No More Learning

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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? l6S

disease of the nervus sympathicus, or in an ex-
cessive secretion of bile, or in a want of sulphate
and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure
in the bowels which stops the circulation of the
blood, or in degeneration of the ovaries, and so
forth). Ail sufferers have an awful resourcefulness
and ingenuity in finding excuses for painful
emotions ; they even enjoy their jealousy, their
broodings over base actions and apparent injuries,
they burrow through the intestines of their past
and present in their search for obscure mysteries,
wherein they will be at liberty to wallow in a
torturing suspicion and get drunk on the venom
of their own malice — they tear open the oldest
wounds, they make themselves bleed from the
scars which have long been healed, they make
evil-doers out of friends, wife, child, and every-
thing which is nearest to them. " I suffer : it
must be somebody's fault" — so thinks every sick
'sheep. But his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says
to him, " Quite so, my sheep, it must be the
fault of some one ; but thou thyself art that some
one, it is all the fault of thyself alone — it is the
foMtt of thyself alone against thyself" : that is. bold
enough, false enough, but one thing is at least
attained ; thereby, as I have said, the course of
resentment is — diverted.

1 6.

You can see now what the remedial instinct of
life has at least tried to effect, according to my
conception, through the ascetic priest, and the



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1 66 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

purpose for which he had to employ a temporary
, tyranny of such paradoxical and anomalous ideas
as " guilt," " sin," " sinfulness," " corruption,"
I " damnation. " What was done was to make the
; sick harmless up to a certain point, to destroy the
'. incurable by means of themselves, to turn the
'•milder cases severely on to themselves, to give
t their resentment a backward direction ("man
needs but one thing"), and to exploit similarly
the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view to
self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is
obvious that there can be no question at all in
the case of a " medication " of this kind, a mere
emotional medication, of any real healing of the
sick in the physiological sense ; it cannot even
for a moment be asserted that in this connection
the instinct of life has taken healing as its goal
and purpose. tOn the one hand, a kind of con-
gestion and organisation of the sick (the word
" Church" is the most popular name for it)jj on the
other, a kind of provisional safeguarding of the
comparatively healthy, the more perfect specimens,
the cleavage of a rift between healthy and sick —
for a long time that was all ! and it was much ! it
was very much !

I am proceeding, as you see, in this essay,
from an hypothesis which, as far as such readers
as I want are concerned, does not require to be
proved ; the hypothesis that " sinfulness " in man
is not an actual fact, but rather merely the inter-
pretation of a fact, of a physiological discomfort,
— a discomfort seen through a moral religious
perspective which is no longer binding upon us.



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 167

The fact, therefore, that any one feels " guilty,"
" sinful," is certainly not yet any proof that he
is right in feeling so, any more than any one is
healthy simply because he feels healthy Re-
member the celebrated witch-ordeals : in those
days the most acute and humane judges had no
doubt but that in these cases they were confronted
with guilt, — the " witches " themselves had no doubt
on the point, — and yet the guilt was lacking. Let
me elaborate this hypothesis : I do not for a
minute accept the very " pain in the soul " as a
real fact, but only as an explanation (a casual
explanation) of facts that could not hitherto be
precisely formulated; I regard it therefore as
something as yet absolutely in the air and devoid
of scientific cogency — ^just a nice fat word in the
place of a lean note of interrogation. When any
one fails to get rid of his " pain in the soul," the
cause is, speaking crudely, to be found not in his
" soul " but more probably in his stomach (speaking
crudely, I repeat, but by no means wishing there-
by that you should listen to me or understand me
in a crude spirit). A strong and well-constituted
man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds
all included) just as he digests his meats, even
when he has some tough morsels to swallow. If
he fails to " relieve himself" of an experience,
this kind of indigestion is quite as much physio-
logical as the other indigestion — and indeed, in
more ways than one, simply one of the results of
the other. You can adopt such a theory, and yet
entre nous be nevertheless the strongest opponent
of all materialism.



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1 68 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

17.

But is he really 2. physician, this ascetic priest?
We already understand why we are scarcely
allowed to call him a physician, however much
he likes to feel a " saviour " and let himself be
worshipped as a saviour. * It is only the actual
suffering, the discomfort of the sufferer, which he
combats, not its cause, not the actual state of sick-
ness — this needs must constitute our most radical
objection to priestly medication. But just once
put yourself into that point of view, of which the
priests have a monopoly, you will find it hard to
exhaust your amazement, at what from that stand-
point he has completely seen, sought, and found.
The mitigation of suffering, every kind of " con-
soling '' — all this manifests itself as his very genius :
with what ingenuity has he interpreted his mission
of consoler, with what aplomb and audacity has
he chosen weapons necessary for the part. Christi-
anity in particular should be dubbed a great
treasure-chamber of ingenious consolations, — such
a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs
has it accumulated within itself; so many of the
most dangerous and daring expedients has it
hazarded ; with such subtlety, refinement, Oriental
refinement, has it divined what emotional stimu-
lants can conquer, at any rate for a time, the deep
depression, the leaden fatigue, the black melan-
choly of physiological cripples — for, speaking

* In the German text " Heiland. " This has the double
meaning of " healer " and " saviour. " — H. B. S.



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 69

generally, all religions are mainly concerned with
fighting a certain fatigue and heaviness that has
infected everything. You can regard it as prima
facie probable that in certain places in the world
there was almost bound to prevail from time to
time among large masses of the population a
sense of physiological depression, which, however,
owing to their lack of physiological knowledge,
did not appear to their consciousness as such,
so that consequently its " cause " and its cure
can only be sought and essayed in the science
of moral psychology (this, in fact, is my most
general formula for what is generally called a
"religion"^ Such a feeling of depression can
have the most diverse origins ; it may be the
result of the crossing of too heterogeneous races
(or of classes — genealogical and racial differences
are also brought out in the classes : the European
" Weltschmerz," the " Pessimism " of the nineteenth
century, is really the result of an absurd and
sudden class-mixture) ; it may be brought about
by a mistaken emigration — a race falling into
a climate for which its power of adaptation is
insufficient (the case of the Indians in India) ; it
may be the effect of old age and fatigue (the
Parisian pessimism from 1850 onwards); it may
be a wrong diet (the alcoholism of the Middle
Ages, the nonsense of vegetarianism — which,
however, have in their favour the authority of Sir
Christopher in Shakespeare) ; it may be blood-
deterioration, malaria, syphilis, and the like
(German depression after the Thirty Years' War,
which infected half Germany with evil diseases,



