No More Learning

A ban had been placed on the strongest, the most
natural, yea, the only genuine impulses; hencefor-
ward, in order that an action might be praiseworthy,
there must be no trace in it of any of those genuine
impulses—monstrous fraud in psychology. Every
kind of self-satisfaction” had to be remodelled
and made possible by means of misunderstanding
and adjusting one's self sub specie boni. Conversely:
that species which found its advantage in depriving
mankind of its self-satisfaction, the representatives
of the gregarious instincts, e. g. the priests and the
philosophers, were sufficiently crafty and psycho-
logically astute to show how selfishness ruled every-
where. The Christian conclusion from this was :
“ Everything is sin, even our virtues. Man is
utterly undesirable. Selfless actions are impos-
sible. " Original sin. In short, once man had
opposed his instincts to a purely imaginary world
of the good, he concluded by despising himself as
incapable of performing "good" actions.
N. B. -In this way Christianity represents a step
forward in the sharpening of psychological insight:
La Rochefoucauld and Pascal. It perceived the
essential equality of human actions, and the equality
of their values as a whole (all immoral).
*
Now the first serious object was to rear men in
whom self-seeking impulses were extinguished:


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SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL.
233
priests, saints. And if people doubted that perfec-
tion was possible, they did not doubt what per-
fection was.
The psychology of the saint and of the priest
and of the "good"man, must naturally have seemed
purely phantasmagorical. The real motive of all
action had been declared bad: therefore, in order
to make action still possible, deeds had to be
prescribed which, though not possible, had to be
declared possible and sanctified. They now
honoured and idealised things with as much falsity
as they had previously slandered them.
Inveighing against the instincts of life came to
be regarded as holy and estimable. The priestly
ideal was: absolute chastity, absolute obedience,
absolute poverty! The lay ideal: alms, pity, self-
sacrifice, renunciation of the beautiful, of reason,
and of sensuality, and a dark frown for all the
strong qualities that existed.
An advance is made: the slandered instincts
attempt to re-establish their rights (0. 8. Luther's
Reformation, the coarsest form of moral falsehood
under the cover of " Evangelical freedom"), they
are rechristened with holy names.
The calumniated instincts try to demonstrate that
they are necessary in order that the virtuous
instincts may be possible. Il faut vivre, afin de
vivre pour autrui: egoism as a means to an end. *
*
Spencer's conclusion in the Data of Ethics. -TR.


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234
THE WILL TO POWER.
But people go still further : they try to grant
both the egoistic and altruistic impulses the right
to exist-equal rights for both—from the utili-
tarian standpoint.
People go further : they see greater utility in
placing the egoistic rights before the altruistic-
greater utility in the sense of more happiness for the
majority, or of the elevation of mankind, etc. etc.
Thus the rights of egoism begin to preponderate,
but under the cloak of an extremely altruistic
standpoint—the collective utility of humanity.
An attempt is made to reconcile the altruistic
mode of action with the natural order of things.
Altruism is sought in the very roots of life.
Altruism and egoism are both based upon the
essence of life and nature.
The disappearance of the opposition between
them is dreamt of as a future possibility. Con-
tinued adaptation, it is hoped, will merge the two
into one.
At last it is seen that altruistic actions are
merely a species of the egoistic—and that the
degree to which one loves and spends one's self is a
proof of the extent of one's individual power and
personality. In short, that the more evil man can
be made, the better he is, and that one cannot be
the one without the other. . . . At this point the
curtain rises which concealed the monstrous fraud
of the psychology that has prevailed hitherto.
Results. There are only immoral intentions and
actions; the so-called moral actions must be shown


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SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL.
235
to be immoral. All emotions are traced to a single
will, the will to power, and are called essentially
equal.
The concept of life: in the apparent
antithesis good and evil, degrees of power in the
instincts alone are expressed. A temporary order
of rank is established according to which certain
instincts are either controlled or enlisted in our
service. Morality is justified: economically, etc.
Against proposition two. -Determinism: the
attempt to rescue the moral world by transferring
it to the unknown.
Determinism is only a manner of allowing our-
selves to conjure our valuations away, once they
have lost their place in a world interpreted
mechanistically. Determinism must therefore be
attacked and undermined at all costs : just as our
right to distinguish between an absolute and
phenomenal world should be disputed.
787.
It is absolutely necessary to emancipate our-
selves from motives: otherwise we should not be
allowed to attempt to sacrifice ourselves or to
neglect ourselves ! Only the innocence of Be-
coming gives us the highest courage and the
highest freedom.
788.
A clean conscience must be restored to the evil
man_has this been my involuntary endeavour all


