No More Learning

tion; in exceptional cases he worships himself as
that standard. A species has no other alternative
than to say “yea” to itself alone, in this way. Its
,
lowest instinct, the instinct of self-preservation and
self-expansion, still radiates in such sublimities.
Man imagines the world itself to be overflowing
with beauty,—he forgets that he is the cause of it
all. He alone has endowed it with beauty. Alas!
and only with human all-too-human beauty! Truth
to tell man reflects himself in things, he thinks
everything beautiful that throws his own image back
at him. The judgment“ beautiful” is the “vanity
of his species. ” A little demon of suspicion
may well whisper into the sceptic's ear: is the
world really beautified simply because man thinks it
beautiful? He has only humanised it—that is all.
But nothing, absolutely nothing proves to us that it
is precisely man who is the proper model of beauty.
Who knows what sort of figure he would cut in the
eyes of a higher judge of taste? He might seem
a little outré ? perhaps even somewhat amusing ?
perhaps a trifle arbitrary? "O Dionysus, thou divine
one, why dost thou pull mine ears? ” Ariadne asks
on one occasion of her philosophic lover, during one
of those famous conversations on the island of
Naxos. “I find a sort of humour in thine ears,
Ariadne: why are they not a little longer ? ”
20
Nothing is beautiful; man alone is beautiful : all
æsthetic rests on this piece of ingenuousness, it is the
first axiom of this science. And now let us straight-
way add the second to it: nothing is ugly save the
.


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76
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
degenerate man,—within these two first principles
the realm of astheticjudgmentsisconfined. From the
physiological standpoint, everything ugly weakens
and depresses man. It reminds him of decay, danger,
impotence; he literally loses strength in its presence.
The effect of ugliness may be gauged by the dyna-
mometer. Whenever man's spirits are downcast, it
is a sign that he scents the proximity of something
“ugly. ” His feeling of power, his will to power,
his courage
and his pride— these things collapse at
the sight of what is ugly, and rise at the sight of
what is beautiful. In both cases an inference is
drawn; the premises to which are stored with extra
ordinary abundance in the instincts. Ugliness is
understood to signify a hint and a symptom of de-
generation: that which reminds us however remotely
of degeneracy, impels us to the judgment "ugly. ”
Every sign of exhaustion, of gravity, of age, of
fatigue; every kind of constraint, such as cramp, or
paralysis ; and above all the smells, colours and
forms associated with decomposition and putrefaç-
tion, however much they may have been attenuated
into symbols,-all these things provoke the same
reaction which is the judgment“ ugly. ” A certain
hatred expresses itself here: what is it that man
hates? Without a doubt it is the decline of his
type. In this regard his hatred springs from the
deepest instincts of the race: there is horror, caution,
profundity and far-reaching vision in this hatred,
it is the most profound hatred that exists. On its
account alone Art is profound.


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 77
21
Schopenhauer. —Schopenhauer, the last German
who is to be reckoned with (who is a European
event like Goethe, Hegel, or Heinrich Heine, and
who is not merely local, national), is for a psycholo-
gist a case of the first rank: I mean as a malicious
though masterly attempt to enlist on the side of a
general nihilistic depreciation of life, the very forces
which are opposed to such a movement,—that is to
say, the great self-affirming powers of the “will to
live," the exuberant forms of life itself. He inter-
preted Art, heroism, genius, beauty, great sympathy,
knowledge, the will to truth, and tragedy, one after
the other, as the results of the denial, or of the need
of the denial, of the “will ”—the greatest forgery,
Christianity always excepted, which history has to
show. Examined more carefully, he is in this respect
simply the heir of the Christian interpretation ; ex-
cept that he knew how to approve in a Christian
fashion (i. e. , nihilistically) even of the great facts of
human culture, which Christianity completely re-
pudiates. (He approved of them as paths to “salva-
tion,” as preliminary stages to "salvation,” as appe-
tisers calculated to arouse the desire for “salvation. ")
22
Let me point to one singleinstance. Schopenhauer
speaks of beauty with melancholy ardour,—why in
sooth does he do this? Because in beauty he sees
a bridge on which one can travel further, or which
stimulates one's desire to travel further. According
to him it constitutes a momentary emancipation from