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I70 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

and thereby paved the way for German servility,
for German pusillanimity). In such a case there
is invariably recourse to a war on a grand scale
with the feeling of depression ; let us inform our-
selves briefly on its most important practices and
phases (I leave on one side, as stands to reason,
the actual philosophic war against the feeling of
depression which is usually simultaneous — it is
interesting enough, but too absurd, too practically
negligible, too full of cobwebs, too much of a
hole-and-corner affair, especially when pain is
proved to be a mistake, on the naif hypothesis
that pain must needs vanish when the mistake
underlying it is recognised — but behold ! it does
anything but vanish . . . ). That dominant de-
pression is primarily fought by weapons which
reduce the consciousness of life itself to the
lowest degree. Wherever possible, no more wishes,
no more wants ; shun everything which produces
emotion, which produces " blood " (eating no salt,
the fakir hygiene) ; no love ; no hate ; equanimity ;
no revenge ; no getting rich ; no work ; begging ;
as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman
as possible ; as far as the intellect is concerned,
Pascal's principle, " il faut s'abetir. " To put the
result in ethical and psychological language, " self-
annihilation," " sanctification " ; to put it in physio-
logical language, " hypnotism " — the attempt to
find some approximate human equivalent for what
hibernation is for certain animals, for what cestiva-
tion is for many tropical plants, a minimum of
assimilation and metabolism in which life just
manages to subsist without really coming into the



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEAL,S ? 171

consciousness. An amazing amount of human
energy has been devoted to this object — perhaps
uselessly? There cannot be the slightest doubt
but that such sportsmen of " saintliness," in whom
at times nearly every nation has abounded, have
really found a genuine relief from that which
they have combated with such a rigorous training
— in countless cases they really escaped by the
help of their system of hypnotism away from deep
physiological depression ; their method is conse-
quently counted among the most universal ethno-
logical facts. Similarly it is improper to consider
such a plan for starving the physical element and
the desires, as in itself a symptom of insanity (as a
clumsy species of roast-beef-eating " freethinkers "
and Sir Christophers are fain to do) ; all the more
certain is it that their method can and does pave
the way to all kinds of mental disturbances, for
instance, " inner lights " (as far as the case of
the Hesychasts of Mount Athos), auditory and
visual hallucinations, voluptuous ecstasies and
effervescences of sensualism (the history of St.
Theresa). The explanation of such events given
by the victims is always the acme of fanatical
falsehood ; this is self-evident. Note well, however,
the tone of implicit gratitude that rings in the
very will for an explanation of such a character.
The supreme state, salvation itself, that. £nal. goal
of uriiversal hypnosis and peace, is always regarded
by them as the mystery of mysteries, which even
the most supreme symbols are inadequate to ex-
press; it is regarded as an entry arid homecsining
to the essence of things, as a liberation from all



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172 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

illusions, as " knowledge," as " truth," as " heing" as
t an escape from every end, every wish, every action,
i as something even beyond Good and Evil.
I " Good and Evil," quoth the Buddhists, " both are
fetters. The perfect man is master of them both. "
" The done and the undone," quoth the disciple
of the Vedanta, " do him no hurt ; the good and
the evil he shakes from off him, sage that he is;
his kingdom suffers no more from any act ; good
and evil, he goes beyond them both. " — An ab-
solutely Indian conception, as much Brahmanist
as Buddhist. Neither in the Indian nor in the
Christian doctrine is this " Redemption " regarded
as attainable by means of virtue and moral improve-
ment, however high they may place the value of
the hypnotic efficiency of virtue : keep clear on
this point — indeed it simply corresponds with the
facts. The fact that they remained irue on this
point is perhaps to be regarded as the best speci-
men of realism in the three great religions, abso-
lutely soaked as they are with morality, with this
one exception. " For those who know, there is
no duty. " " Redemption is not attained by the
acquisition of virtues ; for redemption consists
in being one with Brahman, who is incapable of
acquiring any perfection ; and equally little does
it consist in the giving up of faults, for the
Brahman, unity with whom is what constitutes
redemption, is eternally pure" (these passages
are from the Commentaries of the Cankara, quoted
from the first real European expert of the Indian
philosophy, my friend Paul Deussen). We wish,
therefore, to pay honour to the idea of " redemp-



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 173

tion " in the great religions, but it is somewhat
hard to remain serious in view of the appreciation
meted out to the deep sleep by these exhausted
pessimists who are too tired even to dream — to
the deep sleep considered, that is, as already a
fusing into Brahman, as the attainment of tn^
unio mystica with God. " When he has com-
pletely gone to sleep," says on this point the
oldest and most venerable " script," " and come to
perfect rest, so that he sees no more any vision,
then, oh dear one, is he united with Being, he has
entered into his own self — encircled by the Self
with its absolute knowledge, he has no more any
consciousness of that which is without or of that
which is within. Day and night cross not these
bridges, nor age, nor death, nor suffering, nor
good deeds, nor evil deeds. " " In deep sleep,"
say similarly the believers in this deepest of the
three great religions, " does the soul lift itself from
out this body of ours, enters the supreme light and
stands out therein in its true shape : therein is it
the supreme spirit itself, which travels about, while
it jests and plays and enjoys itself, whether with
women, or chariots, or friends ; there do its thoughts
turn no more back to this appanage of a body, to
which the ' prana ' (the vital breath) is harnessed
like a beast of burden to the cart. " None the
less we will take care to realise (as we did when
discussing " redemption ") that in spite of all its
pomps of Oriental extravagance this simply ex-
presses the same criticism on life as did the clear,
cold, Greekly cold, but yet suffering Epicurus.
jThe hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peace



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THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

of deepest sleep, anaesthesia in short — that is what
passes with the sufferers and the absolutely de-
pressed for, forsooth, their suprenne good, their
value of values ; that is what must be treasured
by them as something positive, be felt by them as
the essence of the Positive (according to the same
logic of the feelings, nothingness is in all pessi-
mistic religions called God). j>

Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and
susceptibility to pain, which presupposes some-
what rare powers, especially courage, contempt of
opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than
another and certainly easier training which is
tried against states of depression. I mean
mechanical activity. It is indisputable that a
suffering existence can be thereby considerably
alleviated. This fact is called to-day by the
somewhat ignoble title of the " Blessing of work. "
The alleviation consists in the attention of the

jTh

sufferer being absol utely diverted from suffe ring, in
' the incessant monopoly of the consciousness by

action, so t hat~"conseq uently there is little Toom ^
iieftrfbr suffering — for narro w is it, this chamb er of^
"h uman conscTousness ! | Mechanical__actiYily_aod

its corollaries, such as~absolute regularityjpunctili-

ous iinreasoning obedience^jthe _chroiiic^routijie^
life, ^Ee^Tomplete occupation of time,_acertain
iTBerty to be ijmpersonal, nay, a jrainingjn " fm-"
pefsorialitYj^ jelfjiorgetfulness. " inc uria sui " — with
~whaLt thoroughness and expert subtlety have all



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 17S

these methods been exploited by the ascetic priest
in his war with pain !