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236
THE WILL TO POWER.
the time? for I take as the evil man him who is
strong (Dostoievsky's belief concerning the con-
victs in prison should be referred to here).
789.
Our new “ freedom. ” What a feeling of relief
there is in the thought that we emancipated spirits
do not feel ourselves harnessed to any system of
teleological aims. Likewise that the concepts
reward and punishment have no roots in the
essence of existence! Likewise that good and
evil actions are not good or evil in themselves,
but only from the point of view of the self-pre-
servative tendencies of certain species of humanity !
Likewise that our speculations concerning pleasure
and pain are not of cosmic, far less then of meta-
physical, importance! (That form of pessimism
associated with the name of Hartmann, which
pledges itself to put even the pain and pleasure of
existence into the balance, with its arbitrary con-
finement in the prison and within the bounds of
pre-Copernican thought, would be something not
only retrogressive, but degenerate, unless it be
merely a bad joke on the part of a “Berliner. " *)
790.
If one is clear as to the “wherefore" of one's
life, then the “how” of it can take care of itself.
*“Berliner ”—The citizens of Berlin are renowned in
Germany for their poor jokes. -TR.


## p. 237 (#267) ############################################

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL
237
It is already even a sign of disbelief in the where-
fore and in the purpose and sense of life in fact,
it is a sign of a lack of will—when the value of
pleasure and pain step into the foreground, and
hedonistic and pessimistic teaching becomes pre-
valent; and self-abnegation, resignation, virtue,
objectivity,” may, at the very least, be signs that
the most important factor is beginning to make
its absence felt.
791.
Hitherto there has been no German culture. It
is no refutation of this assertion to say that there
have been great anchorites in Germany (Goethe,
for instance); for these had their own culture.
But it was precisely around them, as though around
mighty, defiant, and isolated rocks, that the remain-
ing spirit of Germany, as their antithesis, lay—that
is to say, as a soft, swampy, slippery soil, upon
which every step and every footprint of the rest
of Europe made an impression and created forms.
German culture was a thing devoid of character
and of almost unlimited yielding power.
792.
Germany, though very rich in clever and well-
informed scholars, has for some time been so ex-
cessively poor in great souls and in mighty minds,
that it almost seems to have forgotten what a great
soul or a mighty mind is; and to-day mediocre and
even ill-constituted men place themselves in the
market square without the suggestion of a con-
science-prick or a signofembarrassment, and declare


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238
THE WILL TO POWER.
themselves great men, reformers, etc. Take the
case of Eugen Dühring, for instance, a really clever
and well-informed scholar, but a man who betrays
with almost every word he says that he has a miser-
ably small soul, and that he is horribly tormented
by narrow envious feelings; moreover, that it is no
mighty overflowing, benevolent, and spendthrift
spirit that drives him on, but only the spirit of
ambition ! But to be ambitious in such an age as
this is much more unworthy of a philosopher than
ever it was : to-day, when it is the mob that rules,
when it is the mob that dispenses the honours.
793
My “future": a severe polytechnic education.
Conscription; so that as a rule every man of the
higher classes should be an officer, whatever else
he may be besides.


## p. 239 (#269) ############################################

-
1
IV.
THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
794.
OUR religion, morality, and philosophy are
decadent human institutions.
The counter-agent: Art
795.
The Artist-philosopher. A higher concept of
art. Can man stand at so great a distance from
his fellows as to mould them? (Preliminary ex-
ercises thereto :-
1. To become a self-former, an anchorite.
2. To do what artists have done hitherto, i. e.
to reach a small degree of perfection in a certain
medium. )
796.
Art as it appears without the artist, i. e. as a
body, an organisation (the Prussian Officers' Corps,
the Order of the Jesuits). To what extent is the
artist merely a preliminary stage? The world
regarded as a self-generating work of art.
239