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78
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
the “will ”-it lures to eternal salvation. He values
it more particularly as a deliverance from the“ burn-
ing core of the will ” which is sexuality,-in beauty
he recognises the negation of the procreative instinct.
Singular Saint! Some one contradicts thee; I fear
it is Nature. Why is there beauty of tone, colour,
aroma, and of rhythmic movement in Nature at all ?
What is it forces beauty to the fore? Fortunately,
too, a certain philosopher contradicts him. No less
an authority than the divine Plato himself (thus
does Schopenhauer call him), upholds another pro-
position : that all beauty lures to procreation,—that
this precisely is the chief characteristic of its effect,
from the lowest sensuality to the highest spirituality.
a
23
Plato goes further.
further. With an innocence for which
a man must be Greek and not “Christian," he
says
that there would be no such thing as Platonic philo-
sophy if there were not such beautiful boys in
Athens : it was the sight of them alone that set the
soul of the philosopher reeling with erotic passion,
and allowed it no rest until it had planted the seeds
of all lofty things in a soil so beautiful. He was also
a singular saint ! -One scarcely believes one's ears,
even supposing one believes Plato. At least one
realises that philosophy was pursued differently in
Athens; above all, publicly. Nothing is less Greek
than the cobweb-spinning with concepts by an
anchorite, amor intellectualis dei after the fashion
of Spinoza. Philosophy according to Plato's style
.
might be defined rather as an erotic competition,
as a continuation and a spiritualisation of the old


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 79
agonal gymnastics and the conditions on which they
depend. . . . What was the ultimate outcome of
this philosophic eroticism of Plato's? A new art-
form of the Greek Agon, dialectics. —In opposition
to Schopenhauer and to the honour of Plato, I would
remind you that all the higher culture and literature
of classical France, as well, grew up on the soil of
sexual interests. In all its manifestations you may
look for gallantry, the senses, sexual competition,
and “woman,” and you will not look in vain.
24
L'Art pour l'Art. —The struggle against a pur-
pose in art is always a struggle against the moral
tendency in art, against its subordination to morality.
L'art pour l'art means, “let morality go to the devil! ”
-But even this hostility betrays the preponderating
power of the moral prejudice. If art is deprived of
the purpose of preaching morality and of improving
mankind, it does not by any means follow that art
is absolutely pointless, purposeless, senseless, in
short l'art pour l'art—a snake which bites its own
tail. “No purpose at all is better than a moral
purpose! ”—thus does pure passion speak. A psy-
chologist, on the other hand, puts the question :
what does all art do? does it not praise? does it not
glorify? does it not select? does it not bring things
into prominence? In all this it strengthens or
weakens certain valuations. Is this only a secon-
dary matter? an accident? something in which the
artist's instinct has no share? Or is it not rather the
very prerequisite which enables the artist to accom-


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80
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
plish something? . . . Is his most fundamental
instinct concerned with art? Is it not rather con-
cerned with the purpose of art, with life? with a
certain desirable kind of life? Art is the great
stimulus to life: how can it be regarded as purpose-
less, as pointless, as l'art pour l'art ? —There stil!
remains one question to be answered: Art also re-
veals much that is ugly, hard and questionable in
life,-does it not thus seem to make life intolerable?
-And, as a matter of fact, there have been philo-
sophers who have ascribed this function to art.
According to Schopenhauer's doctrine, the general
object of art was to “ free one from the Will”; and
what he honoured as the great utility of tragedy, was
that it" made people more resigned. ”—But this, as
I have already shown, is a pessimistic standpoint;
it is the “evil eye”: the artist himself must be
appealed to. What is it that the soul of the tragic
artist communicates to others? Is it not precisely
his fearless attitude towards that which is terrible
and questionable? This attitude is in itself a highly
desirable one; he who has once experienced it
honours it above everything else. He communi-
cates it. He must communicate, provided he is an
artist and a genius in the art of communication
A courageous and free spirit, in the presence of a
mighty foe, in the presence of a sublime misfortune,
and face to face with a problem that inspires horror
-this is the triumphant attitude which the tragic
artist selects and which he glorifies. The martial
elements in our soul celebrate their Saturnalia in
tragedy; he who is used to suffering, he who looks
out for suffering, the heroic man, extols his exist-


