No More Learning

89
romantic belief in love and the future changes
into a longing for nonentity in 1830-50.
10б.
How is it that German music reaches its head
culminating point in the age of German romanti- wdon stock
cism? How is it that German music lacks
Goethe ? On the other hand, how much Schiller,
or more exactly, how much “ Thekla " * is there
not in Beethoven !
Schumann has Eichendorff, Uhland, Heine,
Hoffman, Tieck, in him. Richard Wagner has
Freischütz, Hoffmann, Grimm, the romantic Saga,
the mystic catholicism of instinct, symbolism,
“the free-spiritedness of passion' (Rousseau's
intention). The Flying Dutchman savours of.
France, where le ténébreux (1830) was the type
of the seducer.
The cult of music, the revolutionary romanticism
of form. Wagner synthesises German and French
romanticism.
107.
From the point of view only of his value to
Germany and to German culture, Richard Wagner
is still a great problem, perhaps a German mis-
fortune: in any case, however, a fatality. But
what does it matter ? Is he not very much
more than a German event ? It also seems to
me that to no country on earth is he less related
than to Germany; nothing was prepared there for
* Thekla is the sentimental heroine in Schiller's Wallen-
stein. --TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.


## p. 90 (#114) #############################################

90
THE WILL TO POWER.
his advent; his whole type is simply strange
amongst Germans; there he stands in their midst,
wonderful, misunderstood, incomprehensible. But
people carefully avoid acknowledging this : they are
too kind, too square-headed—too German for that.
“Credo quia absurdus est”: thus did the German
spirit wish it to be, in this case too-hence it is
content meanwhile to believe everything Richard
Wagner wanted to have believed about himself. In
all ages the spirit of Germany has been deficient in
subtlety and divining powers concerning psycho-
1 logical matters. Now that it happens to be under the
high pressure of patrioticnonsense and self-adoration,
it is visibly growing thicker and coarser : how could
it therefore be equal to the problem of Wagner !
108.
Cathemat
* *32***
byl
mozaims
d ut?
The Germans are not yet anything, but they
are becoming something; that is why they have
not yet any culture ;—that is why they cannot
yet have any culture ! —They are not yet anything:
that means they are all kinds of things. They
are becoming something: that means that they will
one day cease from being all kinds of things. The
latter is at bottom only a wish, scarcely a hope
yet. Fortunately it is a wish with which one
can live, a question of will, of work, of discipline,
a question of training, as also of resentment, of
longing, of privation, of discomfort,-yea, even
of bitterness,-in short, we Germans will get
something out of ourselves, something that has not
yet been wanted of us we want something more!


## p. 91 (#115) #############################################

NIHILISM.
91
That this "German, as he is not as yet”—
has a right to something better than the present
German “culture”; that all who wish to become
something better, must wax angry when they
perceive a sort of contentment, an impudent
“setting-oneself-at-ease,” or “a process of self-
censing," in this quarter: that is my second
principle, in regard to which my opinions have
not yet changed.
(*) SIGNS OF INCREASING STRENGTH.
109.
First Principle: everything that characterises
modern men savours of decay: but side by side
with the prevailing sickness there are signs of a
strength and powerfulness of soul which are still
untried. The same causes which tend to promote
the belittling of men, also force the stronger and
rarer individuals upwards to greatness.
I1O.
General survey : the ambiguous character of our
modern world precisely the same symptoms
might at the same time be indicative of either
decline or strength. And the signs of strength
and of emancipation dearly bought, might in view
of traditional (or hereditary) appreciations con-
cerned with the feelings, be misunderstood as in-
dications of weakness. In short, feeling, as
means of fixing valuations, is not on a level with
the times.
a


## p. 92 (#116) #############################################

92
THE WILL TO POWER.
Generalised: Every valuation is always back-
ward; it is merely the expression of the con-
ditions which favoured survival and growth in
a much earlier age: it struggles against new
conditions of existence out of which it did not
arise, and which it therefore necessarily misunder-
stands : it hinders, and excites suspicion against,
all that is new.
III.
The problem of the nineteenth century. To dis-
cover whether its strong and weak side belong to
each other.
Whether they have been cut from
one and the same piece. Whether the variety of
its ideals and their contradictions are conditioned
by a higher purpose: whether they are something
higher. For it might be the prerequisite of great-
ness, that growth should take place amid such
violent tension. Dissatisfaction, Nihilism, might
be a good sign.
I 12.
General survey. --As a matter of fact, all
abundant growth involves a concomitant process
of crumbling to bits and decay: suffering and the
symptoms of decline belong to ages of enormous
progress; every fruitful and powerful movement
of mankind has always brought about a concurrent
Nihilistic movement. Under certain circumstances,
the appearance of the extremest form of Pessimism
and actual Nihilism might be the sign of a process
of incisive and most essential growth, and of man-
kind's transit into completely new conditions of
existence. This is what I have understood.