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240
THE WILL TO POWER.
797.
The phenomenon, "artist," is the easiest to see
through : from it one can look down upon the
fundamental instincts of power, of nature, etc. ;
even of religion and morality.
Play,” uselessness—as the ideal of him who is
overflowing with power, as the ideal of the child.
The childishness of God, παίς παίζων.
798.
Apollonian, Dionysian. There are two con-
ditions in which art manifests itself in man even
as a force of nature, and disposes of him whether
he consent or not : it may be as a constraint to
visionary states, or it may be an orgiastic impulse.
Both conditions are to be seen in normal life, but
they are then somewhat weaker : in dreams and
in moments of elation or intoxication.
But the same contrast exists between the dream
state and the state of intoxication: both of these
states let loose all manner of artistic powers with-
in us, but each unfetters powers of a different
kind. Dreamland gives us the power of vision, of
association, of poetry: intoxication gives us the
power of grand attitudes, of passion, of song, and
of dance.
66
* German :
Rausch. ”—There is no word in English for
the German expression "Rausch. " When Nietzsche uses it,
he means a sort of blend of our two words : intoxication and
elation. - TR.
:


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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
241
799.
Sexuality and voluptuousness belong to the
Dionysiac intoxication : but neither of them is
lacking in the Apollonian state. There is also
a difference of tempo between the states. . . . The
extreme peace of certain feelings of intoxication (or,
more strictly, the slackening of the feeling of time,
and the reduction of the feeling of space) is wont
to reflect itself in the vision of the most restful
attitudes and states of the soul. The classical
style essentially represents repose, simplification,
foreshortening, and concentration-the highest feel-
ing of power is concentrated in the classical type.
To react with difficulty: great consciousness : no
feeling of strife.
800.
>
The feeling of intoxication is, as a matter of
fact, equivalent to a sensation of surplus power: it
is strongest in seasons of rut: new organs, new
accomplishments, new. colours, new forms.
Em-
bellishment is an outcome of increased power.
Embellishment is merely an expression of a
triumphant will, of an increased state of co-
ordination, of a harmony of all the strong desires,
of an infallible and perpendicular equilibrium.
Logical and geometrical simplification is the result
of an increase of power: conversely, the mere
aspect of such a simplification increases the sense
of power in the beholder. The zenith of
development: the grand style.
Ugliness signifies the decadence of a type: con-
Q
.
.
VOL. II.


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242
THE WILL TO POWER.
tradiction and faulty co-ordination among the in-
most desires—this means a decline in the organis-
ing power, or, psychologically speaking, in the “will. "
The condition of pleasure which is called in-
toxication is really an exalted feeling of power.
. . Sensations of space and time are altered;
inordinate distances are traversed by the eye, and
only then become visible; the extension of the
vision over greater masses and expanses; - the
refinement of the organ which apprehends the
smallest and most elusive things; divination, the
power of understanding at the slightest hint, at
the smallest suggestion ; intelligent sensitiveness;
strength as a feeling of dominion in the muscles,
as agility and love of movement, as dance, as
levity and quick time; strength as the love of
proving strength, as bravado, adventurousness,
fearlessness, indifference in regard to life and
death. . . All these elated moments of life
stimulate each other; the world of images and of
imagination of the one suffices as a suggestion for
the other : in this way states finally merge into
each other, which might do better to keep apart,
c. g. the feeling of religious intoxication and sexual
irritability (two very profound feelings, always
wonderfully co-ordinated. What is it that pleases
almost all pious women, old or young? Answer:
a saint with beautiful legs, still young, still in
nocent). Cruelty in tragedy and pity (likewise
normally correlated). Spring-time, dancing, music,
-all these things are but the display of one sex
before the other,--as also that "infinite yearning
of the heart" peculiar to Faust.