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE
81
ence by means of tragedy,—to him alone does the
tragic artist offer this cup of sweetest cruelty. -
25
To associate in an amiable fashion with any-
body; to keep the house of one's heart open to all, is
certainly liberal : but it is nothing else. One can
recognise the hearts that are capable of noble hos-
pitality, by their wealth of screened windows and
closed shutters: they keep their best rooms empty.
Whatever for ? —Because they are expecting guests
who are somebodies.
26
We no longer value ourselves sufficiently highly
when we communicate our soul's content. Our real
experiences are not at all garrulous. They could
not communicate themselves even if they wished to.
They are at a loss to find words for such con-
fidences. Those things for which we find words, are
things we have already overcome. In all speech there
lies an element of contempt. Speech, it would seem,
was only invented for average, mediocre and com-
municable things. -Every spoken word proclaims
the speaker vulgarised. —(Extract from a moral code
for deaf-and-dumb people and other philosophers. )
27
“This picture is perfectly beautiful ! ” * The dis-
satisfied and exasperated literary woman with a
desert in her heart and in her belly, listening with
* Quotation from the Libretto of Mozart's “ Magic Flute,"
Act 1, Sc. 3. -TR.
6


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82
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
agonised curiosity every instant to the imperative
which whispers to her from the very depths of her
being : aut liberi, aut libri : the literary woman,
sufficiently educated to understand the voice of
nature, even when nature speaks Latin, and more-
over enough of a peacock and a goose to speak even
French with herself in secret. “Je me verrai, je me
lirai, je m'extasierai et je dirai : Possible, que j'aie
eu tant d'esprit ? ”
.
.
28
The objective ones speak. —“Nothing comes more
easily to us, than to be wise, patient, superior. We
are soaked in the oil of indulgence and of sympathy,
we are absurdly just, we forgive everything. Pre-
cisely on that account we should be severe with our-
selves; for that very reason we ought from time to
time to go in for a little emotion, a little emotional
vice. It may seem bitter to us; and between our-
selves we may even laugh at the figure which it
makes us cut. But what does it matter? We
have no other kind of self-control left. This is our
asceticism, our manner of performing penance. " To
become personal—the virtues of the “impersonal and
objective one. "
29
Extract from a doctor's examination paper. -
What is the task of all higher schooling? ”—To
make man into a machine. “What are the means
employed ? "-He must learn how to be bored.
“How is this achieved ? "-By means of the concept
duty. “What example of duty has he before his
eyes ? ”—The philologist: it is he who teaches people
--


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 83
how to swat. “Who is the perfect man? ”—The
Government official. “Which philosophy furnishes
the highest formula for the Government official ? ”-
Kant's philosophy: the Government official as
thing-in-itself made judge over the Government
official as appearance.
30
The right to Stupidity. —The worn-out worker,
whose breath is slow, whose look is good-natured,
and who lets things slide just as they please : this
typical figure which in this age of labour (and of
“Empire ! ”) is to be met with in all classes of society,
has now begun to appropriate even Art, including
the book, above all the newspaper,—and how much
more so beautiful nature, Italy! This man of the
evening, with his "savage instincts lulled,” as Faust
has it; needs his summer holiday, his sea-baths, his
glacier, his Bayreuth. In such ages Art has the
right to be purely foolish,—as a sort of vacation for
spirit, wit and sentiment. Wagner understood this.
Pure foolishness * is a pick-me-up.
31
Yet another problem of diet. —The means with
which Julius Cæsar preserved himself against sick-
ness and headaches : heavy marches, the simplest
mode of living, uninterrupted sojourns in the open
air, continual hardships,-generally speaking these
are the self-preservative and self-defensive measures
against the extreme vulnerability of those subtle
* This alludes to Parsifal. See my note on p. 96, vol. i. ,
“The Will to Power. "-TR.