## p. 93 (#117) #############################################

NIHILISM,
93
II 3.
A.
Starting out with a thoroughly courageous
appreciation of our men of to-day we must not
: :
allow ourselves to be deceived by appearance:
this mankind is much less effective, but it gives
quite different pledges of lasting strength, its
tempo is slower, but the rhythm itself is richer.
Healthiness is increasing, the real conditions of a
healthy body are on the point of being known,
and will gradually be created, “ asceticism” is
regarded with irony. The fear of extremes, a fim
certain confidence in the "right way,” no raving :
a periodical self-habituation to narrower values
(such as “mother-land," "science," etc. ).
This whole picture, however, would still be AM Wed
ambiguous: it might be a movement either of
increase or decline in Life.
124
B.
The belief in “progress"-in lower spheres of
intelligence, appears as increasing life: but this is
self-deception;
in higher spheres of intelligence it is a sign
of declining life.
Description of the symptoms.
The unity of the aspect: uncertainty in regard
to the standard of valuation.
Fear of a general “ in vain. "
Nihilism,


## p. 94 (#118) #############################################

94
THE WILL TO POWER.
114.
As a matter of fact, we are no longer so urgently
in need of an antidote against the first Nihilism :
Life is no longer so uncertain, accidental, and
senseless in modern Europe. All such tremendous
exaggeration of the value of men, of the value of
evil, etc. , are not so necessary now; we can endure
a considerable diminution of this value, we may
grant a great deal of nonsense and accident: the
power man has acquired now allows of a lowering
of the means of discipline, of which the strongest
was the moral interpretation of the universe. The
hypothesis “God” is much too extreme,
115.
no
If anything shows that our humanisation is a
genuine sign of progress, it is the fact that we no
longer require excessive contraries, that we
longer require contraries at all. . . .
We may love the senses; for we have spirit-
ualised them in every way and made them artistic;
We have a right to all things which hitherto
have been most calumniated.
116.
The reversal of the order of rank. —Those pious
counterfeiters—thepriests—are becoming Chandala
in our midst they occupy the position of the
charlatan, of the quack, of the counterfeiter, of the
sorcerer: we regard them as corrupters of the will,


## p. 95 (#119) #############################################

NIHILISM.
95
as the great slanderers and vindictive enemies of
Life, and as the rebels among the bungled and the
botched. We have made our middle class out of
our servant-caste--the Sudra—that is to say, our
people or the body which wields the political
power.
On the other hand, the Chandala of former
times is paramount: the blasphemers, the im-
moralists, the independents of all kinds, the artists,
the Jews, the minstrels—and, at bottom, all dis-
reputable classes are in the van.
We have elevated ourselves to honourable
thoughts,-even more, we determine what honour
is on earth,—"nobility. ” . . . All of us to-day
are advocates of life. —We Immoralists are to-day
the strongest power : the other great powers are
in need of us we re-create the world in our
own image.
We have transferred the label Chandala to
the priests, the backworldsmen, and to the deformed
Christian society which has become associated with
these people, together with creatures of like origin,
the pessimists, Nihilists, romanticists of pity,
criminals, and men of vicious habits--the whole
sphere in which the idea of “God” is that of
Saviour.
We are proud of being no longer obliged to be seen heel en met
liars, slanderers, and detractors of Life. . . .
" ༔་ ༣ ༤
>
117.
The advance of the nineteenth century upon
the eighteenth (at bottom we good Europeans


## p. 96 (#120) #############################################

96
THE WILL TO POWER.
are carrying on a war against the eighteenth
century):
(1) “The return to Nature” is getting to be
understood, ever more definitely, in a way which
is quite the reverse of that in which Rousseau used
the phrase-away from idylls and operas !
(2) Ever more decided, more anti-idealistic,
more objective, more fearless, more industrious,
more temperate, more suspicious of sudden changes,
anti-revolutionary;
(3) The question of bodily health is being pressed
ever more decidedly in front of the health of "the
soul”: the latter is regarded as a condition brought
about by the former, and bodily health is believed
to be, at least, the prerequisite to spiritual health.
I 18.
If anything at all has been achieved, it is a more
innocent attitude towards the senses, a happier,
more favourable demeanour in regard to sensuality,
resembling rather the position taken up by Goethe;
a prouder feeling has also been developed in know-
ledge, and the “reine Thor"* meets with little
faith.
119.
We "objective people. ”—It is not "pity” that
opens up the way for us to all that is most remote
and most strange in life and culture; but our
a
* This is a reference to Wagner's Parsifal. The character
as is well known, is written to represent a son of heart's
affliction, and a child of wisdom-humble, guileless, loving,
pure, and a fool. -TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.


