No More Learning

All the philosophers, with a


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104
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
pedantic and ridiculous seriousness, demanded of
themselves something very much higher, more pre-
tentious, and ceremonious, when they concerned
themselves with morality as a science : they wanted
to give a basis to morality—and every philosopher
hitherto has believed that he has given it a basis;
morality itself, however, has been regarded as
something "given. " How far from their awkward
pride was the seemingly insignificant problem-left
in dust and decay-of a description of forms of
morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands and
senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was
precisely owing to moral philosophers knowing the
moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary epitome, or
an accidental abridgment—perhaps as the morality
of their environment, their position, their church,
their Zeitgeist, their climate and zone—it was pre-
cisely because they were badly instructed with
regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by
no means eager to know about these matters, that
they did not even come in sight of the real problems
of morals-problems which only disclose themselves
by a comparison of many kinds of morality. In
every “Science of Morals" hitherto, strange as it
may sound, the problem of morality itself has been
omitted; there has been no suspicion that there
was anything problematic there! That which
philosophers called "giving a basis to morality,"
and endeavoured to realise, has, wien seen in a
right light, proved merely a learned forın of good
faith in prevailing morality, a new means of its ex-
pression, consequently just a matter-of-fact within
the sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
105
a
motive, a sort of denial that it is lawful for this
morality to be called in question-and in any case
the reverse of the testing, analysing, doubting, and
vivisecting of this very faith. Hear, for instance,
with what innocence—almost worthy of honour-
Schopenhauer represents his own task, and draw
your conclusions concerning the scientificalness of
Science” whose latest master still talks in the
strain of children and old wives : “The principle,"
he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der
Ethik *), “the axiom about the purport of which
all moralists are practically agreed: neminem læde,
immo omnes quantum potes juva-is really the pro-
position which all moral teachers strive to establish,
the real basis of ethics which has been sought,
like the philosopher's stone, for centuries. ”—The
difficulty of establishing the proposition referred
to may indeed be great-it is well known that
Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his efforts ;
and whoever has thoroughly realised how absurdly
false and sentimental this proposition is, in a world
whose essence is Will to Power, may be reminded
that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist, actually,
played the flute . . . daily after dinner : one may
read about the matter in his biography. A ques-
tion by the way: a pessimist, a repudiator of God
and of the world, who makes a halt at morality-
who assents to morality, and plays the flute to
lade-neminem morals, what? Is that really-a
pessimist?
*
Pages 54-55 of Schopenhauer's Basis of Morality, trans-
lated by Arthur B. Bullock, M. A. (1903).


## p. 106 (#128) ############################################

106
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
187.
Apart from the value of such assertions as “there
is a categorical imperative in us," one can always
ask: What does such an assertion indicate about
him who makes it? There are systems of morals
which are meant to justify their author in the eyes
of other people ; other systems of morals are meant
to tranquillise him, and make him self-satisfied ;
with other systems he wants to crucify and humble
himself; with others he wishes to take revenge ;
with others to conceal himself; with others to
glorify himself and gain superiority and distinction;
—this system of morals helps its author to forget,
that system makes him, or something of him, for-
gotten; many a moralist would like to exercise
power and creative arbitrariness over mankind;
many another, perhaps, Kant especially, gives us to
understand by his morals that “what is estimable
in me, is that I know how to obey—and with you
it shall not be otherwise than with me! ” In short,
systems of morals are only a sign-language of the
emotions.
188.
In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals
is a sort of tyranny against "nature" and also
against "reason "; that is, however, no objection,
unless one should again decree by some system of
morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonable-
ness are unlawful. What is essential and invalu-
able in every system of morals, is that it is a long
constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or
Port-Royal, or Puritanism, one should remember


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
107
the constraint under which every language has
attained to strength and freedom-the metrical
constraint, the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How
much trouble have the poets and orators of every
nation given themselves not excepting some of
the prose writers of to-day, in whose ear dwells an
inexorable conscientiousness" for the sake of a
folly," as utilitarian bunglers say, and thereby deem
themselves wise-“from submission to arbitrary
laws," as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy
themselves “free,” even free-spirited. The singular
fact remains, however, that everything of the nature
of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly
certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be
in thought itself, or in administration, or in speaking
and persuading, in art just as in conduct, has only
developed by means of the tyranny of such arbi-
trary law ; and in all seriousness, it is not at all
improbable that precisely this is "nature” and
.
"natural"--and not laisser-aller! j Every artist
knows how different from the state of letting him-
self go, is his “most natural” condition, the free
arranging, locating, disposing, and constructing in
the moments of "inspiration"-and how strictly
and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws,
which, by their very rigidness and precision, defy
all formulation by means of ideas (even the most
stable idea has, in comparison therewith, some-
thing floating, manifold, and ambiguous in it).
The essential thing “in heaven and in earth” is,
apparently (to repeat it once more), that there
should be long obedience in the same direction;
there thereby results, and has always resulted in


## p. 108 (#130) ############################################

108
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
-
the long run, something which has made life worth
living; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing,
reason, spirituality - anything whatever that is
transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. The long
bondage of the spirit, the distrustful constraint in
the communicability of ideas, the discipline which
the thinker imposed on himself to think in accord-
ance with the rules of a church or a court, or con-
formable to Aristotelian premises, the persistent
spiritual will to interpret everything that happened
according to a Christian scheme, and in every oc-
currence to rediscover and justify the Christian God:
-all this violence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadful-
ness, and unreasonableness, has proved itself the
disciplinary means whereby the European spirit has
attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and
subtle mobility; granted also that much irrecover-
able strength and spirit had to be stifled, suffocated,
and spoilt in the process (for here, as everywhere,
nature” shows herself as she is, in all her extrava-
gant and indifferent magnificence, which is shock-
ing, but nevertheless noble). That for centuries
European thinkers only thought in order to prove
something-nowadays, on the contrary, we are
suspicious of every thinker who “ wishes to prove
something "—that it was always settled beforehand
what was to be the result of their strictest thinking,
as it was perhaps in the Asiatic astrology of former
times, or as it is still at the present day in the
innocent, Christian-moral explanation of immediate
personal events “for the glory of God," or "for the
good of the soul” :--this tyranny, this arbitrariness,
this severe and magnificent stupidity, has educated


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
109
«
the spirit ; slavery, both in the coarser and the finer
sense, is apparently an indispensable means even
of spiritual education and discipline. One may
look at every system of morals in this light : it is
nature " therein which teaches to hate the laisser-
aller, the too great freedom, and implants the need
for limited horizons, for immediate duties - it
teaches the narrowing of perspectives, and thus, in a
certain sense, that stupidity is a condition of life
and development.
“ Thou must obey some one,
and for a long time; otherwise thou wilt come to
grief, and lose all respect for thyself"—this seems to
me to be the moral imperative of nature, which is
certainly neither "categorical," as old Kant wished
(consequently the “otherwise"), nor does it address
itself to the individual (what does nature care for
the individual ! ), but to nations, races, ages, and
ranks, above all, however, to the animal “man ”
generally, to mankind.
189.
Industrious races find it a great hardship to be
idle : it was a master stroke of English instinct to
hallow and begloom Sunday to such an extent that
the Englishman unconsciously hankers for his week-
and work-day again :—as a kind of cleverly devised,
cleverly intercalated fast, such as is also frequently
found in the ancient world (although, as is appro-
priate in southern nations, not precisely with respect
to work). Many kinds of fasts are necessary; and
wherever powerful impulses and habits prevail, legis-
lators have to see that intercalary days are appointed,
on which such impulses are fettered, and learn to