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84
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
machines working at the highest pressure, which are
called geniuses.
32
.
The Immoralist speaks. —Nothing is more distaste-
ful to true philosophers than man when he begins
to wish. . . . If they see man only at his deeds; if
they see this bravest, craftiest and most enduring of
animals even inextricably entangled in disaster, how
admirable he then appears to them! They even
encourage him. . . . But true philosophers despise
the man who wishes, as also the “desirable” man-
and all the desiderata and ideals of man in general.
If a philosopher could be a nihilist, he would be one;
for he finds only nonentity behind all human ideals.
Or, not even nonentity, but vileness, absurdity, sick-
ness, cowardice, fatigue and all sorts of dregs from
out the quaffed goblets of his life. . How is it
that man, who as a reality is so estimable, ceases
from deserving respect the moment he begins to
desire ? Must he pay for being so perfect as a
reality ? Must he make up for his deeds, for the
tension of spirit and will which underlies all his
deeds, by an eclipse of his powers in matters of the
imagination and in absurdity ? Hitherto the history
of his desires has been the partie honteuse of man-
kind: one should take care not to read too deeply
in this history. That which justifies man is his
reality,—it will justify him to all eternity. How
much more valuable is a real man than any other
man who is merely the phantom of desires, of dreams
of stinks and of lies ? —than any kind of ideal man?
. . And the ideal man, alone, is what the philo-
sopher cannot abide.


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 85
33
The Natural Value of Egoism. -Selfishness has as
much value as the physiological value of him who
practises it: its worth may be great, or it may be
worthless and contemptible. Every individual may
be classified according to whether he represents the
ascending or the descending line of life. When this
is decided, a canon is obtained by means of which
the value of his selfishness may be determined.
If
he represent the ascending line of life, his value is
of course extraordinary—and for the sake of the
collective life which in him makes one step forward,
the concern about his maintenance, about procuring
his optimum of conditions may even be extreme. The
human unit, the “individual,” as the people and the
philosopher have always understood him, is certainly
an error: he is nothing in himself, no atom, no “link
in the chain,” no mere heritage from the past,—he
represents the whole direct line of mankind up to
his own life. . . . If he represent declining develop-
ment, decay, chronic degeneration, sickness (-ill-
nesses are on the whole already the outcome of
decline, and not the cause thereof), he is of little
worth, and the purest equity would have him take
away as little as possible from those who are lucky
strokes of nature. He is then only a parasite upon
.
34
The Christian and the Anarchist. -When the
anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the decaying strata
of society, raises his voice in splendid indignation
for “right,” “justice,” “equal rights,” he is only
them. . . .


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86
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
a
groaning under the burden of his ignorance, which
cannot understand why he actually suffers,—what
his poverty consists of the poverty of life. An
instinct of causality is active in him: someone must
be responsible for his being so ill at ease. His
“splendid indignation ” alone relieves him some-
what, it is a pleasure for all poor devils to grumble
-it gives them a little intoxicating sensation of
power. The very act of complaining, the mere fact
that one bewails one's lot, may lend such a charm
to life that on that account alone one is ready to
endure it. There is a small dose of revenge in every
lamentation. One casts one's afflictions, and, under
certain circumstances, even one's baseness, in the
teeth of those who are different, as if their condition
were an injustice, an iniquitous privilege. “Since I
am a blackguard you ought to be one too. " It is
upon such reasoning that revolutions are based. -
To bewail one's lot is always despicable: it is always
the outcome of weakness. Whether one ascribes
one's afflictions to others or to one's self, it is all the
The socialist does the former, the Christian,
for instance, does the latter. That which is common
to both attitudes, or rather that which is equally
ignoble in them both, is the fact that somebody
must be to blame if one suffers—in short that the
sufferer drugs himself with the honey of revenge to
allay his anguish. The objects towards which this
lust of vengeance, like a lust of pleasure, are directed,
are purely accidental causes. In all directions the
sufferer finds reasons for cooling his petty passion
for revenge. If he is a Christian, I repeat, he finds
these reasons in himself. The Christian and the
-
same.