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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
243
Artists when they are worth anything at all are
men of strong propensities (even physically), with
surplus energy, powerful animals, sensual; without
a certain overheating of the sexual system a man
like Raphael is unthinkable. . . . To produce
music is also in a sense to produce children;
chastity is merely the economy of the artist, and
in all creative artists productiveness certainly
ceases with sexual potency. . . . Artists should
not see things as they are; they should see them
fuller, simpler, stronger: to this end, however, a
kind of youthfulness, of vernality, a sort of per-
petual elation, must be peculiar to their lives.
:
801.
The states in which we transfigure things and
make them fuller, and rhapsodise about them,
until they reflect our own fulness and love of life
back upon us: sexuality, intoxication, post-prandial
states, spring, triumph over our enemies, scorn,
bravado, cruelty, the ecstasy of religious feeling.
But three elements above all are active: sexuality,
intoxication, cruelty; all these belong to the oldest
festal joys of mankind, they also preponderate in
budding artists.
Conversely: there are things with which we
meet which already show us this transfiguration
and fulness, and the animal world's response
thereto is a state of excitement in the spheres
where these states of happiness originate.
blending of these very delicate shades of animal
well-being and desires is the æsthetic state. The
A
1


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244
THE WILL TO POWER.
latter only manifests itself in those natures which
are capable of that spendthrift and overflowing
fulness of bodily vigour; the latter is always the
primum mobile. The sober-minded man, the
tired man, the exhausted and dried-up man (e. g.
the scholar), can have no feeling for art, because
he does not possess the primitive force of art,
which is the tyranny of inner riches: he who
cannot give anything away cannot feel anything
either.
"Perfection. ”—In these states (more particularly
in the case of sexual love, there is an ingenuous
betrayal of what the profoundest instinct regards
as the highest, the most desirable, the most
valuable, the ascending movement of its type;
also of the condition towards which it is actually
striving. Perfection: the extraordinary expansion
of this instinct's feeling of power, its riches, its
necessary overflowing of all banks.
802.
Art reminds us of states of physical vigour: it
may be the overflow and bursting forth of bloom-
ing life in the world of pictures and desires; on
the other hand, it may be an excitation of the
physical functions by means of pictures and desires
of exalted life--an enhancement of the feeling of
life, the latter's stimulant.
To what extent can ugliness exercise this
power? In so far as it may communicate some-
thing of the triumphant energy of the artist who
has become master of the ugly and the repulsive;


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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
245
or in so far as it gently excites our lust of cruelty
(in some circumstances even the lust of doing
harm to ourselves, self-violence, and therewith the
feeling of power over ourselves).
803.
“Beauty" therefore is, to the artist, something
which is above all order of rank, because in beauty
contrasts are overcome, the highest sign of power
thus manifesting itself in the conquest of opposites;
and achieved without a feeling of tension : violence
being no longer necessary, everything submitting
and obeying so easily, and doing so with good
grace; this is what delights the powerful will of
the artist.
804.
The biological value of beauty and ugliness.
That which we feel instinctively opposed to us
æsthetically is, according to the longest experience
of mankind, felt to be harmful, dangerous, and
worthy of suspicion: the sudden utterance of the
æsthetic instinct, e. g, in the case of loathing, im-
plies an act of judgment. To this extent beauty
lies within the general category of the biological
values, useful, beneficent, and life - promoting:
thus, a host of stimuli which for ages have been
associated with, and remind us of, useful things
and conditions, give us the feeling of beauty, i. e.
the increase of the feeling of power (not only
things, therefore, but the sensations which are
associated with such things or their symbols).
1


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246
THE WILL TO POWER.
In this way beauty and ugliness are recognised
as determined by our most fundamental self-
preservative values. Apart from this, it is nonsense
to postulate anything as beautiful or ugly. Ab-
solute beauty exists just as little as absolute good-
ness and truth. In a particular case it is a matter
of the self-preservative conditions of a certain type
of man: thus the gregarious man will have quite
a different feeling for beauty from the exceptional
or super-man.
It is the optics of things in the foreground
which only consider immediate consequences, from
which the value beauty (also goodness and truth)
arises.
All instinctive judgments are short-sighted in -
regard to the concatenation of consequences :
they merely advise what must be done forthwith.
Reason is essentially an obstructing apparatus
preventing the immediate response to instinctive
judgments: it halts, it calculates, it traces the
chain of consequences further.
Judgments concerning beauty and ugliness are
short-sighted (reason is always opposed to them):
but they are convincing in the highest degree;
they appeal to our instincts in that quarter where
the latter decide most quickly and say yes or no
with least hesitation, even before reason
interpose.
The most common affirmations of beauty
stimulate each other reciprocally; where the
æsthetic impulse once begins to work, a whole
host of other and foreign perfections crystallise
around the “particular form of beau'y. " It is
“
can