When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower
orders, slaves, or prisoners (or women, who for the
most part are a compound of labour-slave and
prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little
with the names, and to rechristen, so as to make
them see henceforth a benefit, a comparative
happiness, in objects which they hated — the slave's
discontent with his lot was at any rate not invented
by the priests. An even more popular means of
fighting depression is the ordaining of a little joy,
which is easily accessible and can be made into a
rule; this medication is frequently used in con-
junction with the former ones. The most frequent]
form in vjiich joy is prescribed as a cure is the
joy in producing joy (such as doing good, giving
presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting,
praising, treating with distinction) ; together with
the prescription of " love your neighbo ur. " | The
ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most
cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation
of the strongest and most life-assertive impulse —
the Will for Power. The happiness involved in
the " smallest superiority " which is the con-
comitant of all benefiting, helping, extolling,
making one's self useful, is the most ample consola-
tion, of which, if they are well-advised, physio-
logical distortions avail themselves : in other
cases they hurt each other, and naturally in obedi-
ence to the same radical instinct. An investiga-
tion of the origin of Christianity in the Roman
world shows that co-operative unions for poverty,



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176 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

sickness, and burial sprang up in the lowest stratum
of contemporary society, amid which the chief
antidote against depression, the little joy experi-
enced in mutual benefits, was deliberately fostered.
Perchance this was then a novelty, a real dis-
covery ? This conjuring up of the will for co-opera-
tion, for family organisation, for communal life,
for " Ccenacula" necessarily brought the Will
for Power, which had been already infinitesimally
stimulated, to a new and much fuller manifesta-
tion. The herd organisation is a genuine advance
and triumph in the fight with depression. With
the growth of the community there matures even
to individuals a new interest, which often enough
takes him out of the more personal element in his
discontent, his aversion to himself, the ," despectus
sui" of Geulincx. f^U sick and diseased people
strive instinctively after a herd-organisation, out
of a desire to shake off their sense of oppressive
discomfort and weakness ; the ascetic priest
divines this instinct and promotes it ; wherever a
herd exists it is the instinct of weakness which
has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the
priests /which has organised it, for, mark this: by
an equally natural necessity the strong strive as
much for isolation as the weak for union : when
the former bind themselves it is only with a view
to an aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction
of their Will for Power, much against the wishes
of their individual consciences ; the latter, on the
contrary, range themselves together with positive
delight in such a muster — their instincts are as
much gratified thereby as the instincts of the



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 77

"born master" (that is, the solitary beast-of-prey
species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the
quick by organisatio n. | There is always lurking
beneath every oligarchy — such is the universal
lesson of history — the desire for tyranny. Every
oligarchy is continually quivering with the tension
of the effort required by each individual to keep
mastering this desire. (Such, e. g. , was the Greek ;
Plato shows it in a hundred places, Plato, who
knew his contemporaries — and himself^

19.

I The methods employed by the ascetic priest,
which we have already learnt to know — stifling
of all vitality, mechanical energy, the little joy,
and especially the method of " love your neigh-
bour" herd-organisation, the awaking of the
communal consciousness of power, to such a pitch
that the individual's disgust with himself becomes
eclipsed by his delight in the thriving of the
community — these are, according to modern
standards, the " innocent " methods employed in
the fight with depressi on ;^ let us turn now to
the more interesting topic of the '' guilty "
methods. The guilty methods spell one thing :
to produce emotional excess — which is used as the
most efficacious anaesthetic against their depress-
ing state of protracted pain ; this is why priestly
ingenuity has proved quite inexhaustible in
thinking out this one question : " By what means
can you produce an emotional excess ? " This
sounds harsh : it is manifest that it would sound
M



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178 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

nicer and would grate on one's ears less, if I
were to say, forsooth : " The ascetic priest made
use at all times of the enthusiasm contained in
all strong emotions. " But what is the good of
still soothing the delicate ears of our modern
effeminates ? What is the good on our side of
budging one single inch before their verbal
Pecksniffianism. For us psychologists to do that
would be at once practical Pecksniffianism, apart
from the fact of its nauseating us. The good
taste (others might say, the righteousness) of a
psychologist nowadays consists, if at all, in com-
bating the shamefully moralised language with
which all modern judgments on men and things
are smeared. For, do not deceive yourself: what
constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls
and of modern books is not the lying, but the
innocence which is part and parcel of their intel-
lectual dishonesty. The inevitable running up
against this "innocence" everywhere constitutes
the most distasteful feature of the somewhat
dangerous business which a modern psychologist
has to undertake: it is a part of our great
danger — it is a road which perhaps leads us
straight to the great nausea — I know quite well
the purpose which all modern books will and can
serve (granted that they last, which I am not
afraid of, and granted equally that there is to
be at some future day a generation with a more
rigid, more severe, and healthier taste) — the
function which all modernity generally will serve
with posterity: that of an emetic, — and this by
reason of its moral sugariness and falsity, its



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 79

ingrained feminism, which it is pleased to call
" Idealism," and at any rate believes to be
idealism. Our cultured men of to-day, our
" good " men, do not lie — that is true ; but it does
not redound to their honour ! The real lie, the
genuine, determined, " honest " lie (on whose
value you can listen to Plato) would prove too
tough and strong an article for them by a long
way ; it would be asking them to do what people
have been forbidden to ask them to do, to open
their eyes to their own selves, and to learn to
distinguish between " true " and " false " in their
own selves. The dishonest lie alone suits them :
everything which feels a good man is perfectly
incapable of any other attitude to anything than
that of a dishonourable liar, an absolute liar, but
none the less an innocent liar, a blue-eyed liar,
a virtuous liar. These " good men," they are
all now tainted with morality through and
through, and as far as honour is concerned they
are disgraced and corrupted for all eternity.
Which of them could stand a further truth '■ about
man"? or, put more tangibly, which of them
could put up with a true biography? One or
two instances : Lord Byron composed a most
personal autobiography, but Thomas Moore was
" too good " for it ; he burnt his friend's papers.
Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer's executor, is said
to have done the same ; for Schopenhauer as well
wrote much about himself, and perhaps also
«(g"amj^ himself (ei? eavrov). The virtuous Ameri-
can Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, suddenly
stopped his work : he had come to a certain



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l8o THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

point in that honourable and simple life, and
could stand it no longer. Moral : What sensible
man nowadays writes one honest word about
himself? He must already belong to the Order
of Holy Foolhardiness. We are promised an
autobiography of Richard Wagner ; who doubts
but that it would be a clever autobiography?
Think, forsooth, of the grotesque horror which
the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in Germany
with his inconceivably square and harmless
pictures of the German Reformation ; what
wouldn't people do if some real psychologist
were to tell us about a genuine Luther, tell us,
not with the moralist simplicity of a country
priest or the sweet and cautious modesty of a
Protestant historian, but say with the fearlessness
of a Taine, that springs from force of character
and not from a prudent toleration of force. (The
Germans, by the bye, have already produced the
classic specimen of this toleration — they may
well be allowed to reckon him as one of their
own, in Leopold Ranke, that bom classical
advocate of every causa fortior, that cleverest
of all the clever opportunists. )

20.

