No More Learning

Has not morality, considered as a whole, opened up
so many sources of displeasure as to lead us to
think that man up to the present, with every new
refinement of morality, has become more and more
discontented with himself, with his neighbour, and
with his own lot? Has not the most moral of men
hitherto believed that the only justifiable state of
mankind in the face of morals is that of the deepest
misery?
107.
Our Right to our Folly. —How must we
act? Why must we act? So far as the coarse and
immediate needs of the individual are concerned,
it is easy to answer these questions, but the more
we enter upon the more important and more subtle
domainsof action, themoredoes the problem become
uncertain and the more arbitrary its solution. An
arbitrary decision, however, is the very thing that
must be excluded here,—thus commands the auth-
ority of morals: an obscure uneasiness and awe
must relentlessly guide man in those very actions
the objects and means of which he cannot at once
perceive. This authority of morals undermines our
thinking faculty in regard to those things concern-
ing which it might be dangerous to think wrongly,
—it is in thisway,at all events, that morality usually
justifies itself to its accusers. Wrong in this place
means dangerous; but dangerous to whom? It


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104 THE DAWN OF DAY.
is not, as a rule, the danger of the doer of the action
which the supporters of authoritative morals have
in view, but their own danger; the loss which their
power and influence might undergo if the right to
act according to their own greater or lesser reason,
however wilfully and foolishly, were accorded to all
men. They on their part make unhesitating use
of their right to arbitrariness and folly,—they even
command in cases where it is hardly possible, or at
all events very difficult, to answer the questions,
"How must they act, why must they act? " And
if the reason of mankind grows with such extra-
ordinary slowness that it was often possible to deny
its growth during the whole course of humanity,
what is more to blame for this than this solemn
presence, even omnipresence, of moral commands,
which do not even permit the individual question
of how and why to be asked at all? Have we not
been educated precisely in such a way as to make
us feel pathetic, and thus to obscure our vision at
the very time when our reason should be able to
see as clearly and calmly as possible—i. e. in all
higher and more important circumstances?
108.
Some Theses. —We should not give the indi-
vidual, in so far as he desires his own happiness,
any precepts or recommendations as to the road
leading to happiness ; for individual happiness arises
from particular laws that are unknown to anybody,
and such a man will only be hindered or obstructed
by recommendations which come to him from out-


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 105
side sources. Those precepts which are called moral
are in reality directed against individuals, and do
not by any means make for the happiness of such in-
dividuals. The relationship of these precepts to the
"happiness and well-being of mankind" is equally
slight, for it is quite impossible to assign a definite
conception to these words, and still less can they
be employed as guiding stars on the dark sea of
moral aspirations. It is a prejudice to think that
morality is more favourable to the development of
the reason than immorality. It is erroneous to
suppose that the unconscious aim in the develop-
ment of every conscious being (namely, animal,
man, humanity, etc. ) is its "greatest happiness":
on the contrary, there is a particular and incom-
parable happiness to be attained at every stage of
our development, one that is neither high nor low,
but quite an individual happiness. Evolution does
not make happiness its goal; it aims merely at
evolution, and nothing else. It is only if humanity
had a universally recognised goal that we could
propose to do this or that: for the time being there
is no such goal. It follows that the pretensions
of morality should not be brought into any relation-
ship with mankind: this would be merely childish
and irrational. It is quite another thing to recom-
mend a goal to mankind: this goal would then be
something that would depend upon our own will
and pleasure. Provided that mankind in general
agreed to adopt such a goal, it could then impose
a moral law upon itself, a law which would, at all
events, be imposed by their own free will. Up to
now, however, the moral law has had to be placed


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I06 THE DAWN OF DAY.
above our own free will: strictly speaking, men
did not wish to impose this law upon themselves;
they wished to take it from somewhere, to discover
it, or to let themselves be commanded by it from
somewhere.
109.
Self-control and Moderation, and their
Final Motive. —I find not more than six essen-
tiallydifferent methods for combating the vehemence
of an impulse. First of all, we may avoid the
occasion for satisfying the impulse, weakening and
mortifying it by refraining from satisfying it for
long and ever-lengthening periods. Secondly, we
may impose a severe and regular order upon our-
selves in regard to the satisfying of our appetites.
By thus regulating the impulse and limiting its ebb
and flow to fixed periods, we may obtain intervals
in which it ceases to disturb us; and by beginning
in this way we may perhaps be able to pass on to
the first method. In the third place, we may de-
liberately give ourselves ovetto an unrestrained and
unbounded gratification of the impulse in order that
we may become disgusted with it, and to obtain by
means of this very disgust a command over the im-
pulse: provided, of course, that we do not imitate the
rider who rides his horse to death and breaks his
own neck in doing so. For this, unhappily, is gener-
ally the outcome of the application of this third
method.
In the fourth place, there is an intellectual trick,
which consists in associating the idea of the gratifica-
x