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IIO
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
hunger anew. Viewed from a higher standpoint,
whole generations and epochs, when they show
themselves infected with any moral fanaticism,
seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and
fasting, during which an impulse learns to humble
and submit itself-at the same time also to purify
and sharpen itself; certain philosophical sects like-
wise admit of a similar interpretation (for instance,
the Stoa, in the midst of Hellenic culture, with the
atmosphere rank and overcharged with Aphro-
disiacal odours). -Here also is a hint for the ex-
planation of the paradox, why it was precisely in
the most Christian period of European history, and
in general only under the pressure of Christian
sentiments, that the sexual impulse sublimated
into love (amour-passion).
190.
There is something in the morality of Plato which
does not really belong to Plato, but which only
appears in his philosophy, one might say, in spite
of him : namely, Socratism, for which he himself
was too noble. “No one desires to injure himself,
hence all evil is done unwittingly. The evil man
inflicts injury on himself; he would not do so, how-
ever, if he knew that evil is evil. The evil man,
therefore, is only evil through error; if one free
him from error one will necessarily make him-
good. ”—This mode of reasoning savours of the
populace, who perceive only the unpleasant con-
sequences of evil-doing, and practically judge that
“it is stupid to do wrong"; while they accept
“good” as identical with “useful and pleasant,”
"


## p. 111 (#133) ############################################

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
III
without further thought. As regards every system
of utilitarianism, one may at once assume that it
has the same origin, and follow the scent : one
will seldom err. –Plato did all he could to interpret
something refined and noble into the tenets of his
teacher, and above all to interpret himself into them
-he, the most daring of all interpreters, who lifted
the entire Socrates out of the street, as a popular
theme and song, to exhibit him in endless and im-
possible modifications-namely, in all his own dis-
guises and multiplicities. In jest, and in Homeric
language as well, what is the Platonic Socrates, if
not-
πρόσθε Πλάτων όπιθεν τε Πλάτων μέσση τε Χίμαιρα.
9
191.
The old theological problem of "Faith” and
Knowledge," or more plainly, of instinct and
reason—the question whether, in respect to the
valuation of things, instinct deserves more authority
than rationality, which wants to appreciate and act
according to motives, according to a “Why," that is
to say, in conformity to purpose and utility—it is
always the old moral problem that first appeared in
the person of Socrates, and had divided men's minds
long before Christianity. Socrates himself, follow-
ing, of course, the taste of his talent that of a
surpassing dialectician–took first the side of reason;
and, in fact, what did he do all his life but laugh at
the awkward incapacity of the noble Athenians,
who were men of instinct, like all noble men, and
could never give satisfactory answers concerning
the motives of their actions? In the end, however,


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I 12
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
though silently and secretly, he laughed also at him-
self: with his finer conscience and introspection,
he found in himself the same difficulty and incapa-
city. "But why”-he said to himself—"should
one on that account separate oneself from the in-
stincts! One must set them right, and the reason
also—one must follow the instincts, but at the same
time persuade the reason to support them with good
arguments. " This was the real falseness of that
great and mysterious ironist ; he brought his con-
science up to the point that he was satisfied with a
kind of self-outwitting: in fact, he perceived the
irrationality in the moral judgment. —Plato, more
innocent in such matters, and without the crafti-
ness of the plebeian, wished to prove to himself, at
the expenditure of all his strength-the greatest
strength a philosopher had ever expended—that
reason and instinct lead spontaneously to one goal,
to the good, to “God”; and since Plato, all theo-
logians and philosophers have followed the same
path—which means that in matters of morality,
instinct (or as Christians call it, “Faith," or as I call
it, “the herd ") has hitherto triumphed. Unless
one should make an exception in the case of
Descartes, the father of rationalism (and con-
sequently the grandfather of the Revolution), who
recognised only the authority of reason : but reason
is only a tool, and Descartes was superficial.
-
192.
Whoever has followed the history of a single
science, finds in its development a clue to the under-
standing of the oldest and commonest processes of


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
113
all“ knowledge and cognisance": there, as here, the
premature hypotheses, the fictions, the good stupid
will to“ belief," and the lack of distrust and patience
are first developed-our senses learn late, and
never learn completely, to be subtle, reliable, and
cautious organs of knowledge. Our eyes find it
easier on a given occasion to produce a picture
already often produced, than to seize upon the
divergence and novelty of an impression : the latter
requires more force, more “morality. ” It is difficult
and painful for the ear to listen to anything new;
we hear strange music badly. When we hear
another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt
to form the sounds into words with which we are
more familiar and conversant-it was thus, for
example, that the Germans modified the spoken
word arcubalista into armbrust (cross-bow). Our
senses are also hostile and averse to the new; and
generally, even in the “simplest” processes of sensa-
tion, the emotions dominate—such as fear, love,
hatred, and the passive emotion of indolence. --
As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single
words (not to speak of syllables) of a page—he
rather takes about five out of every twenty words
at random, and "guesses” the probably appropriate
sense to them-just as little do we see a tree
correctly and completely in respect to its leaves,
branches, colour, and shape; we find it so much
easier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even in the
midst of the most remarkable experiences, we still
do just the same; we fabricate the greater part of
the experience, and can hardly be made to con-
template any event, except as "inventors" thereof.
H


## p. 114 (#136) ############################################

114
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
All this goes to prove that from our fundamental
nature and from remote ages we have been—ac-
customed to lying. Or, to express it more politely
and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly—one
is much more of an artist than one is aware of. -In
an animated conversation, I often see the face of
the person with whom I am speaking so clearly and
sharply defined before me, according to the thought
he expresses, or which I believe to be evoked in his
mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds
the strength of my visual faculty—the delicacy of
the play of the muscles and of the expression of
the eyes must therefore be imagined by me. Pro-
bably the person put on quite a different expression,
or none at all.
193.
Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrari-
wise. What we experience in dreams, provided we
experience it often, pertains at last just as much to
the general belongings of our soul as anything
actually” experienced; by virtue thereof we are
richer or poorer, we have a requirement more or
less, and finally, in broad daylight, and even in the
brightest moments of our waking life, we are ruled
to some extent by the nature of our dreams. Sup-
posing that some one has often flown in his dreams,
and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is con-
scious of the power and art of flying as his privilege
and his peculiarly enviable happiness; such a per-
son, who believes that on the slightest impulse, he
can actualise all sorts of curves and angles, who
knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
115
“upwards” without effort or constraint, a "down-
wards” without descending or lowering-without
trouble ! -how could the man with such dream-
experiences and dream-habits fail to find “happi-
ness” differently coloured and defined, even in his
waking hours ! How could he fail—to long differ-
ently for happiness? “Flight,"such as is described
by poets, must, when compared with his own
"flying," be far too earthly, muscular, violent, far
too "troublesome” for him.
194.
The difference among men does not manifest
itself only in the difference of their lists of desir-
able things--in their regarding different good things
as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to the
greater or less value, the order of rank, of the com-
monly recognised desirable things :-it manifests
itself much more in what they regard as actually
having and possessing a desirable thing. As regards
a woman, for instance, the control over her body
and her sexual gratification serves as an amply
sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the
more modest man; another with a more suspicious
and ambitious thirst for possession, sees the "ques-
tionableness," the mere apparentness of such owner-
ship, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know
especially whether the woman not only gives herself
to him, but also gives up for his sake what she has
or would like to have-only then does he look upon
her as “possessed. ” A third, however, has not even
here got to the limit of his distrust and his desire
for possession : he asks himself whether the woman,