But you will soon understand me. — Putting it
shortly, t here is reason enough, is t here n ot, for
JUS___ps. yd^o^sts nowadays never getting^~a^^

from a, certain . . . miatrust of out own selves^^

Probably even we ourselves are still " too good "
for our ^ work • probably, whatever contempt we



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? (l8 1

feel for this popular craze^ for morality, we
7wsRlves_jfe_perhaps none the iess-its victims^
v rsy\~3. nd slay ggj_. prQbaMy_Jt_jnfects_even us.
Of what was that diplomat warning us, when
he said to his colleagues : " Let us especially mis-
trust our first impulses, gentlemen ! tkey are
almost always gvod" t So should nowadays every
psychologist talk to his colleagues. And thus
we get back to our problem, which in point of
fact does require from us a certain severity, a
certain mistrust especially against " first impulses. "
The ascetic ideal in the__servj££. — qf—p-mfected
^emotio nal excess T- — hewho remembers the previous
essay will already partially anticipate the essential
meaning compressed into these above ten words.
The thorough unswitching of t hgJruman_§Qul,_thg
plungi ng of it into terror, frost, ardour, rapture,
so as to free"Tt^"as through ~som^JightnIi^]JEock7
from all the smallness and pettiness of unhappi-
ness, depression, and discomfort : what waysHead"
to ^w_goal? AnJ which ol these ways"does~s6
inost safely ? . . . At b ottom all great emotio ns
^^MgJhisjiQHgcjpro vided that they find a sudde n
o utlet — emotions such as rage, fear, lust, revenge,
hope, triumph, despair, cruelty ^ and, in sooth, the
ascetic priest has had no scruples in taking into
his service the whole pack of hounds that rage
in the human kennel, unleashing now these and
now those, with the same constant object of
waking man out of his protracted melancholy,
of chasing away, at any rate for a time, his dull
pain, his shrinking misery, but always under the
sanction of a religious^ interpretation and justifica-



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1 82 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

tion. This emotional excess has subsequently to
be paid /or~ this is self-evident — it makes "The
tlt^more in^:^^^ana~'EEeretore tEis~Tan3~~oT remedy
for pain is~ according to moderrT stanHarcls^a
" guilty ^nong . "

The dictates of fairness, however, require that
we should all the more emphasise the fact that
this remedy is applied with a good conscience,
that the ascetic priest has prescribed it in the
most implicit belief in its utility and indispens-
ability; — often enough almost collapsing in the
presence of the pain which he created ;— that we
should similarly emphasise the fact that the
violent physiological revenges of such excesses,
even perhaps the mental disturbances, are not
absolutely inconsistent with the general tenor of
this kind of remedy ; this remedy, which, as we
have shown previously, is not for the purpose of
healing diseases, but of fighting the unhappiness
of that depression, the alleviation and deadening
of which was its object. The object was conse-
quently achieved. /The keynote by which the
ascetic priest was enabled to get every kind of
agonising and ecstatic music to play on the
fibres of the human soul — was, as every one knows,
the exploitation of the feeling of "guilt. "] I
have already indicated in the pf'evious essay the
origin of this feeling — as a piece of animal
psychology and nothing else : we were thus con-
fronted with the feeling of " guilt," in its crude
state, as it were. It was first in the hands of
the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of
guilt, that it took shape — oh, what a shape !



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 83

r ^Sin " — for that is the name of the new priestly
versi on of the anim al " bad-conscience " (the in-
verted cruelty) — has up to the present been the
Efreate st event in the history of the diseased soul :
in " sin " we find the most perilous and fatal master-
piece of religious interpretation,^ \ Imagine_^ man,
s uffering from himself, some way or other but at any
r ate phy siologically, perhaps like an animal shut
up in a cage, norcleaFas to the why and the
wheretore ! Tmagme him iri~TTis"desire for reasons
—reasons briiig'' relief — in his desire again for
re medies , n^xqtics at last, consulting one, who
knows even the occult — ^an3^~see71o~an3~^beH51(f,Tie
gets a hmt trom his wizard, the ascetic priest, hi^
first hint on the " cause " of his trouble : he iriiisl
search tor it in himself. , in his guiltiness, in a piece
"oTthe past, he must understand his very suffering
as a state ojT^unishmentT^Y^ hzs, heard, he has
understood, has the unfortunate : he is now in the
plight of a hen round which a line has been drawn.
He never gets out of the circle of lines. The sick
man has been turned into " the sinner " — and now
for a few thousand years we never get away from
the sight of this new invalid, of " a sinner " — shall
we ever get away from it ? — wherever we just look,
everywhere the hypnotic gaze of the sinner always
moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt,
the only cause of suffering) ; everywhere the evil
conscience, this ^^ greuliche thier" * to use Luther's
language ; everywhere rumination over the past, a
distorted view of action, the gaze of the "green-eyed

* " Horrible beast. "



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184 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

monster" turned on all action; everywhere thewilful
misunderstanding of suffering, its transvaluation
into feelings of guilt, fear of retribution ; every-
where the scourge, the hairy shirt, the starving body,
contrition ; everywhere the sinner breaking himself
on the ghastly wheel of a restless and morbidly
eager conscience ; leverywhere mute pain, extreme
fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the spasms of
an unknown happiness, the shriek for "r edemp tion," J
In point of fact, thanks to this system of procedure,
the old depression, dullnesSj andjati^ue were abso-
l. uSiv:. £Qnq5e£e3ZI ife itsel f became verfj ntsrestius
again, awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing,
~Bi5rnraway, exhausted and yet not tired — ^^suSiwas"
the figure cut by man, "the siriner,"'wKo was initi-
ated into these mysteries. This grand old wizard
of an ascetic priest fighting with depression — he
had clearly triumphed, Ms kingdom had come :
men no longer grumbled at pain, men panted after
pain : '^_^oy£_ ^ciin ! M ore pain ! " So for
centuries on end shrieked the demand of his
acolytes and initiates. Every emotional excess
which hurt ; eve rything which_ broke,~b vertfirew/
crushe d. trans porTgdj^avished ; the mystery of
tortu re-cham bers, the i nggaiutyloILheirjtgglf — ^all
this was now discovered, divined, exploited, all
this was at the service of the wizard, all this served
to promote the triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal.
" My kingdom is not of this world" quoth he, both
at the beginning and at the end : had he still the
right to talk like that? — Goethe has maintained
that there are only thirty-six tragic situations : we
would infer from that, did we not know otherwise



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 85

that Goethe was no ascetic priest. He — knows
more.