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 87
Anarchist—both are decadents. But even when the
Christian condemns, slanders, and sullies the world,
he is actuated by precisely the same instinct as that
which leads the socialistic workman to curse, calum-
niate and cast dirt at society. The last "Judg-
ment” itself is still the sweetest solace to revenge-
revolution, as the socialistic workman expects it,
only thought of as a little more remote. The
notion of a “Beyond,” as well—why a Beyond, if it
be not a means of splashing mud over a “Here," over
this world ? . . .
35
A Criticism of the Morality of Decadence. -An
"altruistic” morality, a morality under which selfish-
ness withers, is in all circumstances a bad sign.
This is true of individuals and above all of nations.
The best are lacking when selfishness begins to be
lacking. Instinctively to select that which is harm-
ful to one, to be lured by “disinterested” motives,
—these things almost provide the formula for de-
cadence. “Not to have one's own interests at heart"
- this is simply a moral fig-leaf concealing a very
different fact, a physiological one, to wit:-“I no
longer know how to find what is to
my
interest. ”. . .
Disintegration of the instincts ! -All is up with
man when he becomes altruistic. —Instead of saying
ingenuously “I am no longer any good,” the lie of
morality in the decadent's mouth says: “Nothing is
any good,-life is no good. ”—A judgment of this
kind ultimately becomes a great danger; for it is
infectious, and it soon flourishes on the polluted soil
of society with tropical luxuriance, now as a religion
(Christianity), anon as a philosophy (Schopenhauer-


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88
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
ism). In certain circumstances the mere effluvia of
such a venomous vegetation, springing as it does out
of the very heart of putrefaction, can poison life for
thousands and thousands of years.
-
a
36
A moral for doctors. —The sick man is a parasite
of society. In certain cases it is indecent to go
on living. To continue to vegetate in a state of
cowardly dependence upon doctors and special
treatments, once the meaning of life, the right to
life, has been lost, ought to be regarded with the
greatest contempt by society. The doctors, for
their part, should be the agents for imparting this
contempt,—they should no longer prepare prescrip-
tions, but should every day administer a fresh dose
of disgust to their patients. A new responsibility
should be created, that of the doctor—the responsi-
bility of ruthlessly suppressing and eliminating de-
generate life, in all cases in which the highest interests
of life itself, of ascending life, demand such a course
- for instance in favour of the right of procreation,
in favour of the right of being born, in favour of the
right to live. One should die proudly when it is no
longer possible to live proudly. Death should be
chosen freely,—death at the right time, faced clearly
and joyfully and embraced while one is surrounded
by one's children and other witnesses. It should be
Saffected in such a way that a proper farewell is still
possible, that he who is about to take leave of us is
still himself, and really capable not only of valuing
what he has achieved and willed in life, but also of
summing-up the value of life itself. Everything


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 89
a
precisely the opposite of the ghastly comedy which
Christianity has made of the hour of death. We
should never forgive Christianity for having so abused
the weakness of the dying man as to do violence to
his conscience, or for having used his manner of
dying as a means of valuing both man and his past !
-In spite of all cowardly prejudices, it is our duty,
in this respect, above all to reinstate the proper-
that is to say, the physiological, aspect of so-called
natural death, which after all is perfectly “un-
natural” and nothing else than suicide. One never
perishes through anybody's fault but one's own.
The only thing is that the death which takes place
in the most contemptible circumstances, the death
that is not free, the death which occurs at the wrong
time, is the death of a coward. Out of the very love
one bears to life, one should wish death to be different
from this—that is to say, free, deliberate, and neither
a matter of chance nor of surprise. Finally let me
whisper a word of advice to our friends the pessi-
mists and all other decadents. We have not the
power to prevent ourselves from being born: but
this error-for sometimes it is an error-can be recti-
fied if we choose. The man who does away with
himself, performs the most estimable of deeds: he
almost deserves to live for having done so. Society
-nay, life itself, derives more profit from such a
deed than from any sort of life spent in renunciation,
anæmia and other virtues,—at least the suicide frees
others from the sight of him, at least he removes one
objection against life. Pessimism pur et vert, can
be proved only by the self efutation of the pessimists
themselves: one should go a step further in one's


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90
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
consistency; one should not merely deny life with
“The World as Will and Idea," as Schopenhauer
did; one should in the first place deny Schopen-
hauer. . . . Incidentally, Pessimism, however infec-
tious it may be, does not increase the morbidness of
an age or of a whole species; it is rather the expres-
a
sion of that morbidness. One falls a victim to it in
the same way as one falls a victim to cholera ; one
must already be predisposed to the disease. Pessi-
mism in itself does not increase the number of the
world's decadents by a single unit. Let me remind
you of the statistical fact that in those years in which
cholera
rages,
the total number of deaths does not
exceed that of other years.
37
Have we become more moral? —As might have been
expected, the whole ferocity of moral stultification,
which, as is well known, passes for morality itself in
Germany, hurled itself against my concept“ Beyond
Good and Evil. ” I could tell you some nice tales
about this. Above all, people tried to make me see
the “incontestable superiority” of our age in regard
to moral sentiment, and the progress we had made
in these matters. Compared with us, a Cæsar Borgia
was by no means to be represented as “higher man,"
the sort of Superman, which I declared him to be.
The editor of the Swiss paper the Bund went so far
as not only to express his admiration for the courage
displayed by my enterprise, but also to pretend to
“understand” that the intended purpose of my work
was to abolish all decent feeling. Much obliged ! -
In reply, I venture to raise the following question ;