## p. 97 (#121) #############################################

NIHILISM.
97
nenesteness hist, suplestarstuera
accessibility and ingenuousness, which precisely
does not "pity," but rather takes pleasure in hun-
dreds of things which formerly caused pain (which
in former days either outraged or moved us, or in
the presence of which we were either hostile or
indifferent). Pain in all its various phases is now
interesting to us : on that account we are certainly
not the more pitiful, even though the sight of pain
may shake us to our foundations and move us to
tears : and we are absolutely not inclined to be
more helpful in view thereof.
In this deliberate desire to look on at all pain
and error, we have grown stronger and more
powerful than in the eighteenth century; it is a
proof of our increase of strength (we have drawn
closer to the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries).
But it is a profound mistake to regard our "roman-
ticism” as a proof of our “ beautified souls. ”
“
We
want stronger sensations than all coarser ages and
classes have wanted. (This fact must not be con-
founded with the needs of neurotics and decadents;
in their case, of course, there is a craving for pepper
-even for cruelty. )
We are all seeking conditions which are eman-
cipated from the bourgeois, and to a greater degree
from the priestly, notion of morality (every book
which savours at all of priestdom and theology
gives us the impression of pitiful niaiserie and
mental indigence). “Good company,” in fact, finds
"
everything insipid which is not forbidden and con-
sidered compromising in bourgeois circles; and the
case is the same with books, music, politics, and
opinions on women.
G
VOL. I.


## p. 98 (#122) #############################################

98
THE WILL TO POWER,
I 20.
4
The simplification of man in the nineteenth cen-
tury (The eighteenth century was that of elegance,
subtlety, and generous feeling). —Not "return to
nature”; for no natural humanity has ever existed
yet. Scholastic, unnatural, and antinatural values
are the rule and the beginning; man only reaches
Nature after a long struggle -- he never turns
“back” to her. . . . To be natural means, to dare
to be as immoral as Nature is.
We are coarser, more direct, richer in irony
towards generous feelings, even when we are be-
neath them.
Our haute volée, the society consisting of our
rich and leisured men, is more natural : people hunt
each other, the love of the sexes is a kind of sport
in which marriage is both a charm and an obstacle;
people entertain each other and live for the sake of
pleasure; bodily advantages stand in the first rank,
and curiosity and daring are the rule.
Our attitude towards knowledge is more natural;
we are innocent in our absolute spiritual debauchery,
we hate pathetic and hieratic manners, we delight
in that which is most strictly prohibited, we should
scarcely recognise any interest in knowledge if we
were bored in acquiring it.
Our attitude to morality is also more natural.
Principles have become a laughing-stock; no one
dares to speak of his “duty," unless in irony. But
a helpful, benevolent disposition is highly valued.
(Morality is located in instinct and the rest is
a


## p. 99 (#123) #############################################

NIHILISM,
99
despised. Besides this there are few points of
honour. )
Our attitude to politics is more natural: we see
problems of power, of the quantum of power, against
another quantum.
We do not believe in a right
that does not proceed from a power which is able
to uphold it. We regard all rights as conquests.
Our valuation of great men and things is more
natural: we regard passion as a privilege; we can
conceive of nothing great which does not involve a
great crime ; all greatness is associated in our minds
;
with a certain standing-beyond-the-pale in morality.
Our attitude to Nature is more natural: we no
longer love her for her "innocence," her “reason,"
her“ beauty,” we have made her beautifully devilish
and “ foolish. ” But instead of despising her on
that account, since then we have felt more closely
related to her and more familiar in her presence.
She does not aspire to virtue: we therefore respect
her.
Our attitude towards Art is more natural : we
do not exact beautiful, empty lies, etc. , from her ;
brutal positivism reigns supreme, and it ascer-
tains things with perfect calm.
In short: there are signs showing that the
European of the nineteenth century is less ashamed
of his instincts; he has gone a long way towards
acknowledging his unconditional naturalness and
immorality, without bitterness: on the contrary, he
is strong enough to endure this point of view alone.
To some ears this will sound as though corruption
had made strides: and certain it is that man has
not drawn nearer to the “ Nature” which Rousseau


## p. 100 (#124) ############################################

100
THE WILL TO POWER.
speaks about, but has gone one step farther in the
civilisation before which Rousseau stood in horror.
We have grown stronger, we have drawn nearer to
the seventeenth century, more particularly to the
taste which reigned towards its close (Dancourt,
Le Sage, Regnard).
I21.
Culture versus Civilisation. The culminating
stages of culture and civilisation lie apart: one
must not be led astray as regards the fundamental
antagonism existing between culture and civilisa-
tion. From the moral standpoint, great periods
in the history of culture have always been periods
of corruption; while on the other hand, those periods
in which man was deliberately and compulsorily
tamed (“civilisation ") have always been periods
of intolerance towards the most intellectual and
most audacious natures. Civilisation desires some-
thing different from what culture strives after :
their aims may perhaps be opposed.
I 22.
What I warn people against : confounding the
instincts of decadence with those of humanity;
Confounding the dissolving means of civilisa-
tion and those which necessarily promote decadence,
with culture;
Confounding debauchery, and the principle,
“ laisser aller," with the Will to Power (the
latter is the exact reverse of the former).
1