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116
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
when she gives up everything for him, does not
perhaps do so for a phantom of him; he wishes
first to be thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well
known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to
let himself be found out. Only then does he feel
the beloved one fully in his possession, when she no
longer deceives herself about him, when she loves
him just as much for the sake of his devilry and
concealed insatiability, as for his goodness, patience,
and spirituality. One man would like to possess a
nation, and he finds all the higher arts of Cagliostro
and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another,
with a more refined thirst for possession, says to
himself: “One may not deceive where one desires
to possess”—he is irritated and impatient at the
idea that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of
the people: “I must, therefore, make myself known,
and first of all learn to know myself! " Amongst
helpful and charitable people, one almost always
finds the awkward craftiness which first gets up
suitably him who has to be helped, as though, for
instance, he should “merit” help, seek just their
help, and would show himself deeply grateful,
attached, and subservient to them for all help.
With these conceits, they take control of the needy
as a property, just as in general they are charitable
and helpful out of a desire for property. One finds
them jealous when they are crossed or forestalled
in their charity. Parents involuntarily make some-
thing like themselves out of their children—they
call that “education”; no mother doubts at the
bottom of her heart that the child she has born
is thereby her property, no father hesitates about


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
117
his right to subject it to his own ideas and notions
of worth. Indeed, in former times fathers deemed
it right to use their discretion concerning the
life or death of the newly born (as amongst the
ancient Germans). And like the father, so also do
the teacher, the class, the priest, and the prince
still see in every new individual an unobjectionable
opportunity for a new possession. The consequence
is.
195.
The Jews-a people" born for slavery," as Tacitus
and the whole ancient world say of them; "the
chosen people among the nations," as they them-
selves say and believe-the Jews performed the
miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of
which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous
charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets
fused into one the expressions “rich," "godless,"
'
“wicked,” “violent," "sensual," and for the first
time coined the word “world” as a term of re-
proach. In this inversion of valuations in which is
also included the use of the word “poor” as synony-
mous with “saint” and “friend”) the significance of
the Jewish people is to be found; it is with them
that the slave-insurrection in morals commences.
»
196.
It is to be inferred that there are countless dark
bodies near the sun-such as we shall never see.
Amongst ourselves, this is an allegory; and the
psychologist of morals reads the whole star-writing


## p. 118 (#140) ############################################

118
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
merely as an allegorical and symbolic language in
which much may be unexpressed.
.
197.
The beast of prey and the man of prey (for in-
stance, Cæsar Borgia) are fundamentally misunder-
stood, “nature" is misunderstood, so long as one
seeks a “morbidness" in the constitution of these
healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths, or
even an innate “hell” in them - as almost all
moralists have done hitherto. Does it not seem
that there is a hatred of the virgin forest and of the
tropics among moralists? And that the “ tropical
man" must be discredited at all costs, whether as
disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own
hell and self-torture? And why? In favour of the
“temperate zones"? In favour of the temperate
men? The "moral"? The mediocre ? _ This for
the chapter : "Morals as Timidity. ”
198.
All the systems of morals which address them-
selves to individuals with a view to their “happi-
ness," as it is called—what else are they but sug-
gestions for behaviour adapted to the degree of
danger from themselves in which the individuals
live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad
propensities, in so far as such have the Will to Power
and would like to play the master; small and great
expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the
musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife
wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their
form-because they address themselves to "all,”


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
119
because they generalise where generalisation is not
authorised; all of them speaking unconditionally,
and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them
flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but
rather endurable only, and sometimes even seduc-
tive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell
dangerously, especially of “the other world. " That
is all of little value when estimated intellectually,
and is far from being "science," much less "wisdom";
but, repeated once more, and three times repeated,
it is expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed
with stupidity, stupidity, stupidity-whether it be
the indifference and statuesque coldness towards
the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics
advised and fostered; or the no-more-laughing and
no-more-weeping of Spinoza, the destruction of the
emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he
recommended so naïvely; or the lowering of the
emotions to an innocent mean at which they may
be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals; or even
morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a
voluntary attenuation and spiritualisation by the
symbolism of art, perhaps as music, or as love of
God, and of mankind for God's sake-for in religion
the passions are once more enfranchised, provided
that . . . ; or, finally, even the complaisant and
wanton surrender to the emotions, as has been
taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold letting-go of
the reins, the spiritual and corporeal licentia morum
in the exceptional cases of wise old codgers and
drunkards, with whom it “no longer has much
danger. ”—This also for the chapter : “Morals as
Timidity. ”


## p. 120 (#142) ############################################

I20
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
199.
Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind has
existed, there have also been human herds (family
alliances, communities, tribes, peoples, states,
churches), and always a great number who obey
in proportion to the small number who command
-in view, therefore, of the fact that obedience has
been most practised and fostered among mankind
hitherto, one may reasonably suppose that, generally
speaking, the need thereof is now innate in every
one, as a kind of formal conscience which gives the
command: “Thou shalt unconditionally do some-
thing, unconditionally refrain from something"; in
short, “Thou shalt. " This need tries to satisfy
itself and to fill its form with a content; according
to its strength, impatience, and eagerness, it at once
seizes as an omnivorous appetite with little selection,
and accepts whatever is shouted into its ear by
all sorts of commanders-parents, teachers, laws,
class prejudices, or public opinion. The extraor-
dinary limitation of human development, the hesi-
tation, protractedness, frequent retrogression, and
turning thereof, is attributable to the fact that the
herd-instinct of obedience is transmitted best, and
at the cost of the art of command. If one imagine
this instinct increasing to its greatest extent, com-
manders and independent individuals will finally
be lacking altogether; or they will suffer inwardly
from a bad conscience, and will have to impose a
deception on themselves in the first place in order
to be able to command : just as if they also were
only obeying. This condition of things actually