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE
91
have we really become more moral? The fact that
everybody believes that we have is already an objec-
tion to the belief. We modern men, so extremely
delicate and susceptible, full of consideration one
for the other, actually dare to suppose that the
pampering fellow-feeling which we all display, this
unanimity which we have at last acquired in sparing
and helping and trusting one another marksa definite
step forward, and shows us to be far ahead of the
man of the Renaissance. But every age thinks the
same, it is bound to think the same. This at least
is certain, that we should not dare to stand amid
the conditions which prevailed at the Renaissance,
we should not even dare to imagine ourselves in
those conditions : our nerves could not endure that
reality, not to speak of our muscles. The inability
to do this however does not denote any progress;
but simply the different and more senile quality of our
particular nature, its greater weakness, delicateness,
and susceptibility, out of which a morality more rich
in consideration was bound to arise. If we imagine
our delicateness and senility, our physiological de-
crepitude as non-existent, our morality of “human-
isation” would immediately lose all value—no
morality has
per se—it would even fill us
with scorn.
On the other hand, do not let us doubt
that we moderns, wrapped as we are in the thick
cotton wool of our humanitarianism which would
shrink even from grazing a stone, would present a
comedy to Cæsar Borgia's contemporaries which
would literally make them die of laughter. We are
indeed, without knowing it, exceedingly ridiculous
with our modern“ virtues. ” The decline of the
any value


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92
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
"
.
.
instincts of hostility and of those instincts that arouse
suspicion,-for this if anything is what constitutes
our progress—is only one of the results mani-
fested by the general decline in vitality: it requires a
hundred times more trouble and caution to live such
a dependent and senile existence. In such circum-
stances everybody gives everybody else a helping
hand, and, to a certain extent, everybody is either
an invalid or an invalid's attendant. This is then
called “virtue”: among those men who knew a
different life-that is to say, a fuller, more prodigal,
more superabundant sort of life, it might have
been called by another name,-possibly “cowardice,"
or “vileness,” or “old woman's morality. " Our
mollification of morals—this is my cry; this if you
will is my innovation—is the outcome of our decline;
conversely hardness and terribleness in morals may
be the result of a surplus of life. When the latter
state prevails, much is dared, much is challenged,
and much is also squandered. That which formerly
was simply the salt of life, would now be our poison.
To be indifferent-even this is a form of strength-
for that, likewise, we are too senile, too decrepit: our
morality of fellow-feeling, against which I was the
first to raise a finger of warning, that which might be
called moral impressionism, is one symptom the more
of the excessive physiological irritability which is
peculiar to everything decadent. That movement
which attempted to introduce itself in a scientific
manner on the shoulders of Schopenhauer's morality
of pity-a very sad attempt ! -is in its essence the
movement of decadence in morality, and as such it
is intimately related to Christian morality. Strong
a


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SKIKMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 93
.
a
ages and noble cultures see something contemptible
in pity, in the “love of one's neighbour,” and in a
lack of egoism and of self-esteem. -Ages should be
measured according to their positive forces ;-valued
by this standard that prodigal and fateful age of the
Renaissance, appears as the last great age, while we
moderns with our anxious care of ourselves and love
of our neighbours, with all our unassuming virtues
of industry, equity, and scientific method—with our
lust of collection, of economy and of mechanism-
representa weak
age. . . Ourvirtues are necessarily
determined, and are even stimulated, by our weak-
ness. “Equality,"acertain definite process of making
everybody uniform, which only finds its expression
in the theory of equal rights, is essentially bound up
with a declining culture: the chasm between man
and
man,
class and class, the multiplicity of types,
the will to be one's self, and to distinguish one's self
—that, in fact, which I call the pathos of distance
is proper to all strong ages. The force of tension,
-nay, the tension itself, between extremes grows
slighter every day,—the extremes themselves are
tending to become obliterated to the point of becom-
ing identical. All our political theories and state con-
stitutions, not by any means excepting “The German
Empire,” are the logical consequences, the necessary
consequences of decline; the unconscious effect of
decadence has begun to dominate even the ideals
of the various sciences. My objection to the whole
of English and French sociology still continues to
be this, that it knows only the decadent form of
society from experience, and with perfectly childlike
innocence takes the instincts of decline as the norm,