## p. 101 (#125) ############################################

NIHILISM.
1οΙ
I 23.
The unsolved problems which I set anew : the
problem of civilisation, the struggle between Rous-
seau and Voltaire about the year 1760. Man
becomes deeper, more mistrustful, more “immoral,"
stronger, more self-confident—and therefore " more
natural"; that is "progress. ” In this way, by a
process of division of labour, the more evil strata
and the milder and tamer strata of society get
separated : so that the general facts are not visible
at first sight. . . . It is a sign of strength, and of
the self-control and fascination of the strong, that
these stronger strata possess the arts in order to
make their greater powers for evil felt as something
higher. ” As soon as there is a progress” there is
a transvaluation of the strengthened factors into
the “good. "
124
Man must have the courage of his natural instincts
restored to him. -
The poor opinion he has of himself must be
destroyed (not in the sense of the individual, but
in the sense of the natural man . )-
The contradictions in things must be eradicated,
after it has been well understood that we were
responsible for them
Social idiosyncrasies must be stamped out of
existence (guilt, punishment, justice, honesty,
freedom, love, etc, etc. )
An advance towards "naturalness": in all politi-
cal questions, even in the relations between parties,
even in merchants', workmen's, or contractors'


## p. 102 (#126) ############################################

102
THE WILL TO POWER.
parties, only questions of power come into play :-
{ "what one can do " is the first question, what one
ought to do is only a secondary consideration.
125.
Socialism-or the tyranny of the meanest and
the most brainless,—that is to say, the superficial,
the envious, and the mummers, brought to its
zenith,—is, as a matter of fact, the logical con-
clusion of "modern ideas” and their latent
“
anarchy: but in the genial atmosphere of demo-
cratic well-being the capacity for forming resolu-
tions or even for coming to an end at all, is
paralysed. Men follow-but no longer their
reason, That is why socialism is on the whole
a hopelessly bitter affair : and there is nothing
more amusing than to observe the discord between
the poisonous and desperate faces of present-day
socialists—and what wretched and nonsensical
feelings does not their style reveal to us and
the childish lamblike happiness of their hopes and
desires. Nevertheless, in many places in Europe,
there may be violent hand-to-hand struggles and
irruptions on their account: the coming century
is likely to be convulsed in more than one spot,
and the Paris Commune, which finds defenders and
advocates even in Germany, will seem to have
been but a slight indigestion compared with what
is to come. Be this as it may, there will always
be too many people of property for socialism ever
to signify anything more than an attack of illness :
and these people of property are like one man
with one faith, "one must possess something in


## p. 103 (#127) ############################################

NIHILISM.
103
to regera
هود هود کن وہ
a
order to be some one. ” This, however, is the oldest
and most wholesome of all instincts; I should add :
one must desire more than one has in order to/1
become more. ” For this is the teaching which lifel tiem
itself preaches to all living things: the morality of
Development. To have and to wish to have more,
in a word, Growth-that is life itself. In the
teaching of socialism "a will to the denial of life"
is but poorly concealed: botched men and races
they must be who have devised a teaching of this
sort. In fact, I even wish a few experiments
might be made to show that in a socialistic society,
life denies itself, and itself cuts away its own roots.
The earth is big enough and man is still unex- veche
hausted enough for a practical lesson of this sort
and demonstratio ad absurdum-even if it were fnis not
accomplished only by a vast expenditure of lives Riwalow's
—to seem worth while to me. Still, Socialism, like
a restless mole beneath the foundations of a society
wallowing in stupidity, will be able to achieve
something useful and salutary: it delays "Peace
on Earth” and the whole process of character-
softening of the democratic herding animal; it
forces the European to have an extra supply of
intellect,—that is to say, craft and caution, and
prevents his entirely abandoning the manly and
warlike qualities,—it also saves Europe awhile from
the marasmus femininus which is threatening it.
en altera's
I 26.
The most favourable obstacles and reniedies of
modernity :
1


## p. 104 (#128) ############################################

104
THE WILL TO POWER.
(1) Compulsory military service with real wars
in which all joking is laid aside.
(2) National thick-headedness (which simplifies
and concentrates).
(3) Improved nutrition (meat).
(4) Increasing cleanliness and wholesomeness in
the home.
(5) The predominance of physiology over
theology, morality, economics, and politics.
(6) Military discipline in the exaction and the
practice of one's “duty” (it is no longer customary
to praise).
I 27.
I am delighted at the military development of
Europe, also at the inner anarchical conditions: the
period of quietude and“ Chinadom” which Galiani
prophesied for this century is now over. Personal
and manly capacity, bodily capacity recovers its
value, valuations are becoming more physical,
nutrition consists ever more and more of flesh.
Fine
have once
more become possible.
Bloodless sneaks (with mandarins at their head,
as Comte imagined them) are now a matter of
the past. The savage in every one of us is
acknowledged, even the wild animal. Precisely on
that account, philosophers will have a better chance.
-Kant is a scarecrow !
men
I 28.
I have not yet seen any reasons to feel dis-
couraged. He who acquires and preserves a