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
I21
exists in Europe at present–I call it the moral
hypocrisy of the commanding class. They know
no other way of protecting themselves from their
bad conscience than by playing the rôle of executors
of older and higher orders (of predecessors, of the
constitution, of justice, of the law, or of God him-
self), or they even justify themselves by maxims
from the current opinions of the herd, as "first
servants of their people," or "instruments of the
public weal. ” On the other hand, the gregarious
European man nowadays assumes an air as if he
were the only kind of man that is allowable ; he
glorifies his qualities, such as public spirit, kind-
ness, deference, industry, temperance, modesty,
indulgence, sympathy, by virtue of which he is
gentle, endurable, and useful to the herd, as the
peculiarly human virtues. In cases, however, where
it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannot
be dispensed with, attempt after attempt is made
nowadays to replace commanders by the sum-
ming together of clever gregarious men: all repre-
sentative constitutions, for example, are of this
origin. In spite of all, what a blessing, what a
deliverance from a weight becoming unendurable,
is the appearance of an absolute ruler for these
gregarious Europeans of this fact the effect of the
appearance of Napoleon was the last great proof:
the history of the influence of Napoleon is almost
the history of the higher happiness to which the
entire century has attained in its worthiest indi.
viduals and periods.


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122
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
200.
The man of an age of dissolution which mixes
the races with one another, who has the inheritance
of a diversified descent in his body--that is to say,
contrary, and often not only contrary, instincts and
standards of value, which struggle with one another
and are seldom at peace—such a man of late
culture and broken lights, will, on an average, be
a weak man. His fundamental desire is that the
war which is in him should come to an end ;
happiness appears to him in the character of a
soothing medicine and mode of thought (for
instance, Epicurean or Christian); it is above all
things the happiness of repose, of undisturbedness,
of repletion, of final unity—it is the Sabbath of
Sabbaths,” to use the expression of the holy
rhetorician, St Augustine, who was himself such
a man. -Should, however, the contrariety and con-
flict in such natures operate as an additional incen-
tive and stimulus to life and if, on the other hand,
in addition to their powerful and irreconcilable
instincts, they have also inherited and indoctrin-
ated into them a proper mastery and subtlety for
carrying on the conflict with themselves (that is to
say, the faculty of self-control and self-deception),
there then arise those marvellously incompre-
hensible, and inexplicable beings, those enigmatical
men, predestined for conquering and circumventing
others, the finest examples of which are Alcibiades
and Cæsar (with whom I should like to associate
the first of Europeans according to my taste, the
Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second), and amongst


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
123
artists, perhaps Lionardo da Vinci. They appear
precisely in the same periods when that weaker
type, with its longing for repose, comes to the
front; the two types are complementary to each
other, and spring from the same causes.
201.
As long as the utility which determines moral
estimates is only gregarious utility, as long as the
preservation of the community is only kept in view,
and the immoral is sought precisely and exclusively
in what seems dangerous to the maintenance of
the community, there can be no "morality of love
to one's neighbour. " Granted even that there is
already a little constant exercise of consideration,
sympathy, fairness, gentleness, and mutual assist-
ance, granted that even in this condition of society
all those instincts are already active which are
latterly distinguished by honourable names as
“virtues," and eventually almost coincide with the
conception “morality”: in that period they do not
as yet belong to the domain of moral valuations-
they are still ultra-moral. A sympathetic action,
for instance, is neither called good nor bad, moral
nor immoral, in the best period of the Romans;
and should it be praised, a sort of resentful disdain
is compatible with this praise, even at the best,
directly the sympathetic action is compared with
one which contributes to the welfare of the whole,
to the res publica. After all,“ love to our neighbour
is always a secondary matter, partly conventional
and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our fear
of our neighbour. After the fabric of society seems
(


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124
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
on the whole established and secured against
external dangers, it is this fear of our neighbour
which again creates new perspectives of moral valua-
tion. Certain strong and dangerous instincts, such
as the love of enterprise, foolhardiness, revengeful-
ness, astuteness, rapacity, and love of power, which
up till then had not only to be honoured from the
point of view of general utility-under other names,
of course, than those here given-but had to be
fostered and cultivated (because they were per-
petually required in the common danger against
the common enemies), are now felt in their danger-
ousness to be doubly strong-when the outlets for
them are lacking—and are gradually branded as
immoral and given over to calumny. The contrary
instincts and inclinations now attain to moral
honour; the gregarious instinct gradually draws
its conclusions. How much or how little danger-
ousness to the community or to equality is con-
tained in an opinion, a condition, an emotion, a
disposition, or an endowment—that is now the
moral perspective; There again fear is the mother
of morals. It is by the loftiest and strongest
instincts, when they break out passionately and
carry the individual far above and beyond the
average, and the low level of the gregarious
conscience, that the self-reliance of the community
is destroyed; its belief in itself, its backbone, as it
were, breaks ; consequently these very instincts
will be most branded and defamed. The lofty
independent spirituality, the will to stand alone,
and even the cogent reason, are felt to be dangers;
everything that elevates the individual above the


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
125
>
herd, and is a source of fear to the neighbour, is
henceforth called evil; the tolerant, unassuming,
self-adapting, self-equalising disposition, the medi-
ocrity of desires, attains to moral distinction and
honour. Finally, under very peaceful circum-
stances, there is always less opportunity and
necessity for training the feelings to severity and
rigour; and now every form of severity, even in
justice, begins to disturb the conscience; a lofty
and rigorous nobleness and self - responsibility
almost offends, and awakens distrust, “the lamb,"
and still more “the sheep,” wins respect. There
is a point of diseased mellowness and effeminacy
in the history of society, at which society itself
takes the part of him who injures it, the part of
the criminal, and does so, in fact, seriously and
honestly. To punish, appears to it to be somehow
unfair—it is certain that the idea of “punishment
and “the obligation to punish" are then painful
and alarming to people. “Is it not sufficient if the
criminal be rendered harmless? Why should we
still punish? Punishment itself is terrible! ”—with
these questions gregarious morality, the morality
of fear, draws its ultimate conclusion.
could at all do away with danger, the cause of fear,
one would have done away with this morality at
the same time, it would no longer be necessary, it
would not consider itself any longer necessary! -
Whoever examines the conscience of the present-
day European, will always elicit the same impera-
tive from its thousand moral folds and hidden
recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the herd:
we wish that some time or other there may be
If one


## p. 126 (#148) ############################################

126
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
nothing more to fear! ” Some time or other--the
will and the way thereto is nowadays called
progress” all over Europe,
66
202.
"
Let us at once say again what we have already said
a hundred times, for people's ears nowadays are un-
willing to hear such truths-our truths. We know
well enough how offensively it sounds when any one
plainly, and without metaphor, counts man amongst
the animals; but it will be accounted to us almost
a crime, that it is precisely in respect to men of
“modern ideas” that we have constantly applied
the terms "herd,” “herd-instincts," and such like
expressions. What avail is it?
We cannot do
otherwise, for it is precisely here that our new in-
sight is. We have found that in all the principal
moral judgments Europe has become unanimous,
including likewise the countries where European
influence prevails : in Europe people evidently know
what Socrates thought he did not know, and what
the famous serpent of old once promised to teach
—they "know" to-day what is good and evil. It
must then sound hard and be distasteful to the ear,
when we always insist that that which here thinks it
knows, that which here glorifies itself with praise
and blame, and calls itself good, is the instinct of
the herding human animal: the instinct which has
come and is ever coming more and more to the
front, to preponderance and supremacy over other
instincts, according to the increasing physiological
approximation and resemblance of which it is the