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 107
tion so firmly with some painful thought, that after a
little practice the thought of gratification is itself im-
mediately felt as a very painful one. (For example,
when the Christian accustoms himself to think of
the presence and scorn of the devil in the course of
sensual enjoyment, or everlasting punishment in
hell for revenge by murder; or even merely of the
contempt which he will meet with from those of
his fellow-men whom he most respects, if he steals
a sum of money, or if a man has often checked an
intense desire for suicide by thinking of the grief
and self-reproaches of his relations and friends, and
has thus succeeded in balancing himself upon the
edge of life: for, after some practice, these ideas
follow one another in his mind like cause and effect. )
Among instances of this kind may be mentioned
the cases of Lord Byron and Napoleon, in whom
the pride of man revolted and took offence at the
preponderance of one particular passion over the
collective attitude and order of reason. From this
arises the habit and joy of tyrannising over the
craving and making it, as it were, gnash its teeth.
"I will not be a slave of any appetite," wrote Byron
in his diary. In the fifth place, we may bring about
a dislocation of our powers by imposing upon our-
selves a particularly difficult and fatiguing task, or
by deliberately submitting to some new charm and
pleasure in order thus to turn our thoughts and
physical powers into other channels. It comes to
the same thing if we temporarily favour another im-
pulse by affording it numerous opportunities of
gratification, and thus rendering it the squanderer
of the power which would otherwise be command-


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106
THE DAWN OF DAY.
above our own free will: strictly speaking, men
did not wish to impose this law upon themselves;
they wished to take it from somewhere, to discover
it, or to let themselves be commanded by it from
somewhere.
109.
SELF-CONTROL AND MODERATION, AND THEIR
FINAL MOTIVE. — I find not more than six essen-
tially different methods for combating the vehemence
of an impulse. First of all, we may avoid the
occasion for satisfying the impulse, weakening and
mortifying it by refraining from satisfying it for
long and ever-lengthening periods. Secondly, we
may impose a severe and regular order upon our-
selves in regard to the satisfying of our appetites.
By thus regulating the impulse and limiting its ebb
and flow to fixed periods, we may obtain intervals
in which it ceases to disturb us; and by beginning
in this way we may perhaps be able to pass on to
the first method. In the third place, we may de-
liberately give ourselves over to an unrestrained and
unbounded gratification of the impulse in order that
we may become disgusted with it, and to obtain by
means of this very disgust a command over the im-
pulse: provided, of course, that we do not imitate the
rider who rides his horse to death and breaks his
own neck in doing so. For this, unhappily, is gener-
ally the outcome of the application of this third
method.
In the fourth place, there is an intellectual trick,
which consists in associating the idea of the gratifica-


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THE DAWN OF DAY.
107
tion so firmly with some painful thought, that after a
little practice the thought of gratification is itself im-
mediately felt as a very painful one. (For example,
when the Christian accustoms himself to think of
the presence and scorn of the devil in the course of
sensual enjoyment, or everlasting punishment in
hell for revenge by murder; or even merely of the
contempt which he will meet with from those of
his fellow-men whom he most respects, if he steals
a sum of money, or if a man has often checked an
intense desire for suicide by thinking of the grief
and self-reproaches of his relations and friends, and
has thus succeeded in balancing himself upon the
edge of life: for, after some practice, these ideas
follow one another in his mind like cause and effect. )
Among instances of this kind may be mentioned
the cases of Lord Byron and Napoleon, in whom
the pride of man revolted and took offence at the
preponderance of one particular passion over the
collective attitude and order of reason. From this
arises the habit and joy of tyrannising over the
craving and making it, as it were, gnash its teeth.
“ I will not be a slave of any appetite," wrote Byron
in his diary. In the fifth place, we may bring about
a dislocation of our powers by imposing upon our-
selves a particularly difficult and fatiguing task, or
by deliberately submitting to some new charm and
pleasure in order thus to turn our thoughts and
physical powers into other channels. It comes to
the same thing if we temporarily favour another im-
pulse by affording it numerous opportunities of
gratification, and thus rendering it the squanderer
of the power which would otherwise be command-


