-arrangement (according to us, if I may
say so ! ) and not a world-explanation ; but in so
far as it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded
as more, and for a long time to come must be
regarded as more—namely, as an explanation. It
has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evi-
dence and palpableness of its own: this oper-
ates fascinatingly, persuasively, and convincingly
upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes---
in fact, it follows instinctively the canon of truth
of eternal popular sensualism. What is clear,
what is “explained”? Only that which can be
seen and felt-one must pursue every problem
thus far. Obversely, however, the charm of the
Platonic mode of thought, which was an aristo-
cratic mode, consisted precisely in resistance to
obvious sense-evidence-perhaps among men who
enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses
than our contemporaries, but who knew how to
find a higher triumph in remaining masters of
them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey con-
ceptional networks which they threw over the
motley whirl of the senses—the mob of the senses,
as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and
interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato,
there was an enjoyment different from that which
the physicists of to-day offer us—and likewise the
Darwinists and antiteleologists among the physio-
logical workers, with their principle of the "smallest


## p. 22 (#44) ##############################################

22
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
possible effort," and the greatest possible blunder.
“Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp,
there is also nothing more for men to do”—that
is certainly an imperative different from the Platonic
one, but it may notwithstanding be the right im-
perative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists
and bridge-builders of the future, who have nothing
but rough work to perform.
15.
To study physiology with a clear conscience, one
must insist on the fact that the sense-organs are
not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic
philosophy; as such they certainly could not be
causes ! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regu-
lative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle.
What? And others say even that the external
world is the work of our organs ? But then our
body, as a part of this external world, would be the
work of our organs! But then our organs them-
selves would be the work of our organs! It seems
to me that this is a complete reductio ad absurdum,
if the conception causa sui is something fundament-
ally absurd. Consequently, the external world is
not the work of our organs-- ?
16.
There are still harmless self-observers who be-
lieve that there are “immediate certainties”; for
instance, “I think,” or as the superstition of
Schopenhauer puts it, “I will"; as though cognition
here got hold of its object purely and simply as
“the thing in itself,” without any falsification taking


## p. 23 (#45) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
23
C
(6
:
place either on the part of the subject or the object.
I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that
“immediate certainty," as well as "absolute know-
ledge" and the "thing in itself," involve a contra-
dictio in adjecto; we really ought to free ourselves
from the misleading significance of words! The
people on their part may think that cognition is
knowing all about things, but the philosopher must
say to himself: “When I analyse the process that
is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a
whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative
proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impos-
sible: for instance, that it is I who think, that there
must necessarily be something that thinks, that
thinking is an activity and operation on the part of
a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is
an “ego," and finally, that it is already determined
what is to be designated by thinking—that I
know what thinking is. For if I had not already
decided within myself what it is, by what standard
could I determine whether that which is just
happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'?
In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I
compare my state at the present moment with other
states of myself which I know, in order to deter-
mine what it is; on account of this retrospective
connection with further knowledge,' it has at any
rate no immediate certainty for me. ”—In place of
the “immediate certainty” in which the people
may believe in the special case, the philosopher thus
finds a series of metaphysical questions presented
to him, veritable conscience questions of the in-
tellect, to wit: “From whence did I get the notion
6


## p. 24 (#46) ##############################################

24
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
>
of 'thinking'? Why do I believe in cause and
effect? What gives me the right to speak of an
'ego,' and even of an 'ego' as cause, and finally
of an 'ego. as. . . cause of thought? He who
ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at
once by an appeal to a sort of intuitive perception,
like the person who says, “I think, and know that
this, at least, is true, actual, and certain "-will
encounter a smile and two notes of interrogation in
a philosopher nowadays. “Sir,” the philosopher
will perhaps give him to understand, “it is improb-
able that you are not mistaken, but why should it
be the truth? ”
"
"
17.
With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I
shall never tire of emphasising a small, terse fact,
which is unwillingly recognised by these credulous
minds-namely, that a thought comes when "it"
wishes, and not when “I” wish; so that it is a
perversion of the facts of the case to say that the
subject “I” is the condition of the predicate
“think. ” One thinks; but that this “one is
pre-
cisely the famous old "ego," is, to put it mildly,
only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not
an “immediate certainty. ” After all, one has even
gone too far with this one thinks"-even the
"one" contains an interpretation of the process, and
does not belong to the process itself. One infers
here according to the usual grammatical formula-
“To think is an activity; every activity requires
an agency that is active; consequently” . It
was pretty much on the same lines that the older
7
!
.