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
127
a
:
symptom. Morality in Europe at present is herding-
animal morality; and therefore, as we understand
the matter, only one kind of human morality,
beside which, before which, and after which many
other moralities, and above all higher moralities,
are or should be possible. Against such a "possi-
bility," against such a “should be," however, this
morality defends itself with all its strength; it says
obstinately and inexorably: "I am morality itself
and nothing else is morality! ” Indeed, with the
help of a religion which has humoured and flattered
the sublimest desires of the herding-animal, things
have reached such a point that we always find a
more visible expression of this morality even in
political and social arrangements : the democratic
movement is the inheritance of the Christian move-
ment. That its tempo, however, is much too slow
and sleepy for the more impatient ones, for those
who are sick and distracted by the herding-instinct,
is indicated by the increasingly furious howling,
and always less disguised teeth-gnashing of the
anarchist dogs, who are now roving through the
highways of European culture. Apparently in
opposition to the peacefully industrious democrats
and Revolution-ideologues, and still more so to the
awkward philosophasters and fraternity-visionaries
who call themselves Socialists and want a “free
society," those are really at one with them all in
their thorough and instinctive hostility to every
form of society other than that of the autonomous
herd (to the extent even of repudiating the notions
“master” and “servant"-ni dieu ni maltre, says a
socialist formula); at one in their tenacious oppo-
"


## p. 128 (#150) ############################################

128
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
>
sition to every special claim, every special right
and privilege (this means ultimately opposition to
every right, for when all are equal, no one needs
"rights” any longer); at one in their distrust of
punitive justice (as though it were a violation of
the weak, unfair to the necessary consequences of
all former society); but equally at one in their
religion of sympathy, in their compassion for all
that feels, lives, and suffers (down to the very
animals, up even to “God”—the extravagance of
“sympathy for God” belongs to a democratic age);
altogether at one in the cry and impatience of their
sympathy, in their deadly hatred of suffering gener-
ally, in their almost feminine incapacity for witness-
ing it or allowing it; at one in their involuntary
beglooming and heart-softening, under the spell of
which Europe seems to be threatened with a new
Buddhism ; at one in their belief in the morality of
mutual sympathy, as though it were morality in
itself, the climax, the attained climax of mankind,
the sole hope of the future, the consolation of the
present, the great discharge from all the obliga-
tions of the past; altogether at one in their belief
in the community as the deliverer, in the herd, and
therefore in “themselves. ”
203.
We, who hold a different belief-we, who regard
the democratic movement, not only as a degenerat-
ing form of political organisation, but as equiva-
lent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as
involving his mediocrising and depreciation : where


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
129
"
have we to fix our hopes? In new philosophers-
there is no other alternative: in minds strong and
original enough to initiate opposite estimates of
value, to transvalue and invert “eternal valua-
tions”; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in
the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the
knots which will compel millenniums to take new
paths. To teach man the future of humanity as
his will, as depending on human will, and to make
preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and col-
lective attempts in rearing and educating, in order
thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of folly
and chance which has hitherto gone by the name
of “history" (the folly of the "greatest number"
is only its last form)—for that purpose a new
type of philosophers and commanders will some
time or other be needed, at the very idea of
which everything that has existed in the way of
occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look
pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders
hovers before our eyes is it lawful for me to
say it aloud, ye free spirits ? The conditions which
one would partly have to create and partly utilise
for their genesis; the presumptive methods and
tests by virtue of which a soul should grow up
to such an elevation and power as to feel a con-
straint to these tasks; a transvaluation of values,
under the new pressure and hammer of which a
conscience should be steeled and a heart trans-
formed into brass, so as to bear the weight of such
responsibility; and on the other hand the necessity
for such leaders, the dreadful danger that they
might be lacking, or miscarry and degenerate :--
I


## p. 130 (#152) ############################################

130
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
these are our real anxieties and glooms, ye know it
well, ye free spirits! these are the heavy distant
thoughts and storms which sweep across the heaven
of our life. There are few pains so grievous as to
have seen, divined, or experienced how an excep-
tional man has missed his way and deteriorated;
but he who has the rare eye for the universal
danger of "man" himself deteriorating, he who like
us has recognised the extraordinary fortuitousness
which has hitherto played its game in respect to
the future of mankind—a game in which neither
the hand, nor even a "finger of God” has partici-
pated ! -he who divines the fate that is hidden
under the idiotic unwariness and blind confidence
of “modern ideas," and still more under the whole
of Christo-European morality - suffers from an
anguish with which no other is to be compared.
He sees at a glance all that could still be made out
of man through a favourable accumulation and
augmentation of human powers and arrangements;
he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction
how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possi-
bilities, and how often in the past the type man
has stood in presence of mysterious decisions
and new paths :-he knows still better from his
painfulest recollections on what wretched obstacles
promising developments of the highest rank have
hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk,
and become contemptible. The universal degener-
acy of mankind to the level of the
man of the
future"-as idealised by the socialistic fools and
shallow - pates - this degeneracy and dwarfing of
man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they


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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
131
call it, to a man of “free society"), this brutalising
of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims,
is undoubtedly possible! He who has thought out
this possibility to its ultimate conclusion knows
another loathing unknown to the rest of mankind-
and perhaps also a new mission !


## p. 132 (#154) ############################################

(
IT


## p. 133 (#155) ############################################

SIXTH CHAPTER
WE SCHOLARS.
204.
At the risk that moralising may also reveal itself
here as that which it has always been-namely,
resolutely montrer ses plaies, according to Balzac
I would venture to protest against an improper and
injurious alteration of rank, which quite unnoticed,
and as if with the best conscience, threatens nowa-
days to establish itself in the relations of science
and philosophy. I mean to say that one must have
the right out of one's own experience-experience,
as it seems to me, always implies unfortunate ex-
perience? —to treat of such an important question of
rank, so as not to speak of colour like the blind, or
against science like women and artists ("Ah! this
dreadful science ! ” sigh their instinct and their
shame, “it always finds things out! "). The declara-
tion of independence of the scientific man, his
emancipation from philosophy, is one of the subtler
after-effects of democratic organisation and dis-
organisation : the self-glorification and self-con-
ceitedness of the learned man is now everywhere in
full bloom, and in its best springtime-which does
not mean to imply that in this case self-praise
smells sweetly. Here also the instinct of the popu-
r