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THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
the standard, of sociological valuations. Descending
life, the decay of all organising power—that is to
say, of all that power which separates, cleaves gulfs,
and establishes rank above and below, formulated
itself in modern sociology as the ideal. Our socialists
are decadents: but Herbert Spencer was also a
decadent,-he saw something to be desired in the
triumph of altruism! .
.
38
My Concept of Freedom. —Sometimes the value
of a thing does not lie in that which it helps us to
achieve, but in the amount we have to pay for it, —
what it costs us. For instance, liberal institutions
straightway cease from being liberal, the moment
they are soundly established: once this is attained
no more grievous and more thorough enemies of
freedom exist than liberal institutions! One knows,
of course, what they bring about: they undermine
the Will to Power, they are the levelling of mountain
and valley exalted to a morality, they make people
small, cowardly and pleasure-loving,—by means of
them the gregarious animal invariably triumphs.
Liberalism, or, in plain English, the transformation
of mankind into cattle. The same institutions, so long
as they are fought for, produce quite other results ;
then indeed they promote the cause of freedom
quite powerfully. Regarded more closely, it is war
which produces these results, war in favour of liberal
institutions, which, as war, allows the illiberal in-
stincts to subsist. For war trains men to be free.
What in sooth is freedom? Freedom is the will to
be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 95
*
distance which separates us from other men. To
grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to
privation, and even to life itself. To be ready to
sacrifice men for one's cause, one's self included.
Freedom denotes that the virile instincts which
rejoice in war and in victory, prevail over other in-
stincts; for instance,over the instincts of “happiness. ”
The man who has won his freedom, and how much
more so, therefore, the spirit that has won its freedom,
tramples ruthlessly upon that contemptible kind of
comfort which tea-grocers, Christians, cows, women,
Englishmen and other democrats worship in their
dreams. The free man is a warrior. -How is free-
dom measured in individuals as well as in nations ?
According to the resistance which has to be over-
come, according to the pains which it costs to
remain uppermost. The highest type of free man
would have to be sought where the greatest resist-
ance has continually to be overcome: five paces
away from tyranny, on the very threshold of the
danger of thraldom. This is psychologically true
if, by the word “Tyrants” we mean inexorable and
terrible instincts which challenge the maximum
amount of authority and discipline to oppose them
-the finest example of this is Julius Cæsar ; it is also
true politically : just examine the course of history.
The nations which were worth anything, which got
to be worth anything, never attained to that condi-
tion under liberal institutions : great danger made
out of them something which deserves reverence,
that danger which alone can make us aware of our
resources, our virtues, our means of defence, our
weapons, our genius,—which compels us to be strong,
»


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First principle: a man must need to be strong, other-
wise he will never attain it. —Those great forcing-
houses of the strong, of the strongest kind of men
that have ever existed on earth, the aristocratic com-
munities like those of Rome and Venice, understood
freedom precisely as I understand the word : as
something that one has and that one has not, as
something that one will have and that one seizes by
force.
39
A Criticism of Modernity. –Our institutions are
no longer any good; on this point we are all agreed.
But the fault does not lie with them ; but with us.
Now that we have lost all the instincts out of
which institutions grow, the latter on their part are
beginning to disappear from our midst because we
are no longer fit for them. Democracy has always
been the death agony of the power of organisation :
already in “Human All-too-Human,” Part I. , Aph.
472, I pointed out that modern democracy, together
with its half-measures, of which the “German
Empire” is an example, was a decaying form of
the State. For institutions to be possible there must
exist a sort of will, instinct, imperative, which cannot
be otherwise than antiliberal to the point of wicked-
ness: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsi-
bility for centuries to come, to solidarity in long
family lines forwards and backwards in infinitum.
If this will is present, something is founded which
resembles the imperium Romanum : or Russia, the
only great nation to-day that has some lasting power
and grit in her, that can bide her time, that can
still promise something. -Russia the opposite of all