21.

So far as all this kind of priestly medicine-
mongering, the " guilty " kind, is concerned, every
word of criticism is superfluous. As for the sug-
gestion that emotional excess of the type, which
in these cases the ascetic priest is fain to order to
his sick patients (under the most sacred euphemism,
as is obvious, and equally impregnated with the
sanctity of his purpose)' has ever really been of
use to any sick man, who, forsooth, would feel in-
clined to maintain a proposition of that character ?
At any rate, some understanding should, be come
to as to the expression " be of use. " Ilf you only
wish to express that such a system of treatment
has reformed man, I do not gainsay it : I merely
add that " reformed " conveys to my mind as
much as "tamed," "weakened," "discouraged," "re-
fined," " daintified," " emasculated " (and thus it
means almost as much as injured^ But when you
have to deal principally with sick, depressed, and
oppressed creatures, such a system, even granted
that it makes the ill " better," under any circum-
stances also makes them more ill : ask the mad-
doctors the invariable result of a methodical appli-
cation of penance-torture, contrition, and salvation
ecstasies. Similarly ask history, fin every body
politic where the ascetic priest has established
this treatment of the sick, disease has on every
occasion spread with sinister speed throughout



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1 86 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

its length and breadthj What was always the
"result"? A shattered nervous system, in addition
to the existing malady, and this in the greatest
as in the smallest, in the individuals as in masses.
We find, in consequence of the penance and re-
demption-training, awful epileptic epidemics, the
greatest known to history, such as the St. Vitus and
St. John dances of the Middle Ages ; we find, as
another phase of its after-effect, frightful mutila-
tions and chronic depressions, by means of which
the temperament of a nation or a city (Geneva,
Bale) is turned once for all into its opposite ; —
this training, again, is responsible for the witch-
hysteria, a phenomenon analogous to somnambul-
ism (eight great epidemic outbursts of this only
between i 564 and 1605) ; — we find similarly in its
train those delirious death-cravings of large masses,
whose awful "shriek," "evvivala morte! " was heard
over the whole of Europe, now interrupted by volup-
tuous variations and anon by a rage for destruc-
tion, just as the same emotional sequence with the
same intermittencies and sudden changes is now
universally observed in every case where the ascetic
doctrine of sin scores once more a great success
(religious neurosis appears as a manifestation of the
devil,thereis no doubt of it. What is it? QucBritur).
I Speaking generally, the ascetic ideal and its sublime-
moral cult, this most ingenious, reckless, and peril-
ous systematisation of all methods of emotional
excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable
fashion on the whole history of man, and unfortun-
ately not only on historyj^ I was scarcely able to
put forward any other element which attacked the



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 87

and race efficiency of Europeans with more
destructive power than did this ideal ; it can be
dubbed, without exaggeration, the real fatality in the
history of the health of the European man. At the
most you can merely draw a comparison with the
specifically German influence : I mean the alcohol
poisoning of Europe, which up to the present has
kept pace exactly with the political and racial pre-
dominance of the Germans (where they inoculated
their blood, there too did they inoculate their vice).
Third in the series comes syphilis — magno sed
proximo intervallo.

22.

The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained
the mastery, corrupted the health of the soul, he
has consequently also corrupted taste in artibus
et litteris — he corrupts it still. " Consequently ? "
I hope I shall be granted this " consequently " ;
at any rate, I am not going to prove it first. One
solitary indication, it concerns the arch-book of
Christian literature, their real model, their " book-
in-itself. " In the very midst of the Grseco-Roman
splendour, which was also a splendour of books,
face to face with an ancient world of writings
which had not yet fallen into decay and ruin, at a
time when certain books were still to be read, to
possess which we would give nowadays half our
literature in exchange, at that time the simplicity
and vanity of Christian agitators (they are gener-
ally called Fathers of the Church) dared to declare :
"We too have our classical literature, we do not
need that of the Greeks" — and meanwhile they



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1 88 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

proudly pointed to their books of legends, their
letters of apostles, and their apologetic tractlets,
just in the same way that to-day the English
" Salvation Army " wages its fight against Shake-
speare and other " heathens " with an analogous
literature. You already guess it, I do not like the
" New Testament " ; it almost upsets me that I
stand so isolated in my taste so far as concerns
this valued, this over-valued Scripture ; the taste of
two thousand years is against me ; but what
boots it ! " Here I stand ! I cannot help my-
self " * — I have the courage of my bad taste. The
Old Testament — yes, that is something quite
different, all honour to the Old Testament ! I find
therein great men, an heroic landscape, and one
of the rarest phenomena in the world, the in-
comparable naivete of the strong heart; further
still, I find a people. In the New, on the contrary,
just a hostel of petty sects, pure rococo of the
soul, twisting angles and fancy touches, nothing but
conventicle air, not to forget an occasional whiff of
bucolic sweetness which appertains to the epoch
{and the Roman province) and is less Jewish than
Hellenistic. Meekness and braggadocio cheek by
jowl ; an emotional garrulousness that almost
deafens ; passionate hysteria, but no passion ; pain-
ful pantomime ; here manifestly every one lacked
good breeding. How dare any one make so much
fuss about their little failings as do these pious
little fellows ! No one cares a straw about it — let

* " Here I stand ! I cannot help myself. God help me !
Amen" — were Luther's words before the Reichstag at
Worms. — H. B. S.



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 89

alone God. Finally they actually wish to have
"the crown of eternal life," do all these little
provincials ! In return for what, in sooth ? For
what end? It is impossible to carry insolence
any further. An immortal Peter ! who could
stand him ! They have an ambition which makes
one laugh: the thing dishes up cut and dried his
most personal life, his melancholies, and common-
or-garden troubles, as though the Universe itself
were under an obligation to bother itself about
them, for it never gets tired of wrapping up God
Himself in the petty misery in which its troubles
are involved. And how about the atrocious form of
this chronic hobnobbing with God ? This Jewish,
and not merely Jewish, slobbering and clawing
importunacy towards God ! — There exist little
despised " heathen nations " in East Asia, from
whom these first Christians could have learnt
something worth learning, a little tact in worship-
ing ; these nations do not allow themselves to say
aloud the name of their God. This seems to me
delicate enough, it is certain that it is too delicate,
and not only for primitive Christians ; to take a
contrast, just recollect Luther, the most " eloquent "
and insolent peasant whom Germany has had,
think of the Lutherian tone, in which he felt quite
the most in his element during his tite-d-tites
with God. Luther's opposition to the mediaeval
saints of the Church (in particular, against " that
devil's hog, the Pope "), was, there is no doubt, at
bottom the opposition of a boor, who was offended
at the good etiquette of the Church, that worship-
etiquette of the sacerdotal code, which only admits