## p. 134 (#156) ############################################

134
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
»
lace cries, “Freedom from all masters! ” and after
science has, with the happiest results, resisted
theology, whose "handmaid " it had been too long,
it now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion
to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to
play the “master”—what am I saying! to play the
philosopher on its own account. My memory—the
memory of a scientific man, if you please ! -teems
with the naïvetés of insolence which I have heard
about philosophy and philosophers from young
naturalists and old physicians (not to mention the
most cultured and most conceited of all learned
men, the philologists and schoolmasters, who are
both the one and the other by profession). On one
occasion it was the specialist and the Jack Horner
who instinctively stood on the defensive against all
synthetic tasks and capabilities; at another time it
was the industrious worker who had got a scent of
otiuni and refined luxuriousness in the internal
economy of the philosopher, and felt himself
aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occa-
sion it was the colour-blindness of the utilitarian,
who sees nothing in philosophy but a series of
refuted systems, and an extravagant expenditure
which “does nobody any good. ” At another time
the fear of disguised mysticism and of the boundary-
adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous, at
another time the disregard of individual philoso-
phers, which had involuntarily extended to disre-
gard of philosophy generally. In fine, I found most
frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy
in young scholars, the evil after-effect of some parti-
cular philosopher, to whom on the whole obedience


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WE SCHOLARS.
135
had been foresworn, without, however, the spell of
his scornful estimates of other philosophers having
been got rid of-the result being a general ill-will
to all philosophy. (Such seems to me, for instance,
the after-effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern
Germany: by his unintelligent rage against Hegel,
he has succeeded in severing the whole of the last
generation of Germans from its connection with
German culture, which culture, all things considered,
has been an elevation and a divining refinement of
the historical sense ; but precisely at this point
Schopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive, and
un-German to the extent of ingeniousness. ) On the
whole, speaking generally, it may just have been the
humanness, all-too-humanness of the modern philo-
sophers themselves, in short, their contemptible-
ness, which has injured most radically the reverence
for philosophy and opened the doors to the instinct
of the populace. Let it but be acknowledged to
what an extent our modern world diverges from
the whole style of the world of Heraclites, Plato,
Empedocles, and whatever else all the "royal and
magnificent anchorites of the spirit” were called;
and with what justice an honest man of science
may feel himself of a better family and origin, in
view of such representatives of philosophy, who,
owing to the fashion of the present day, are just as
much aloft as they are down below-in Germany,
for instance, the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist
Eugen Dühring and the amalgamist Eduard von
Hartmann. It is especially the sight of those
hotch - potch philosophers, who call themselves
realists,” or “positivists,” which is calculated to
66


## p. 136 (#158) ############################################

136
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
implant a dangerous distrust in the soul of a young
and ambitious scholar : those philosophers, at the
best, are themselves but scholars and specialists,
that is very evident !
All of them are persons
who have been vanquished and brought back again
under the dominion of science, who at one time or
another claimed more from themselves, without
having a right to the "more" and its responsibility
-and who now, creditably, rancorously and vindic-
tively, represent in word and deed, disbelief in the
master-task and supremacy of philosophy. After
all, how could it be otherwise ? Science flourishes
nowadays and has the good conscience clearly
visible on its countenance; while that to which the
entire modern philosophy has gradually sunk, the
remnant of philosophy of the present day, excites
distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity.
Philosophy reduced to a "theory of knowledge,” no
more in fact than a diffident science of epochs and
doctrine of forbearance: a philosophy that never
even gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously
denies itself the right to enter—that is philosophy
in its last throes, an end, an agony, something that
awakens pity. How could such a philosophy--
rule 1
205.
The dangers that beset the evolution of the philo-
sopher are, in fact, so manifold nowadays, that one
might doubt whether this fruit could still come to
maturity. The extent and towering structure of
the sciences have increased enormously, and there-
with also the probability that the philosopher will


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WE SCHOLARS.
137
grow tired even as a learner, or will attach himself
somewhere and “specialise”: so that he will no
longer attain to his elevation, that is to say, to his
superspection, his circumspection, and his despection.
Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his
maturity and strength is past; or when he is im-
paired, coarsened, and deteriorated, so that his view,
his general estimate of things, is no longer of much
importance. It is perhaps just the refinement of
his intellectual conscience that makes him hesitate
and linger on the way; he dreads the temptation
to become a dilettante, a millepede, a milleantenna ;
he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has
lost his self-respect no longer commands, no longer
leads; unless he should aspire to become a great
play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and spiritual
rat-catcher-in short, a misleader.
, misleader. This is in the
last instance a question of taste, if it has not really
been a question of conscience. To double once
more the philosopher's difficulties, there is also the
fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a Yea
or Nay, not concerning science, but concerning life
and the worth of life-he learns unwillingly to
believe that it is his right and even his duty to
obtain this verdict, and he has to seek his way to
the right and the belief only through the most ex-
tensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying) ex-
periences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumb-
founded. In fact, the philosopher has long been
mistaken and confused by the multitude, either
with the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with
the religiously elevated, desensualised, desecularised
visionary and God-intoxicated man; and even yet
1


## p. 138 (#160) ############################################

138
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
(
1
>
when one hears anybody praised, because he lives
“wisely,” or “as a philosopher," it hardly means
anything more than “prudently and apart. ” Wis-
dom: that seems to the populace to be a kind of
flight, a means and artifice for withdrawing success-
fully from a bad game; but the genuine philosopher
-does it not seem so to us, my friends ? -lives
unphilosophically” and “unwisely," above all,
imprudently, and feels the obligation and burden of
a hundred attempts and temptations of life-he
risks himself constantly, he plays this bad game.
206.
In relation to the genius, that is to say, a being
who either engenders or produces—both words under-
stood in their fullest sense--the man of learning, the
scientific average man, has always something of the
old maid about him ; for, like her, he is not con-
versant with the two principal functions of man.
To both, of course, to the scholar and to the old
maid, one concedes respectability, as if by way of
indemnification—in these cases one emphasises the
respectability—and yet, in the compulsion of this
concession, one has the same admixture of vexation.
Let us examine more closely: what is the scientific
man? Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with
commonplace virtues : that is to say, a non-ruling,
non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type of
man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to
rank and file, equability and moderation in capacity
and requirement; he has the instinct for people like
himself, and for that which they require—for
instance: the portion of independence and green


## p. 139 (#161) ############################################

WE SCHOLARS.
139
:
meadow without which there is no rest from labour,
the claim to honour and consideration (which first
and foremost presupposes recognition and recognisa-
bility), the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual
ratification of his value and usefulness, with which
the inward distrust which lies at the bottom of the
heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals,
has again and again to be overcome. The learned
man, as is appropriate, has also maladies and
faults of an ignoble kind : he is full of petty envy,
and has a lynx-eye for the weak points in those
natures to whose elevations he cannot attain. He
is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go,
but does not flow; and precisely before the man of
the great current he stands all the colder and more
reserved—his eye is then like a smooth and irre-
sponsive lake, which is no longer moved by rapture
or sympathy. The worst and most dangerous thing
of which a scholar is capable results from the instinct
of mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of
mediocrity, which labours instinctively for the
destruction of the exceptional man, and endeavours
to break—or still better, to relax-every bent bow.
To relax, of course, with consideration, and naturally
with an indulgent hand-to relax with confiding
sympathy : that is the real art of Jesuitism, which
has always understood how to introduce itself as
the religion of sympathy.
a
207
However gratefully one may welcome the objective
spirit—and who has not been sick to death of all
subjectivity and its confounded ipsissimosity ! -in