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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
247
.
impossible to remain objective, it is certainly
impossible to dispense with the interpreting,
bestowing, transfiguring, and poetising power (the
latter is a stringing together of affirmations con-
cerning beauty itself). The sight of a beautiful
woman.
Thus (1) judgment concerning beauty is short-
sighted; it sees only the immediate consequences.
(2) It smothers the object which gives rise to
it with a charm that is determined by the associa-
tion of various judgments concerning beauty,
which, however, are quite alien to the essence of
the particular object. To regard a thing as beauti-
ful is necessarily to regard it falsely (that is why
incidentally love marriages are from the social
point of view the most unreasonable form of
matrimony).
805
Concerning the genesis of Art. -That making
perfect and seeing perfect, which is peculiar to the
cerebral system overladen with sexual energy (a
lover alone with his sweetheart at eventide trans-
figures the smallest details: life is a chain of
sublime things, "the misfortune of an unhappy
love affair is more valuable than anything else");
on the other hand, everything perfect and beautiful
operates like an unconscious recollection of that
amorous condition and of the point of view
peculiar to it—all perfection, and the whole of
the beauty of things, through contiguity, revives
aphrodisiac bliss, (Physiologically it is the
creative instinct of the artist and the distribution


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248
THE WILL TO POWER.
of his semen in his blood. ) The desire for art
and beauty is an indirect longing for the ecstasy
of sexual desire, which gets communicated to the
brain. The world become perfect through “ love. "
806.
"
Sensuality in its various disguises. — (1) As
idealism (Plato), common to youth, constructing
a kind of concave-mirror in which the image of
the beloved is an incrustation, an exaggeration, a
transfiguration, an attribution of infinity to every-
thing. (2) In the religion of love, "a fine young
man," "a beautiful woman,” in some way divine;
a bridegroom, a bride of the soul. (3) In art, as
a decorating force, e. g. just as the man sees the
woman and makes her a present of everything
that can enhance her personal charm, so the
sensuality of the artist adorns an object with
everything else that he honours and esteems,
and by this means perfects it (or idealises it).
Woman, knowing what man feels in regard to
her, tries to meet_his idealising endeavours half-
way by decorating herself, by walking and dancing
well, by expressing delicate thoughts: in addition,
she may practise modesty, shyness, reserve-
prompted by her instinctive feeling that the ideal-
ising power of man increases with all this. (In
the extraordinary finesse of woman's instincts,
modesty must not by any means be considered as
conscious hypocrisy: she guesses that it is pre-
cisely artlessness and real shame which seduces
man most and urges him to an exaggerated


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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
249
esteem of her. On this account, woman is in-
genuous, owing to the subtlety of her instincts
which reveal to her the utility of a state of
innocence. A wilful closing of one's eyes
to one's self. . . . Wherever dissembling has a
stronger influence by being unconscious it actually
becomes unconscious. )
807.
What a host of things can be accomplished by
the state of intoxication which is called by the
name of love, and which is something else besides
love ! And yet everybody has his own experience
of this matter. The muscular strength of a girl
suddenly increases as soon as a man comes into
her presence: there are instruments with which
this can be measured. In the case of a still closer
relationship of the sexes, as, for instance, in dancing
and in other amusements which society gatherings
entail, this power increases to such an extent
as to make real feats of strength possible: at
last one no longer trusts either one's eyes, or one's
watch! Here at all events we must reckon with
the fact that dancing itself, like every form of
rapid movement, involves a kind of intoxication
of the whole nervous, muscular, and visceral
system. We must therefore reckon in this case
with the collective effects of a double intoxication.
-And how clever it is to be a little off your head
at times ! There are some realities which we
cannot admit even to ourselves: especially when
we are women and have all sorts of feminine
!