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1 90 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

to the holy of holies the initiated and the silent,
and shuts the door against the boors. These
definitely were not to be allowed a hearing in this
planet — but Luther the peasant simply wished it
otherwise ; as it was, it was not German enough for
him. He personally wished himself to talk direct,
to talk personally, to talk " straight from the
shoulder" with his God. Well, he's done it.
The ascetic ideal, you will guess, was at no time
and in no place, a school of good taste, still less of
good manners — at the best it was a school for
sacerdotal manners : that is, it contains in itself
something which was a deadly enemy to all good
manners. Lack of measure, opposition to measure
it is itself a " non plus ultra"

23-

The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health
and taste, there are also third, fourth, fifth, and
sixth things which it has corrupted — I shall take
care not to go through the catalogue (when should
I get to the end ? ). I have here to expose not
what this ideal effected ; but rather only what it
means, on what it is based, what lies lurking
behind it and under it, that of which it is the pro-
visional expression, an obscure expression bristling
with queries and misunderstandings. And with
this object only in view I presumed " not to spare "
my readers a glance at the awfulness of its results,
a glance at its fatal results ; I did this to prepare
them for the final and most awful aspect presented
to me by the question of the significance of that



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 191

ideal. Vyh^t is the significance pX. . the„ power of
that idealjJbe_monstjousness_ofjts ^ower ? Why-
is it given such an amount of scope? Why is
not a better resistance offered against it ? The
ascetic ideal expresses one will : where is the
opposition will, in which an opposition ideal
expresses itself? The ascetic ideal has an aim- —
this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other
interests of human life should, measured by its
standard, appear petty and narrow ; it explains
epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end ;
it forbids any other interpretation, any other end ;
it repudiates, denies, affirms, confirms, only in the
sense of its own interpretation (and was there ever
a more thoroughly elaborated system of interpre-
tation ? ) ; it subjects itself to no power, rather does
it believe In its own precedence over everjr"power
^^^^it~believes that nothing~p6w^firl exists "in-the
world that has not first got to receive~fronr""it""~a
meaningj_a_j;ight_to^^^exist,_a^ Y^^, as ^eing an
i nstrument in its w ork,_a-. . wa-V-and_means^tQ_iis,
end, to one end. Where is the counte rpart o{
tS 5~"complete sys te m of will, end, and interpreta-
t ion ? Why is the counterpart lacking WKere
is the other " one aim " ? But I am told it is not
lacking, tnat not "only has it fought a long and
fortunate fight with that ideal, but that further ^
has _ already won the mastery o ver th at ideal in
a1] ^sppntialc ■ Ipf- ni^r w^^"le_iiiodern scjmce^ attest
_this — that modern science, which, like th e genuin e
reality-philosophy which i t is, manifestly believes
in it self alone, manifestlyT ias the courage to"l3e
itSelf, the will to be itself, and has got oiTwell



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192 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

enough without God, another world, and nega-
tive virtues. " —
WltR~all their noisy agitator-babble, however,
they effect nothing with me ; these trumpeters of
reality are bad musicians, their voices do not come
from the deeps with sufificient audibility, t hey are no t

I the mouthpie ce for the ab YSS,ofscientificiaiQwledge

I -—for to-day scientific k52^? ^S5_i^ ^" abyss — the
word " science," in such trumpeter-niquths, is a pros"
titution, an abuse^ an impertinence. The truth is

\ j usT tTie~oppositg ^from what is maintainej _jn~lEe"
asceHcjEiory. . Scienc e ha s to-day absolutely no
beli ef in itself, let alone m aiTTdeal superior" to
It self, a nd wherever science still consistTorpassidiT7

/ love, ardour, suffering, it is not the opposition to
that ascetic ideal, but rather the incarnation of its

\ latest and noblest form. Does that ring strange ?
'There are enough brave and decent working people,
even among the learned men of to-day, who like
their little corner, and who, just because they are
pleased so to do, become at times indecently loud
with their demand, that people to-day should be
quite content, especially in science — for in science
there is so much useful work to do. I do not deny
it — -there is nothing I should like less than to spoil
the delight of these honest workers in their handi-
work ; for I rejoice in their work. But the fact of
science requiring hard work, the fact of its having
contented workers, is absolutely no proof of science
as a whole having to-day one end, one will, one
ideal, one passion for a great faith ; the contrary, as
I have said, is the case. When science is not the
latest manifestation of the ascetic ideal — but these



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 93

are cases of such rarity, selectness, and exquisite-
ness, as to preclude the general judgment being
affected thereby — science is a hiding-place for every
kind of cowardice, disbelief, remorse, despectio sui,
bad conscience — it is the very anxiety that springs
from having no ideal, the suffering from the lack
of a great love, the discontent with an enforced
moderation. Oh, what does all science not cover
to-day? How mucETara nvTate. does itlnoF try
Jfo^oxer ? The diligence of our best scholars, their
senseless industry, their burning the candle of their
brain at both ends — their very mastery in their
handiwork — how often is the real meaning of all
that to prevent themselves conTiiiumg to see a
cer tain thing ? Science as a self-a naesthetic : do you
Unow that? You wound them — every one who
consorts with scholars experiences this — you wound
them sometimes to the quick through just a harm-
less word ; when you think you are paying them a
compliment you embitter them beyond all bounds,
simply because you didn't have {he finesse to infer
the real kind of customers you had to tackle,
the sufferer kind (who won't own up even to
themselves what they really are), the dazed and
iinrni;ifjriniis ki'nij jyho have on ly one' fear — coming
to consciousness.