## p. 140 (#162) ############################################

140
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
the end, however, one must learn caution even with
regard to one's gratitude, and put a stop to the
exaggeration with which the unselfing and de-
personalising of the spirit has recently been cele-
brated, as if it were the goal in itself, as if it were
salvation and glorification - as is especially ac-
customed to happen in the pessimist school, which
has also in its turn good reasons for paying the
highest honours to “disinterested knowledge. ” The
objective man, who no longer curses and scolds like
the pessimist, the ideal man of learning in whom
the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a
thousand complete and partial failures, is assuredly
one of the most costly instruments that exist, but
his place is in the hand of one who is more power-
ful. He is only an instrument; we may say, he is a
mirror-he is no "purpose in himself. " The objec-
tive man is in truth a mirror : accustomed to pro-
stration before everything that wants to be known,
with such desires only as knowing or “reflecting”
imply-he waits until something comes, and then
expands himself sensitively, so that even the light
footsteps and gliding past of spiritual beings may
not be lost on his surface and film. Whatever
"personality” he still possesses seems to him
accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing ; so
much has he come to regard himself as the passage
and reflection of outside forms and events. He
calls up the recollection of "himself” with an effort,
and not infrequently wrongly; he readily confounds
himself with other persons, he makes mistakes with
regard to his own needs, and here only is he un-
refined and negligent. Perhaps he is troubled about


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WE SCHOLARS.
141
the health, or the pettiness and confined atmosphere
of wife and friend, or the lack of companions and
society-indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his
suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove
away to the more general case, and to-morrow he
knows as little as he knew yesterday how to help
himself. He does not now take himself seriously
and devote time to himself: he is serene, not from
lack of trouble, but from lack of capacity for grasp-
ing and dealing with his trouble. The habitual
complaisance with respect to all objects and ex-
periences, the radiant and impartial hospitality with
which he receives everything that comes his way,
his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous
indifference as to Yea and Nay: alas! there are
enough of cases in which he has to atone for these
virtues of his ! —and as man generally, he becomes
far too easily the caput mortuum of such virtues.
Should one wish love or hatred from him I mean
love and hatred as God, woman, and animal under-
stand them—he will do what he can, and furnish
what he can. But one must not be surprised if it
should not be much-if he should show himself just
at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and
deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is
artificial, and rather un tour de force, a slight ostenta-
tion and exaggeration. He is only genuine so far
as he can be objective ; only in his serene totality
is he still “nature” and “natural. ” His mirroring
and eternally self-polishing soul no longer knows
how to affirm, no longer how to deny ; he does not
command; neither does he destroy. "Je ne méprise
presque rien" he says, with Leibnitz: let us not
-
9)


## p. 142 (#164) ############################################

142
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
overlook nor undervalue the presque ! Neither is
he a model man; he does not go in advance of any
one, nor after either; he places himself generally
too far off to have any reason for espousing the
cause of either good or evil. If he has been so
long confounded with the philosopher, with the
Cæsarean trainer and dictator of civilisation, he has
had far too much honour, and what is most essential
in him has been overlooked-he is an instrument,
something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest
sort of slave, but nothing in himself-presque rien !
The objective man is an instrument, a costly, easily
injured, easily tarnished, measuring instrument and
mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of
and respected ; but he is no goal, no outgoing nor
upgoing, no complementary man in whom the rest
of existence justifies itself, no termination-and
still less a commencement, an engendering, or
primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful, self-centred,
that wants to be master ; but rather only a soft,
inflated, delicate, movable potter's-form, that must
wait for some kind of content and frame to “shape"
itself thereto—for the most part a man without
frame and content, a "selfless
“selfless” man. Consequently,
also, nothing for women, in parenthesi.
208.
When a philosopher nowadays makes known
that he is not a sceptic-I hope that has been
gathered from the foregoing description of the
objective spirit ? —people all hear it impatiently;
they regard him on that account with some appre-
hension, they would like to ask so many, many


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.
questions . . indeed among timid hearers, of
whom there are now so many, he is henceforth said
to be dangerous. With his repudiation of scepti-
cism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-
threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind
of explosive were being tried somewhere, a dyna-
mite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered
Russian nihiline, a pessimism bonæ voluntatis, that
not only denies, means denial, but-dreadful
thought! practises denial. Against this kind of
"good will”—a will to the veritable, actual nega-
tion of life-there is, as is generally acknowledged
nowadays, no better soporific and sedative than
scepticism, the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of
scepticism; and Hamlet himself is now prescribed
by the doctors of the day as an antidote to the
"spirit,” and its underground noises. “Are not
our ears already full of bad sounds ? ” say the
sceptics, as lovers of repose, and almost as a kind
of safety police, “this subterranean Nay is terrible!
Be still, ye pessimistic moles ! ” The sceptic, in
effect, that delicate creature, is far too easily
frightened; his conscience is schooled so as to
start at every Nay, and even at every sharp,
decided Yea, and feels something like a bite thereby.
Yea! and Nay! —they seem to him opposed to
morality; he loves, on the contrary, to make a
festival to his virtue by a noble aloofness, while
perhaps he says with Montaigne: “What do I
know? " Or with Socrates: “I know that I know
nothing. " Or: "Here I do not trust myself, no
door is open to me. ” Or: “Even if the door were
open, why should I enter immediately ? ” Or:
"
>
"


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144
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
“What is the use of any hasty hypotheses ? It
might quite well be in good taste to make no
hypotheses at all. Are you absolutely obliged to
straighten at once what is crooked ? to stuff every
hole with some kind of oakum? Is there not time
enough for that? Has not the time leisure? Oh,
ye demons, can ye not at all wait ? The uncertain
also has its charms, the Sphinx, too, is a Circe, and
Circe, too, was a philosopher”—Thus does a sceptic
console himself; and in truth he needs some con-
solation. For scepticism is the most spiritual
expression of a certain many-sided physiological
temperament, which in ordinary language is called
nervous debility and sickliness; it arises whenever
races or classes which have been long separated,
decisively and suddenly blend with one another.
In the new generation, which has inherited as it
were different standards and valuations in its
blood, everything is disquiet, derangement, doubt,
and tentative; the best powers operate restrictively,
the very virtues prevent each other growing and
becoming strong, equilibrium, ballast, and perpen-
dicular stability are lacking in body and soul.
That, however, which is most diseased and degen-
erated in such nondescripts is the will; they are
no longer familiar with independence of decision,
or the courageous feeling of pleasure in willing-
they are doubtful of the "freedom of the will”
even in their dreams. Our present-day Europe,
the scene of a senseless, precipitate attempt at a
radical blending of classes, and consequently of
races, is therefore sceptical in all its heights and
depths, sometimes exhibiting the mobile scepti-