## p. 105 (#129) ############################################

NIHILISM.
105
strong will, together with a broad mind, has a
more favourable chance now than ever he had.
For the plasticity of man has become exceedingly
great in democratic Europe: men who learn easily,
who readily adapt themselves, are the rule: the
gregarious animal of a high order of intelligence
is prepared. He who would command finds those
who must obey: I have Napoleon and Bismarck
in mind, for instance. The struggle against strong
and unintelligent wills, which forms the surest
obstacle in one's way, is really insignificant. Who
would not be able to knock down these “ objective”
gentlemen with weak wills, such as Ranke and
Renan !
I 29.
Spiritual enlightenment is an unfailing means of
making men uncertain, weak of will, and needful
of succour and support; in short, of developing
the herding instincts in them. That is why all
great artist-rulers hitherto (Confucius in China,
the Roman Empire, Napoleon, Popedom—at a
time when they had the courage of their worldliness
and frankly pursued power) in whom the ruling
instincts, that had prevailed until their time,
culminated, also made use of the spiritual enlighten-
ment;or at least allowed it to be supreme (after
the style of the Popes of the Renaissance). The
self-deception of the masses on this point, in every
democracy for instance, is of the greatest possible
value: all that makes men smaller and more
amenable is pursued under the title “progress. "


## p. 106 (#130) ############################################

106
THE WILL TO POWER,
130.
The highest equity and mildness as a condition
of weakness (the New Testament and the early
Christian community-manifesting itself in the
form of utter foolishness in the Englishmen, Darwin
and Wallace). Your equity, ye higher men, drives
.
you to universal suffrage, etc. ; your "humanity”
urges you to be milder towards crime and stupidity.
In the end you will thus help stupidity and harm-
lessness to conquer.
Outwardly: Ages of terrible wars, insurrections,
explosions. Inwardly : ever more and more weak-
ness among men; events take the form of excitants.
The Parisian as the type of the European extreme.
Consequences : (1) Savages (at first, of course,
in conformity with the culture that has reigned
hitherto); (2) Sovereign individuals (where power-
ful barbarous masses and emancipation from all
that has been, are crossed). The age of greatest
stupidity, brutality, and wretchedness in the masses,
and in the highest individuals.
131.
An incalculable number of higher individuals
now perish : but he who escapes their fate is as
strong as the devil. In this respect we are re-
minded of the conditions which prevailed in the
Renaissance.
132.
How are Good Europeans such as ourselves
distinguished from the patriots? In the first place,


## p. 107 (#131) ############################################

NIHILISM,
107
we are atheists and immoralists, but we take care
to support the religions and the morality which
we associate with the gregarious instinct : for by
means of them, an order of men is, so to speak,
being prepared, which must at some time or other
fall into our hands, which must actually crave for
our hands.
Beyond Good and Evil,—certainly; but we
insist upon the unconditional and strict preserva-
tion of herd-morality.
We reserve ourselves the right to several kinds
of philosophy which it is necessary to learn: under
certain circumstances, the pessimistic kind as a
hammer; a European Buddhism might perhaps
be indispensable.
We should probably support the development
and the maturation of democratic tendencies; for
it conduces to weakness of will : in “ Socialism"
we recognise a thorn which prevents smug ease.
Attitude towards the people. Our prejudices;
we pay attention to the results of cross-breeding.
Detached, well-to-do, strong: irony concerning
the "press " and its culture. Our care: that
scientific men should not become journalists. We
despise any form of culture that tolerates news-
paper reading or writing.
We make our accidental positions (as Goethe
and Stendhal did), our experiences, a foreground,
and we lay stress upon them, so that we may
deceive concerning our backgrounds. We ourselves
.
wait and avoid putting our heart into them. They
serve us as refuges, such as a wanderer might require
and use—but we avoid feeling at home in them.


## p. 108 (#132) ############################################

108
THE WILL TO POWER.
We are ahead of our fellows in that we have had
a disciplina voluntatis. All strength is directed to
the development of the will, an art which allows
us to wear masks, an art of understanding beyond
the passions (also “super-European” thought at
times).
This is our preparation before becoming the
law-givers of the future and the lords of the earth;
if not we, at least our children. Caution where
marriage is concerned.
133.
The twentieth century. The Abbé Galiani says
somewhere : “ La prévoyance est la cause des guerres
actuelles de l'Europe. Si l'on voulait se donner la
peine de ne rien prévoir, tout le monde serait
tranquille, et je ne crois pas qu'on serait plus mal-
heureux parce qu'on ne ferait pas la guerre. " As I
in no way share the unwarlike views of my deceased
friend Galiani, I have no fear whatever of saying
something beforehand with the view of conjuring
up in some way the cause of wars.
A condition of excessive consciousness, after the
worst of earthquakes : with new questions.
134.
It is the time of the great noon, of the most
appalling enlightenment: my particular kind of
Pessimism: the great starting-point.
(1) Fundamental contradiction between civil-
isation and the elevation of man.