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250
THE WILL TO POWER.
pudeurs. ” . . . Those young creatures dancing
over there are obviously beyond all reality: they
are dancing only with a host of tangible ideals :
what is more, they even see ideals sitting around
them, their mothers! . . . An opportunity for
quoting Faust. They look incomparably fairer,
do these pretty creatures, when they have lost
their head a little ; and how well they know it
too, they are even more delightful because they
know it! Lastly, it is their finery which inspires
them : their finery is their third little intoxication.
They believe in their dressmaker as in their God:
and who would destroy this faith in them? Blessed
is this faith! And self-admiration is healthy!
Self-admiration can protect one even from cold !
Has a beautiful woman, who knew she was well-
dressed, ever caught cold? Never yet on this
earth! I even suppose a case in which she has
scarcely a rag on her.
808.
If one should require the most astonishing
proof of how far the power of transfiguring, which
comes of intoxication, goes, this proof is at hand
in the phenomenon of love; or what is called love
in all the languages and silences of the world.
Intoxication works to such a degree upon reality
in this passion that in the consciousness of the
lover the cause of his love is quite suppressed, and
something else seems to take its place,-a vibra-
tion and a glitter of all the charm-mirrors of
Circe. In this respect, to be man
or
an


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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
251
.
animal makes no difference: and still less does
spirit, goodness, or honesty. If one is astute,
one is befooled astutely; if one is thick-headed,
one is befooled in a thick-headed way. But love,
even the love of God, saintly love, “the love that
saves the soul,” are at bottom all one; they are
nothing but a fever which has reasons to trans-
figure itself—a state of intoxication which does
well to lie about itself. . . . And, at any rate,
when a man loves, he is a good liar about himself
and to himself: he seems to himself transfigured,
stronger, richer, more perfect; he is more per-
fect. . . Art here acts as an organic function:
we find it present in the most angelic instinct
“ love”; we find it as the greatest stimulus of
life—thus art is sublimely utilitarian, even in the
fact that it lies. . . . But we should be wrong
to halt at its power to lie: it does more than
merely imagine; it actually transposes values.
And it not only transposes the feeling for values :
the lover actually has a greater value; he is
stronger. In animals this condition gives rise to
new weapons, colours, pigments, and forms, and
above all to new movements, new rhythms, new
love-calls and seductions. In man it is just the
same. His whole economy is richer, mightier,
and more complete when he is in love than when
he is not The lover becomes a spendthrift; he
is rich enough for it. He now dares; he becomes
an adventurer, and even a donkey in magnanimity
and innocence; his belief in God and in virtue
revives, because he believes in love. Moreover,
such idiots of happiness acquire wings and new
.


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252
THE WILL TO POWER.
capacities, and even the door to art is opened to
them.
If we cancel the suggestion of this intestinal
fever from the lyric of tones and words, what is
left to poetry and music? . . . L'art
L'art pour l'art
perhaps; the professional cant of frogs shivering
outside in the cold, and dying of despair in their
swamp. Everything else was created by
love.
.
.
.
809.
All art works like a suggestion on the muscles
and the senses which were originally active in the
ingenuous artistic man; its voice is only heard
by artists—it speaks to this kind of man, whose
constitution is attuned to such subtlety in sensi-
tiveness. The concept "layman" is a misnomer.
The deaf man is not a subdivision of the class
whose ears are sound. All art works as a tonic;
it increases strength, it kindles desire (i. e. the
feeling of strength), it excites all the more subtle
recollections of intoxication; there is actually a
special kind of memory which underlies such
states-a distant flitful world of sensations here
returns to being.
Ugliness is the contradiction of art. It is that
which art excludes, the negation of art: wherever
decline, impoverishment of life, impotence, de-
composition, dissolution, are felt, however remotely,
the æsthetic man reacts with his No. Ugliness
depresses: it is the sign of depression. It robs
strength, it impoverishes, it weighs down. . .
Ugliness suggests repulsive things. From one's


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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
253
states of health one can test how an indisposition
may increase one's power of fancying ugly things.
One's selection of things, interests, and questions
becomes different. Logic provides a state which
is next of kin to ugliness: heaviness, bluntness.
In the presence of ugliness equilibrium is lacking
in a mechanical sense : ugliness limps and
stumbles the direct opposite of the godly agility
of the dancer.
The æsthetic state represents an overflow of
means of communication as well as a condition of
extreme sensibility to stimuli and signs. It is
the zenith of communion, and transmission
between living creatures; it is the source of
languages. In it, languages, whether of signs,
sounds, or glances, have their birthplace. The
richer phenomenon is always the beginning: our
abilities are subtilised forms of richer abilities.
But even to-day we still listen with our muscles,
we even read with our muscles.
Every mature art possesses a host of conventions
as a basis : in so far as it is a language. Con-
vention is a condition of great art, not an obstacle
to it. .
Every elevation of life likewise elevates
the power of communication, as also the under-
standing of man. The power of living in other
people's souls originally had nothing to do with
morality, but with a physiological irritability of
suggestion : "sympathy," or what is called
“altruism," is merely a product of that psycho-
motor relationship which is reckoned as spirituality
(psycho-motor induction, says Charles Féré).
People never communicate a thought to one
.
.