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cism which springs impatiently and wantonly from
branch to branch, sometimes with gloomy aspect,
like a cloud overcharged with interrogative signs-
and often sick unto death of its will! Paralysis of
will; where do we not find this cripple sitting
nowadays! And yet how bedecked oftentimes !
How seductively ornamented! There are the
finest gala dresses and disguises for this disease ;
and that, for instance, most of what places itself
nowadays in the show-cases as objectiveness,"
“the scientific spirit,” “ l'art pour l'art,” and “pure
voluntary knowledge," is only decked-out scepti-
cism and paralysis of will—I am ready to answer
for this diagnosis of the European disease. —The
disease of the will is diffused unequally over
Europe; it is worst and most varied where civilisa-
tion has longest prevailed; it decreases according
as “the barbarian" still—or again-asserts his
claims under the loose drapery of Western culture.
It is therefore in the France of to-day, as can be
readily disclosed and comprehended, that the will
is most infirm; and France, which has always
had a masterly aptitude for converting even the
portentous crises of its spirit into something
charming and seductive, now manifests emphatic-
ally its intellectual ascendency over Europe, by
being the school and exhibition of all the charms
of scepticism. The power to will and to persist,
moreover, in a resolution, is already somewhat
stronger in Germany, and again in the North of
Germany it is stronger than in Central Germany;
it is considerably stronger in England, Spain, and
Corsica, associated with phlegm in the former and
K


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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
with hard skulls in the latter—not to mention
Italy, which is too young yet to know what it
wants, and must first show whether it can exercise
will; but it is strongest and most surprising of all
in that immense middle empire where Europe as it
were flows back to Asia-namely, in Russia.
There the power to will has been long stored up
and accumulated, there the will—uncertain whether
to be negative or affirmative—waits threateningly to
be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase from our
physicists). Perhaps not only Indian wars and
complications in Asia would be necessary to free
Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal
subversion, the shattering of the empire into small
states, and above all the introduction of parlia-
mentary imbecility, together with the obligation
of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast.
I do not say this as one who desires it; in my
heart I should rather prefer the contrary-I mean
such an increase in the threatening attitude of
Russia, that Europe would have to make up its
mind to become equally threatening-namely, to
acquire one will, by means of a new caste to rule
over the Continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its
own, that can set its aims thousands of years ahead;
so that the long spun-out comedy of its petty-
stateism, and its dynastic as well as its democratic
many-willed-ness, might finally be brought to a
close. The time for petty politics is past; the next
century will bring the struggle for the dominion
of the world—the compulsion to great politics.


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209.
As to how far the new warlike age on which we
Europeans have evidently entered may perhaps
favour the growth of another and stronger kind of
scepticism, I should like to express myself pre-
liminarily merely by a parable, which the lovers of
German history will already understand. That un-
scrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers
(who, as King of Prussia, brought into being a
military and sceptical genius—and therewith, in
reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged
type of German), the problematic, crazy father of
Frederick the Great, had on one point the very
knack and lucky grasp of the genius : he knew
what was then lacking in Germany, the want of
which was a hundred times more alarming and
serious than any lack of culture and social form-his
ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the
anxiety of a profound instinct. Men were lacking;
and he suspected, to his bitterest regret, that his own
son was not man enough. There, however, he de-
ceived himself; butwho would not have deceived him-
self in his place? He saw his son lapsed to atheism,
to the esprit, to the pleasant frivolity of clever
Frenchmen--he saw in the background the great
bloodsucker, the spider scepticism ; he suspected
the incurable wretchedness of a heart no longer
hard enough either for evil or good, and of a broken
will that no longer commands, is no longer able to
command. Meanwhile, however, there grew up in
his son that new kind of harder and more dangerous
scepticism--who knows to what extent it was en-
a


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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
couraged just by his father's hatred and the icy
melancholy of a will condemned to solitude ? —the
scepticism of daring manliness, which is closely
related to the genius for war and conquest, and
made its first entrance into Germany in the person
of the great Frederick. This scepticism despises
and nevertheless grasps ; it undermines and takes
possession; it does not believe, but it does not
thereby lose itself; it gives the spirit a dangerous
liberty, but it keeps strict guard over the heart. It
is the German form of scepticism, which, as a con-
tinued Fredericianism, risen to the highest spiritua-
lity, has kept Europe for a considerable time under
the dominion of the German spirit and its critical
and historical distrust. Owing to the insuperably
strong and tough masculine character of the great
German philologists and historical critics (who,
rightly estimated, were also all of them artists of
destruction and dissolution), a new conception of
the German spirit gradually established itself—in
spite of all Romanticism in music and philosophy,
in which the leaning towards masculine scepticism
was decidedly prominent: whether, for instance, as
fearlessness of gaze, as courage and sternness of the
dissecting hand, or as resolute will to dangerous
voyages of discovery, to spiritualised North Pole
expeditions under barren and dangerous skies.
There may be good grounds for it when warm-
blooded and superficial humanitarians cross them-
selves before this spirit, cet esprit fataliste, ironique,
méphistophélique, as Michelet calls it, not without a
shudder. But if one would realise how characteristic
is this fear of the “man" in the German spirit which
1


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149
awakened Europe out of its "dogmatic slumber,"
let us call to mind the former conception which had
to be overcome by this new one-and that it is not
so very long ago that a masculinised woman could
dare, with unbridled presumption, to recommend
the Germans to the interest of Europe as gentle,
good-hearted, weak-willed, and poetical fools.
Finally, let us only understand profoundly enough
Napoleon's astonishment when he saw Goethe: it
reveals what had been regarded for centuries as the
“German spirit. ” “ Voild un homme! ”-that was
as much as to say :
“ But this is a man! And I
only expected to see a German ! "
210.
Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philo-
sophers of the future, some trait suggests the
question whether they must not perhaps be sceptics
in the last-mentioned sense, something in them
would only be designated thereby—and not they
themselves. With equal right they might call
themselves critics; and assuredly they will be
men of experiments. By the name with which I
ventured to baptize them, I have already expressly
cmphasised their attempting and their love of
attempting : is this because, as critics in body and
soul, they will love to make use of experiments in a
new, and perhaps wider and more dangerous sense?
In their passion for knowledge, will they have to go
further in daring and painful attempts than the sensi-
tive and pampered taste of a democratic century
can approve of ? - There is no doubt: these coming
ones will be least able to dispense with the serious


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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
and not unscrupulous qualities which distinguish
the critic from the sceptic: I mean the certainty as
to standards of worth, the conscious employment
of a unity of method, the wary courage, the standing-
alone, and the capacity for self-responsibility ;
indeed, they will avow among themselves a delight
in denial and dissection, and a certain considerate
cruelty, which knows how to handle the knife surely
and deftly, even when the heart bleeds. They will
be sterner (and perhaps not always towards them-
selves only) than humane people may desire, they
will not deal with the “truth” in order that it may
"please" them, or "elevate" and "inspire" them-
they will rather have little faith in “ truth” bringing
with it such revels for the feelings.