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 97
wretched European petty-statism and neurasthenia,
which the foundation of the German Empire has
brought to a crisis. The whole of the Occident no
longer possesses those instincts from which institu-
tions spring, out of which a future grows: maybe
nothing is more opposed to its “modern spirit
than these things. People live for the present, they
live at top speed,—they certainly live without any
sense of responsibility; and this is precisely what
they call “freedom. ” Everything in institutions
which makes them institutions, is scorned, loathed
and repudiated : everybody is in mortal fear of a
new slavery, wherever the word "authority” is so
much as whispered. The decadence of the valuing
instinct, both in our politicians and in our political
parties, goes so far, that they instinctively prefer
that which acts as a solvent, that which precipitates
the final catastrophe. . . . As an example of this
behold modern marriage. All reason has obviously
been divorced from modern marriage : but this is no
objection to matrimony itself but to modernity.
The rational basis of marriage-it lay in the ex-
clusive legal responsibility of the man: by this means
some ballast was laid in the ship of matrimony,
whereas nowadays it has a list, now on this side, now
on that. The rational basis of marriage—it lay in its
absolute indissolubleness : in this way it was given
a gravity which knew how to make its influence felt,
in the face of the accident of sentiment, passion and
momentary impulse: it lay also in the fact that the
responsibility of choosing the parties to the contract,
lay with the families. By showing ever more and
more favour to love-marriages, the very foundation
:
7


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of matrimony, that which alone makes it an institu-
tion, has been undermined. No institution ever has
been nor ever will be built upon an idiosyncrasy; as
I say, marriage cannot be based upon “love. " It
can be based upon sexual desire ; upon the instinct
of property (wife and child as possessions); upon the
instinct of dominion, which constantly organises for
itself the smallest form of dominion, the family
which requires children and heirs in order to hold
fast, also in the physiological sense, to a certain
quantum of acquired power, influence and wealth,
so as to prepare for lasting tasks, and for solidarity in
the instincts from one century to another. Marriage
as an institution presupposes the affirmation of the
greatest and most permanent form of organisation;
if society cannot as a whole stand security for itself
into the remotest generations, marriage has no mean-
ing whatsoever. —Modern marriage has lost its mean-
ing; consequently it is being abolished.
40
The question of the Working-man. —The mere fact
that there is such a thing as the question of the work-
ing-man is due to stupidity, or at bottom to degen-
erate instincts which are the cause of all the stu-
pidity of modern times. Concerning certain things
no questions ought to be put: the first imperative
principle of instinct. For the life of me I cannot
see what people want to do with the working-man
of Europe, now that they have made a question of
him. He is far too comfortable to cease from ques-
tioning ever more and more, and with ever less
modesty. After all, he has the majority on his side.


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 99
There is now not the slightest hope that an unassum-
ing and contented sort of man, after the style of the
Chinaman, will come into being in this quarter : and
this would have been the reasonable course, it was
even a dire necessity. What has been done? Every-
thing has been done with the view of nipping the
very pre-requisite of this accomplishment in the bud,
—with the most frivolous thoughtlessness those self-
same instincts by means of which a working-class
becomes possible, and tolerable even to its members
themselves, have been destroyed root and branch.
The working-man has been declared fit for military
service; he has been granted the right of combina-
tion, and of voting : can it be wondered at that he
already regards his condition as one of distress (ex-
pressed morally, as an injustice)? But, again I ask,
what do people want? If they desire a certain end,
then they should desire the means thereto. If they
will have slaves, then it is madness to educate them
to be masters.
41
»*_In
-
“The kind of freedom I do not mean. . .
an age like the present, it simply adds to one's perils
to be left to one's instincts. The instincts contra-
dict, disturb, and destroy each other ; I have already
defined modernism as physiological self-contra-
diction. A reasonable system of education would
insist upon at least one of these instinct-systems
being paralysed beneath an iron pressure, in order to
* This is a playful adaptation of Max von Schenkendorf's
poem “ Freiheit. ” The proper line reads : "Freiheit die ich
meine” (The freedom that I do mean). —TR.


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IOO
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allow others to assert their power, to grow strong,
and to dominate.