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254
THE WILL TO POWER.
a
v another: they communicate a movement, an
imitative sign which is then interpreted as a
thought.
810.
Compared with music, communication by means
of words is a shameless mode of procedure; words
reduce and stultify; words make impersonal ;
words make common that which is uncommon.
811.
.
It is exceptional states that determine the
artist-such states as are all intimately related
and entwined with morbid symptoms, so that it
would seem almost impossible to be an artist
· without being ill.
The physiological conditions which in the artist
become moulded into a "personality," and which,
to a certain degree, may attach themselves to any
man:-
(1) Intoxication, the feeling of enhanced power ;
the inner compulsion to make things a mirror of
one's own fulness and perfection.
(2) The extreme sharpness of certain senses,
so that they are capable of understanding a totally
different language of signs—and to create such a
language (this is a condition which manifests itself
in some nervous diseases); extreme susceptibility
out of which great powers of communion are
developed; the desire to speak on the part of
everything that is capable of making signs; a need
of being rid of one's self by means of gestures


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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
255
and attitudes; the ability of speaking about one's
self in a hundred different languages—in fact, a
state of explosion.
One must first imagine this condition as one in
which there is a pressing and compulsory desire of
ridding one's self of the ecstasy of a state of tension,
by all kinds of muscular work and movement;
also as an involuntary co-ordination of these move-
ments with inner processes (images, thoughts,
desires)--as a kind of automatism of the whole
muscular system under the compulsion of strong
stimuliacting from within; the inability to
resist reaction; the apparatus of resistance is
also suspended. Every inner movement (feeling,
thought, emotion) is accompanied by vascular
changes, and consequently by changes in colour,
temperature, and secretion.
The suggestive power
of music, its "suggestion mentale. "
(3) The compulsion to imitate: extreme irritabil.
ity, by means of which a certain example becomes
contagious—a condition is guessed and represented
merely by means of a few signs. A complete
picture is visualised by one's inner consciousness,
and its effect soon shows itself in the movement
of the limbs,—in a certain suspension of the will
(Schopenhauer ! ! ! ! ). A sort of blindness and
deafness towards the external world, the realm
of admitted stimuli is sharply defined.
This differentiates the artist from the layman
(from the spectator of art): the latter reaches the
height of his excitement in the mere act of appre-
hending: the former in giving—and in such a way
that the antagonism between these two gifts is not
.


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256
THE WILL TO POWER.
only natural but even desirable. Each of these states
has an opposite standpoint-to demand of the
artist that he should have the point of view of the
spectator (of the critic) is equivalent to asking
him to impoverish his creative power. . . . In this
respect the same difference holds good as that which
exists between the sexes : one should not ask the
artist who gives to become a woman—to “receive. "
Our æsthetics have hitherto been women's
æsthetics, inasmuch as they have only formulated
the experiences of what is beautiful, from the point
of view of the receivers in art. In the whole of
philosophy hitherto the artist has been lacking . . .
i. e. as we have already suggested, a necessary
fault: for the artist who would begin to under-
stand himself would therewith begin to mistake
himself-he must not look backwards, he must
not look at all; he must give. —It is an honour
for an artist to have no critical faculty; if he can
criticise he is mediocre, he is modern.
812.
Here I lay down a series of psychological states
as signs of flourishing and complete life, which
to-day we are in the habit of regarding as morbid.
But, by this time, we have broken ourselves of
the habit of speaking of healthy and morbid as
opposites: the question is one of degree, what
I maintain on this point is that what people call
healthy nowadays represents a lower level of that
which under favourable circumstances actually
would be healthy-that we are relatively sick. . . .


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THE WILL TO POWER IN ART.
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The artist belongs to a much stronger race. That
which in us would be harmful and sickly, is natural
in him.