-^ 24

And now look at the other side, at those rare
cases, of which I spoke, the most supreme idealists
to be found nowadays among philosophers and
scholars. Have we, perchance, found in them the
sought-for opponents of the ascetic ideal, its anti-
N



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194 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

idealists} In fact, they believe themselves to be
such, these " unbelievers " (for they are all of them
that) : It seeriisThat this ideaj s their last remn ant
of faith, tEe~i3ea of being opponents of this ideal,
so earnest are they on this subject, so passionate
in word and gesture; — but does it follow that
what they believe must necessarily be truel We
" knowers " have grown by degrees suspicious of
all kinds of believers, our suspicion has step by
step habituated us to draw just the opposite con-
clusions to what people have drawn before ; that
is to say, wherever the strength of a belief is parti-
cularly prominent to draw the conclusion of the
difficulty of proving what is believed, the conclusion
of its actual improbability. f We do no t again deny
that " faith produces salvation " Vfor~iMf^very
'^«/5«Jwe. _d^'3enyJ:hat faith /roz'4J_anytHingjJ^~
a . strong faith, which produces ha ppiness, causes
suspicion of the object of that faith, it does no t
"establish ~its " truth," it does establish a certain
prob ability of — illusiou^ What is now the~posi-
tion in these cases ? These solitaries and deniers
of to-day; these fanatics in one thing, in their claim
to intellectual cleanness ; these hard, stern, contin-
ent, heroic spirits, who constitute the glory of our
time ; all these pale atheists, anti- Christians, im-
moralists. Nihilists; these sceptics, " ephectics," and
" hectics " of the intellect (in a certain sense they
are the latter, both collectively and individually);
these supreme idealists of knowledge, in whom
alone nowadays the intellectual conscience dwells
and is alive — in point of fact they believe them-
selves as far away as possible from the ascetic



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 195

ideal, do these " free, very free spirits " : and yet,
if I may reveal what they themselves cannot see
— for they stand too near themselves : this ideal is
simply their ideal, they represent it nowadays and
perhaps no one else, they themselves are its most
spiritualised product, its most advanced picket of
skirmishers and scouts, its most insidious delicate
and elusive form of seduction. — If I am in any
way a reader of riddles, then I will be one with this
sentence : for some time past there have been no
free spirits ; for they siiir~BeUeve in WufK. ~ When
the Christian TS'usaSers in the East came into
collision with that invincible order of assassins,
that order of free spirits /ar excellence, whose lowest
grade lives in a state of discipline such as no order
of monks has ever attained, then in some way or
other they managed to get an inkling of that
symbol and tally-word, that was reserved for the
highest grade alone as their secretum, " Nothing is"
true, everything is allowed," — in sooth, that was
freedom of thought, thereby was taking leave of the
very belief in truth. Has indeed any European,
any Christian freethinker, ever yet wandered into
this proposition and its labyrinthine consequences ?
Does he know from experience the Minotauros of
this den. — I doubt it — nay, I know otherwise.
Nothing is more really alien to these " mono-
fanatics," these so-called " free spirits," than freedom
and unfettering in that sense ; in no respect are
they more closely tied, the absolute fanaticism of
their belief in truth is unparalleled. I know all this
perhaps too much from experience at close quarters
— that dignified philosophic abstinence to which



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196 ^ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

-subelief like that binds its adherents, that stoicism
of the intellect, which eventually vetoes negation
as rigidly as it does affirmation, that wish for
standing still in front of the actual, the factum
brutum, that fatalism in "fetitsfaits" [ce petit faital-
ism, as I call it), in which French Science now
attempts a kind of moral superiority over German,
this renunciation of interpretation generally (that
is, of forcing, doctoring, abridging, omitting, sup-
pressing, inventing, falsifying, and all the other
essential attributes of interpretation) — all this, con-
sidered broadly, expresses the asceticism of virtue,
quite as efficiently as does any repudiation of the
senses (it is at bottom only a modus of that repudia-
tion). But what forces it intq^that unqualified
will_for truth is iihe faith in the ascetic ideal itself,
even_thougH"Tf "taKe~tEeTorm of its unconscious
iniperatives,-— make lio"' mistake about it, it is~tEe~
faith, I repeat, in a ■metaphysica l valu ej^nintrinsic^
j^"ueortruth, of a cKaracter which is only w^ranted_
and guaranteed in this ideal (it stands and falls with
thartd"eal)7~ Judged strictly, there does not exist
a science without its " hypotheses," the thought of
such a science is inconceivable, illogical : a philo-
sophy, a faith, must always exist first to enable
science to gain thereby a direction, a meaning, a
limit and method, a ri£:ht to existence. (He who
holds a contrary opinion on the subject — ^he, for ex-
ample, who takes it upon himself to establish philo-
sophy " upon a strictly scientific basis " — has first
got to " turn up-side-down " not only philosophy
but also truth itself — the gravest insult which
could possibly be offered to two such respectable



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 197

females ! ) Yes, there is no doubt about it — and
here I quote my Joyful Wisdom, cp. Book V. Aph.
344 : " The tnan who is truthful in that daring
and extreme f ashion, which is the presupposition
of the faith in science, asserts thereby a different'
-world fro m that of life, na ture, and history ; and In
soTaTas he asserts the existence ofjhat^different
world, come, must he notsinularly repudiate jts
counterpartT^rs" world , oar w orld? Th e belief on
whi ch our faith in scien ce is based has remained to
this ^y a me taphysjcaLbelief — even we knowers
of to-day, we godless foes of metaphysics, we too
take our fire from that conflagration which was
kindled by a thousand-year-old faith, from that
C hristian belief, which was also Plato's benef7tHe
beli ef that God is truth, that truth is Siyine. . . .
But what if this belief becomes more and more in-
credible, what if nothing proves itself tob^ divine,
unless It be error, blindness, lies-— -what if God
Himse^^roved_Himself_. to- be^our oldest lie? " —
It is necessary to stop at this point and to consider
the situation carefully. Science itself now needs a
j ustification (which is not for a minute to say that
there is such a justification). Turn in this context
to the most ancient and the most modern philo-
sophers : they all fail to realise the extent of the
need of a justification on the part of the Will for
Truth — here is a gap in every philosophy — what
is it caused by ? Because up to the present the
ascetic ideal dominated all philosophy, because
Truth was fixed as Being, as God, as the Supreme
Court of Appeal, because Truth was not allowed
to be a problem. Do you understand this



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(igS \ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

" allowed " ? 1 F rom the minute that the belief in
the God of t he ascetic ideal is repudiatedTth ere "
exTsts a ite w^odlem : the problem of the vaTueoT^^
truth. [ The Will for Truth needed a critiq ^ue^^^r'
us "define b y these words-QUt-DisoLlask^iJhe value
of truth is tentatively toJbe_ccMedin_^uestionr7y~:^
' (If this seems too laconically expressed, I recom-
mend the reader to peruse again that passage from
the Joyful Wisdom which bears the title, " How far
we also are still pious," Aph. 344, and best of all
the whole fifth book of that work, cis well as the
Preface to The Dawn of Day! )

25.