## p. 25 (#47) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
25
"
atomism sought, besides the operating "power,” the
material particle wherein it resides and out of
which it operates—the atom. More rigorous minds,
however, learnt at last to get along without this
"earth-residuum," and perhaps some day we shall
accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point
of view, to get along without the little "one" (to
which the worthy old "ego” has refined itself).
18.
6
It is certainly not the least charm of a theory
that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it
attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the
hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will”
owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one
is always appearing who feels himself strong enough
to refute it.
19.
Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will
as though it were the best-known thing in the
world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to un-
derstand that the will alone is really known to us,
absolutely and completely known, without deduction
or addition. But it again and again seems to me
that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what
philosophers are in the habit of doing—he seems to
have adopted a popular prejudice and exaggerated
it. Willing—seems to me to be above all something
- complicated, something that is a unity only in name
-and it is precisely in a name that popular preju-
dice lurks, which has got the mastery over the
inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages.
그
​-


## p. 26 (#48) ##############################################

26
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
)
So let us for once be more cautious, let us be “un-
philosophical”: let us say that in all willing there,
is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sen-
sation of the condition
"away from which we go,
the sensation of the condition " towards which we
go," the sensation of this “ from” and “towards”
itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscu-
lar sensation, which, even without our putting
in motion “arms and legs," commences its action
by force of habit, directly we “will ” anything.
,
""
Therefore, just as sensations and indeed many
kinds of sensations) are to be recognised as
ingredients of the will, so, in the second place,
thinking is also to be recognised; in every act of
the will there is a ruling thought;—and let us
not imagine it possible to sever this thought from
the "willing," as if the will would then remain over!
In the third place, the will is not only a complex of
sensation and thinking, but it is above all an emotion,
and in fact the emotion of the command. That
which is termed “ freedom of the will” is essentially
the emotion of supremacy in respect to him who
must obey: "I am free, 'he' must obey”-this con-
sciousness is inherent in every will; and equally
so the straining of the attention, the straight look
which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the un-
conditional judgment that “this and nothing else is
necessary now," the inward certainty that obedience
will be rendered -and whatever else pertains to the
position of the commander A man who wills
commands something within himself which renders
obedience, or which he believes renders obedience.
But now let us notice what is the strangest thing


## p. 27 (#49) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
27
about the will,—this affair so extremely complex,
for which the people have only one name. Inas-
much as in the given circumstances we are at the
same time the commanding and the obeying parties,
and as the obeying party we know the sensations
of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and
motion, which usually commence immediately after
the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we
are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to
deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic
term “I”: a whole series of erroneous conclusions,
and consequently of false judgments about the will
itself, has become attached to the act of willing-to
such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that
willing suffices for action. Since in the majority of
cases there has only been exercise of will when the
effect of the command—consequently obedience,
and therefore action-was to be expected, the appear-
ance has translated itself into the sentiment, as if
there were there a necessity of effect; in a word,
he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty
that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes
the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will
itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensa-
tion of power which accompanies, all success.
"Freedom of Will”—that is the expression for the
complex state of delight of the person exercising
volition, who commands and at the same time
identifies himself with the executor of the order-
who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles,
but thinks within himself that it was really his own
will that overcame them. In this
way
the
person
exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of
4


## p. 28 (#50) ##############################################

28
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
his successful executive instruments, the useful
“underwills” or under-souls-indeed, our body is
but a social structure composed of many souls—to
his feelings of delight as commander. L'effet c'est
moi : what happens here is what happens in every
well-constructed and happy commonwealth, namely,
that the governing class identifies itself with the
successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is
absolutely a question of commanding and obeying,
on the basis, as already said, of a social structure
composed of many “souls"; on which account a
philosopher should claim the right to include
willing-as-such within the sphere of morals-re-
garded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy
under which the phenomenon of "life. ” manifests
itself.
20.
That the separate philosophical ideas are not
anything optional or autonomously evolving, but
grow up in connection and relationship with each
other ; that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they
seem to appear in the history of thought, they
nevertheless belong just as much
to t system as
the collective members of the fauna of a Continent
-is betrayed in the end by the circumstance: how
unfailingly the most diverse philosophers always fill
in again a definite fundamental scheme of possible
philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always
revolve once more in the same orbit; however
independent of each other they may feel themselves
with their critical or systematic wills, something
within them leads them, something impels them in


## p. 29 (#51) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
29
a
definite order the one after the other-to wit, the
innate methodology and relationship of their ideas.
Their thinking is in fact far less a discovery than a
re-recognising, a remembering, a return and a home-
coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of
the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew :
philosophising is so far a kind of atavism of the
highest order. The wonderful family resemblance
of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophising
is easily enough explained. In fact, where there
is affinity of language, owing to the common
philosophy of grammar-I mean owing to the
unconscious domination and guidance of similar
grammatical functions—it cannot but be that every-
thing is prepared at the outset for a similar de-
velopment and succession of philosophical systems;
just as the way seems barred against certain other
possibilities of world-interpretation.