## p. 109 (#133) ############################################

NIHILISM.
109
(2) Moral valuations regarded as a history of
lies and the art of calumny in the service of the
Will to Power of the will of the herd, which rises
against stronger men).
(3) The conditions which determine every
elevation in culture (the facilitation of a selection
being made at the cost of a crowd) are the con-
ditions of all growth.
(4). The multiformity of the world as a question
of strength, which sees all things in the perspective
of their growth. The moral Christian values to
be regarded as the insurrection and mendacity of
slaves (in comparison with the aristrocratic values
of the ancient world).


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1


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SECOND BOOK.
A
CRITICISM OF THE HIGHEST
VALUES THAT HAVE PREVAILED
HITHERTO.


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I.
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
ALL the beauty and sublimity with which we
have invested real and imagined things, I will
show to be the property and product of man,
and this should be his most beautiful apology.
Man as a poet, as a thinker, as a god, as love, as
power. Oh, the regal liberality with which he
has lavished gifts upon things in order to im-
poverish himself and make himself feel wretched !
Hitherto, this has been his greatest disinterested-
ness, that he admired and worshipped, and knew
how to conceal from himself that he it was who
had created what he admired.
I. CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIONS.
135.
The origin of religion. —Just as the illiterate
man of to-day believes that his wrath is the cause
of his being angry, that his mind is the cause of
his thinking, that his soul is the cause of his
feeling, in short, just as a mass of psychological
entities are still unthinkingly postulated as causes;
H
VOL. I.


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114
THE WILL TO POWER.
so, in a still more primitive age, the same pheno-
mena were interpreted by man by means of
personal entities. Those conditions of his soul
which seemed strange, overwhelming, and raptur-
ous, he regarded as obsessions and bewitching
influences emanating from the power of some
personality. (Thus the Christian, the
the most
puerile and backward man of this age, traces
hope, peace, and the feeling of deliverance to a
psychological inspiration on the part of God:
being by nature a sufferer and a creature in need
of repose, states of happiness, peace, and resigna-
tion, perforce seem strange to him, and seem to
need some explanation. ) Among intelligent,
strong, and vigorous races, the epileptic is mostly
the cause of a belief in the existence of some
foreign power; but all such examples of apparent
subjection—as, for instance, the bearing of the
exalted man, of the poet, of the great criminal,
or the passions, love and revenge—lead to the
invention of supernatural powers.
A condition
is made concrete by being identified with a
personality, and when this condition overtakes
anybody, it is ascribed to that personality. In
other words: in the psychological concept of God,
a certain state of the soul is personified as a cause
in order to appear as an effect.
The psychological logic is as follows: when the
feeling of power suddenly seizes and overwhelms
a man,--and this takes place in the case of all
the great passions,-a doubt arises in him con-
cerning his own person : he dare not think himself
the cause of this astonishing sensation—and thus


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
115
No' Sridzis
he posits a stronger person, a Godhead as its cause.
In short, the origin of religion lies in the extreme
feelings of power, which, being strange, take ment
by surprise : and just as the sick man, who feels
one of his limbs unaccountably heavy, concludes
that another man must be sitting on it, so the
ingenuous homo religiosus, divides himself up into
several people. Religion is an example of the
" altération de la personnalité. " A sort of fear and
sensation of terror in one's own presence.
But
also a feeling of inordinate rapture and exaltation,
Among sick people, the sensation of health suffices
to awaken a belief in the proximity of God.
136.
Rudimentary psychology of the religious man :-
All changes are effects; all effects are effects of
will (the notion of "Nature" and of "natural law,"
is lacking); all effects presuppose an agent.
Rudimentary psychology: one is only a cause
oneself, when one knows that one has willed
something
Result: States of power impute to man the
feeling that he is not the cause of them, that he
is not responsible for them: they come without
being willed to do so—consequently we cannot be
their originators: will that is not free (that is to
say, the knowledge of a change in our condition
which we have not helped to bring about) requires
a strong will.
Consequence of this rudimentary psychology :
Man has never dared to credit himself with his
}