No ! You can't get round me with science, when
I search for the natural antagonists of the ascetic
ideal, when I put the question : " Where is the op-
posed will in which the opponent ideal expresses
itself? " Science is not, by a long way, independent
enough to fulfil this function ; in every depar tment
sci ence needs an id eal valu e, a p o wer whi ch creates
values,_aild. Jn__whose service it can believe in iSelf
— scie nce itself never creates value s. Its relation
to the aacet ic ideal js ^ot in itself antagOTiiSc";
speaking roughly, it r ather repre sents the progress-
ive force in the^ inner _ evolution of thaTTdealT
Tested more exactly, its o ppositi on and antagori^
isHL-are--XQncgnjM_XLQt_mtL_the ideal JtsafTlJat
only with that ideal's niitwnrks^'ts^ outer^arb, its
masquerade, with itstemporary harciening,stiffenm"g,
and_dogmatising;;-it_makes-the- life jE^the ideal
f ree on c e more, while it repudiates its superficial



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS

elements. These two phenomena, science and'lEe'
ascetic ideal, both rest on the same basis — I have
already made this clear — t he bas is,! s ay, oft he same
over-appreciation of truth (more accurately the
sSme beliet m tbElmpossibtlity of valuing and of
criticis ing tru5E J, and consequently they are neces-
sarily allies, so that, in the event of their being
attacked, they must always be attacked and called
into question together. A valuation of the ascetic
ideal inevita bly entails a~vaIu "ation '61 sclen'ce~as
wettT'lose no time in seeing this clearly, and be
sharp" to catch it ! { Art, I am speaking provision-
ally, for I will treat it on some other occasion in
greater detail, — art, I repeat, in which lying is
sanctified and the will for deception has good con-
science on its side, is much more fundamentally
opposed to the^ascetic Heal than is science : Plato's
instinctlelt this — Plato, the greatest enemy of art
which Europe has produced up to the present.
Plato versus Homer, that is the complete, the true
antagoni smr^on the oiTe ji de7Tfie~wHo le4iearted
" transcendental," t he great defamer of life ; on the
ot her, its involuntary panegyrist, t he golden nature.
An artistic subservi ence to the servj ce ofthe ascetic"
ideal is consequently the most absolute artistic
corrupt ion that there can be, though~unfortunaterv^
it is one of the most frequent phases, for nothing
is more corruptible than an artis t. ') Considered
physiologically, moreover, science rests on the samci
b asis as does the ascet ic ideal : a certain impovensh~\
mep,t of life is the pre suppositioEToTtEeTatter as of \
the former — add, frijjidity. of the emotions, slacken-
mg ol the tempo , the substitution of dialectic for



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200 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

instinct, seriousness impressed on mien and gesture
(^HTiousneis, that^most unmistakable sign of strenu-~"
ous metabolism, of struggling, toiling life). Con-
sider the periods in a nation in which the learned
man comes into prominence ; they are the periods
of exhaustion, often of sunset, of decay — the
effervescing strength, the confidence in life, the con-
fidence in the future are no more. The preponder-
ence of the mandarins never signifies any good, any
more than does the advent of democracy, or arbi-
tration instead of war, equal rights for women, the
religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of
declining life. (Science handled as a problem ! what
is the meaning of science ? — upon this point the
Preface to the Birth of Tragedy^ No ! this
" modern _ science " — mark you this we ll-— is at
times the best ally for the ascetic ideal, 3nd_S2Ee
very'Teason that_itJs_jLlk_ally^jvhicr^_mostjjn-
coriscious, most automatic, most secret, and most
subterranean ! They have been playing into each
'Other's" hands up to the present, have these "poor
in spirit" and the scientific opponents of that
ideal (take care, by the bye, not to think that
these opponents are the antithesis of this ideal,
that they are the rich in spirit — that they are
not; I have called them the hectic in spirit).
As for these celebrated victories of science;
there is no doubt that they are victories — but
victories over what ? There was not for a single
minute any victory among their list over the
ascetic ideal, rather was it made stronger, that is
to say, more elusive, more abstract, more insidious,
from the fact that a wall, an outwork, that had got



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 20I

built on to the main fortress and disfigured its
appearance, should from time to time be ruthlessly
destroyed and broken down by science. Does any
one seriously suggest that the downfall of the theo-
logical astronomy signified the downfall of that
ideal ? — Has, perchance, man grown /ess in need of
a transcendental solution of his riddle of existence,
because since that time this existence has become
more random, casual, and superfluous in the visible
order of the universe? Has there not been since
the time of Copernicus an unbroken progress in the
self-belittling of man and his will for belittling
himself? Alas, his belief in his dignity, his unique-
ness, his irreplaceableness in the scheme of existence,
is gone — he has become animal, literal, unqualified,
and unmitigated animal, he who in his earlier belief
was almost God (" child of God," " demi-God ").
Since Copernicus man seems to have fallen on to
a steep plane — he rolls faster and faster away from
the centre — whither ? into nothingness ? into the
"thrilling sensation of his own nothingness"! — Well !
this would be the straight way — to the o/<3f ideal ? —
All science (and by no means only astronomy, with
regard to the humiliating and deteriorating effect of
which Kant has made a remarkable confession, " it
annihilates my own importance"), all science, natural
as much as unnatural — by unnaturaT"! mean'fKe

^^^^^in^5j2iJ[^-? 3=^~"°^'^? :5i^l£f^°'^* tol:alk
man out of his present opinion ofhimself, as_thou^
tHat^oginion hadJBeen nothing Butabizarre piece
of conceit ; you might go so far as to say that science ""
finds its p eculiar pride, its peculiar bitter fcmnlSf"
stoical ataraxia, in preserving man's contempt of



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202 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

himself, that state which it took so much trouble

to bring about, as m an's final apd m ost serious claim
to self-a ppre ciation (rightly so, in point of fact, for
he who despises is always " one who has not for-
gotten how to appreciate "). But does all this
involve anyreal effort to counteract the ascetic ideal ?
Is it really seriously suggested that Kant's victory
over the theological dogmatism about "God,"
" Soul," " Freedom," " Immortality," has damaged
that ideal in any way (as the theologians have
imagined to be the case for a long time past) ? —
And in this connection it does not concern us for
a single minute, if Kant himself intended any such
consummation. It is certain that from the time
of Kant every type of transcendentalist is playing a
winning game — they are emancipated from the
theologians ; what luck ! — he has revealed to them
that secret art, by which they can now pursue their
" heart's desire " on their own responsibility, and
with all the respectability of science. Similarly,
who can grumble at the agnostics, reverers, as
they are, of the unknown and the absolute
mystery, if they now worship their very query as
God? (Xaver Doudan talks somewhere of the
ravages which I'habitude dadmirer rinintelligible
au lieu de rester tout simplement dans Vinconnu
has produced — the ancients, he thinks, must have
been exempt from those ravages. ) Supposing
that everything, " known " to man, lails to
^tisty_iiisj(ifiaEEs,_and^onjffie contrary contradicts"
ancL horrifies them, wh at a divine way out of all
this to be able to look for the responsibility, not
in jhe _iLdesJjdng-! ! -l)ut, ia "Jsnojving 'M;^-" There"~



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 203

knowledge. Consequentl y^^^&xe. _jg__„a
^wHaF'irn'ovel elegantia syllogismi\ what
a triumph for the ascetic ideal !