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116
THE WILL TO POWER.
strong and startling moods, he has always con-
ceived them as “passive," as “imposed upon him
from outside": Religion is the offshoot of a
doubt concerning the entity of the person, an
altération of the personality: in so far as every-
thing great and strong in man was considered
superhuman and foreign, man belittled himself,
he laid the two sides, the very pitiable and weak
side, and the very strong and startling side apart,
in two spheres, and called the one“ Man” and the
other “ God. ”
And he has continued to act on these lines;
during the period of the moral idiosyncrasy he
did not interpret his lofty and sublime moral
states as proceeding from his own will” or as
the “work” of the person.
Even the Christian
himself divides his personality into two parts, the
one a mean and weak fiction which he calls man,
and the other which he calls God (Deliverer and
Saviour).
Religion has lowered the concept "man”; its
ultimate conclusion is that all goodness, greatness,
and truth are superhuman, and are only obtainable
by the grace of God,
137
One way of raising man out of his self-abase-
ment, which brought about the decline of the point
of view that classed all lofty and strong states of
the soul, as strange, was the theory of relation-
ship. These lofty and strong states of the soul
could at least be interpreted as the influence of
our forebears; we belonged to each other, we were


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
117
.
irrevocably joined; we grew in our own esteem,
by acting according to the example of a model
known to us all.
There is an attempt on the part of noble
families to associate religion with their own
feelings of self-respect. Poets and seers do the
same thing; they feel proud that they have been
worthy,—that they have been selected for such
association,—they esteem it an honour, not to be
considered at all as individuals, but as mere
mouthpieces (Homer).
Man gradually takes possession of the highest
and proudest states of his soul, as also of his acts
and his works. Formerly it was believed that
one paid oneself the greatest honour by denying
one's own responsibility for the highest deeds one
accomplished, and by ascribing them to-God.
The will which was not free, appeared to be that
which imparted a higher value to a deed: in those
days a god was postulated as the author of the deed.
>
138.
Priests are the actors of something which is
supernatural, either in the way of ideals, gods, or
saviours, and they have to make people believe in
them ; in this they find their calling, this is the
purpose of their instincts; in order to make it as
credible as possible, they have to exert themselves
to the utmost extent in the art of posing; their
actor's sagacity must, above all, aim at giving
them a clean conscience, by means of which, alone,
it is possible to persuade effectively.
همی


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118
THE WILL TO POWER
139.
-
The priest wishes to make it an understood
thing that he is the highest type of man, that he
rules-even over those who wield the power,—that
he is invulnerable and unassailable,—that he is
the strongest power in the community, not by any
means to be replaced or undervalued.
Means thereto: he alone knows; he alone is the
man of virtue ; he alone has sovereign power over
himself: he alone is, in a certain sense, God, and
ultimately goes back to the Godhead; he alone
is the middleman between God and others; the
Godhead administers punishment to every one
who puts the priest at a disadvantage, or who
thinks in opposition to him.
Means thereto: Truth exists. There is only
one way of attaining to it, and that is to become
a priest. Every good in order, nature, or tradition,
is to be traced to the wisdom of the priests. The
Holy Book is their work. The whole of nature is
only a fulfilment of the maxims which it contains,
No other source of goodness exists than the priests.
Every other kind of perfection, even the warrior's,
is different in rank from that of the priests.
Consequence : If the priest is to be the highest
type, then the degrees which lead to his virtues
must be the degrees of value among men. Study,
emancipation from material things, inactivity, im-
passibility, absence of passion, solemnity; - the
opposite of all this is found in the lowest type of
man.


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
119
The priest has taught a kind of morality which
conduced to his being considered the highest type
of man.
He conceives a type which is the reverse
of his own: the Chandala. By making these as
contemptible as possible, some strength is lent to
the order of castes. The priest's excessive fear of
sensuality also implies that the latter is the most
serious threat to the order of castes (that is to say,
order in general). . . . Every “free tendency” in
puncto puncti overthrows the laws of marriage.
140.
:-
The philosopher considered as the development
of the priestly type :—He has the heritage of the
priest in his blood; even as a rival he is compelled
to fight with the same weapons as the priest of his
time ;-he aspires to the highest authority.
What is it that bestows authority upon men who
have no physical power to wield (no army, no
arms at all . )?
How do such men gain
authority over those who are in possession of
material power, and who represent authority ?
(Philosophers enter the lists against princes, vic-
torious conquerors, and wise statesmen. )
They can do it only by establishing the belief
that they are in possession of a power which is
higher and stronger-God. Nothing is strong
enough: every one is in need of the mediation and
the services of priests. They establish themselves
as indispensable intercessors. The conditions of
their existence are: (1) That people believe in
the absolute superiority of their god, in fact believe
-


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I 20
THE WILL TO POWER.
in their god; (2) that there is no other access, no
direct access to god, save through them. The
second condition alone gives rise to the concept
"heterodoxy"; the first to the concept “dis-
"
believers" (that is to say, he who believes in
another god).
141.
A Criticism of the Holy Lie. —That a lie is
allowed in pursuit of holy ends is a principle
which belongs to the theory of all priestcraft,
and the object of this inquiry is to discover to
what extent it belongs to its practice.
But philosophers, too, whenever they intend
taking over the leadership of mankind, with the
ulterior motives of priests in their minds, have
never failed to arrogate to themselves the right to
lie: Plato above all. But the most elaborate of
lies is the double lie, developed by the typically
Arian philosophers of the Vedanta : two systems,
contradicting each other in all their main points,
but interchangeable, complementary, and mutually
expletory, when educational ends were in question.
The lie of the one has to create a condition in
which the truth of the other can alone become
intelligible.
How far does the holy lie of priests and philo-
sophers go ? — The question here is, what hypo-
theses do they advance in regard to education,
and what are the dogmas they are compelled to
invent in order to do justice to these hypotheses ?
First : they must have power, authority, and
absolute credibility on their side.
.


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
121
Secondly: they must have the direction of the
whole of Nature, so that everything affecting the
individual seems to be determined by their law.
Thirdly : their domain of power must be very
extensive, in order that its control may escape
the notice of those they subject : they must know
the penal code of the life beyond—of the life
"after death,”—and, of course, the means where-
by the road to blessedness may be discovered.
They have to put the notion of a natural course
of things out of sight, but as they are intelligent
and thoughtful people, they are able to promise a
host of effects, which they naturally say are con-
ditioned by prayer or by the strict observance of
their law. They can, moreover, prescribe a large
number of things which are exceedingly reasonable
—only they must not point to experience or
empiricism as the source of this wisdom, but to
revelation or to the fruits of the "most severe
exercises of penance. "
The holy lie, therefore, applies principally to the
purpose of an action (the natural purpose, reason,
is made to vanish: a moral purpose, the observ-
ance of some law, a service to God, seems to be
the purpose): to the consequence of an action (the
natural consequence is interpreted as something
supernatural, and, in order to be on surer ground,
other incontrollable and supernatural consequences
are foretold).
In this way the concepts good and evil are
created, and seem quite divorced from the natural
concepts : "useful,” “harmful,” “life-promoting,"
“ life-reducing,"_indeed, inasmuch as another life


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122
THE WILL TO POWER,
is imagined, the former concepts may even be
antagonistic to Nature's concepts of good and evil.
In this way, the proverbial concept “conscience. ”
is created : an inner voice, which, though it makes
itself heard in regard to every action, does not
measure the worth of that action according to its
results, but according to its intention or the con-
formity of this intention to the “law. "
The holy lie therefore invented: (1) a god who
punishes and rewards, who recognises and carefully
observes the law-book of the priests, and who is
particular about sending them into the world as
his mouthpieces and plenipotentiaries; (2) an
After Life, in which, alone, the great penal machine
is supposed to be active to this end the immor-
tality of the soul was invented; (3) a conscience in
man, understood as the knowledge that good and
evil are permanent values-that God himself
speaks through it, whenever its counsels are in
conformity with priestly precepts; (4) Morality as
the denial of all natural processes, as the subjection
of all phenomena to a moral order, as the inter-
pretation of all phenomena as the effects of a
moral order of things (that is to say, the concept
of punishment and reward), as the only power and
only creator of all transformations; (5) Truth as
given, revealed, and identical with the teaching of
the priests: as the condition to all salvation and
happiness in this and the next world.
In short: what is the price paid for the improve-
ment supposed to be due to morality - The
unhinging of reason, the reduction of all motives to
fear and hope (punishment and reward); dependence
-


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION,
I 23
upon the tutelage of priests, and upon a formulary
exactitude which is supposed to express a divine
will; the implantation of a "conscience” which
establishes a false science in the place of experience
and experiment: as though all one had to do or
had not to do were predetermined a kind of
castration of the seeking and striving spirit ;-in
short: the worst mutilation of man that can be
imagined, and it is pretended that "the good
man” is the result.
Practically speaking, all reason, the whole heri-
tage of intelligence, subtlety, and caution, the first
condition of the priestly canon, is arbitrarily re-
duced, when it is too late, to a simple mechanical
process : conformity with the law becomes a pur-
pose in itself, it is the highest purpose ; Life no
longer contains any problems;—the whole conception
of the world is polluted by the notion of punish-
ment;-Life itself, owing to the fact that the
priest's life is upheld as the non plus ultra of
perfection, is transformed into a denial and pol-
lution of life;—the concept “God” represents an
aversion to Life, and even a criticism and a con-
temning of it. Truth is transformed in the mind,
into priestly prevarication; the striving after truth,
into the study of the Scriptures, into the way to
become a theologian. .
142.
A criticism of the Law-Book of Manu. The
whole book is founded upon the holy lie. Was
it the well-being of humanity that inspired the
whole of this system? Was this kind of man,


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124
THE WILL TO POWER.
1
who believes in the interested nature of every
action, interested or not interested in the success
of this system? The desire to improve mankind
—whence comes the inspiration to this feeling?
Whence is the concept improvement taken?