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106
THE DAWN OF DAY.
above our own free will: strictly speaking, men
did not wish to impose this law upon themselves;
they wished to take it from somewhere, to discover
it, or to let themselves be commanded by it from
somewhere.
109.
SELF-CONTROL AND MODERATION, AND THEIR
FINAL MOTIVE. —I find not more than six essen-
tially different methods for combating the vehemence
of an impulse. First of all, we may avoid the
occasion for satisfying the impulse, weakening and
mortifying it by refraining from satisfying it for
long and ever-lengthening periods. Secondly, we
may impose a severe and regular order upon our-
selves in regard to the satisfying of our appetites.
By thus regulating the impulse and limiting its ebb
and flow to fixed periods, we may obtain intervals
in which it ceases to disturb us; and by beginning
in this way we may perhaps be able to pass on to
the first method. In the third place, we may de-
liberately give ourselves over to an unrestrained and
unbounded gratification of the impulse in order that
we may become disgusted with it, and to obtain by
means of this very disgust a command over the im-
pulse: provided, of course, that we do not imitate the
rider who rides his horse to death and breaks his
own neck in doing so. For this, unhappily, is gener-
ally the outcome of the application of this third
method.
In the fourth place, there is an intellectual trick,
which consists in associating the idea of the gratifica-


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THE DAWN OF DAY.
107
tion so firmly with some painful thought, that after a
little practice the thought of gratification is itself im-
mediately felt as a very painful one. (For example,
when the Christian accustoms himself to think of
the presence and scorn of the devil in the course of
sensual enjoyment, or everlasting punishment in
hell for revenge by murder; or even merely of the
contempt which he will meet with from those of
his fellow-men whom he most respects, if he steals
a sum of money, or if a man has often checked an
intense desire for suicide by thinking of the grief
and self-reproaches of his relations and friends, and
has thus succeeded in balancing himself upon the
edge of life: for, after some practice, these ideas
follow one another in his mind like cause and effect. )
Among instances of this kind may be mentioned
the cases of Lord Byron and Napoleon, in whom
the pride of man revolted and took offence at the
preponderance of one particular passion over the
collective attitude and order of reason. From this
arises the habit and joy of tyrannising over the
craving and making it, as it were, gnash its teeth.
“I will not be a slave of any appetite," wrote Byron
in his diary. In the fifth place, we may bring about
a dislocation of our powers by imposing upon our-
selves a particularly difficult and fatiguing task, or
by deliberately submitting to some new charm and
pleasure in order thus to turn our thoughts and
physical powers into other channels. It comes to
the same thing if we temporarily favour another im-
pulse by affording it numerous opportunities of
gratification, and thus rendering it the squanderer
of the power which would otherwise be command-


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108 THE DAWN OF DAY.
eered, so to speak, by the tyrannical impulse. A
few, perhaps, will be able to restrain the particular
passion which aspires to domination by granting
their other known passions a temporary encourage-
ment and license in order that they may devour
the food which the tyrant wishes for himself
alone.
In the sixth and last place, the man who can
stand it, and thinks it reasonable to weaken and sub-
due his entire physical and psychical organisation,
likewise, of course, attains the goal of weakening a
single violent instinct; as, for example, those who
starve their sensuality and at the same time their
vigour, and often destroy their reason into the bar-
gain, such as the ascetics. —Hence, shunning the
opportunities, regulating the impulse, bringing
about satiety and disgust in the impulse, associating
a painful idea (such as that of discredit, disgust, or
offended pride), then the dislocation of one's forces,
and finally general debility and exhaustion: these
are the six methods. But the will to combat the
violence of a craving is beyond our power, equally
with the method we adopt and the success we may
have in applying it. In all this process our intellect
is rather merely the blind instrument of another rival
craving, whether it be the impulse to repose, or the
fear of disgrace and other evil consequences, or love.
While " we " thus imagine that we are complaining
of the violence of an impulse, it is at bottom merely
one impulse which is complaining of another, i. e. the
perception of the violent suffering which is being
caused us presupposes that there is another equally
or more violent impulse, and that a struggle
<
*.


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 109
is impending in which our intellect must take
part.
110.
That which Opposes. —We may observe the
following process in ourselves, and I should like
it to be often observed and confirmed. There arises
in us the scent of a kind of pleasure hitherto un-
known to us, and consequently a new craving.
Now, the question is, What opposes itself to this
craving? If it be things and considerations of a
common kind, or people whom we hold in no very
high esteem, the aim of the new craving assumes
the appearance of a "noble, good, praiseworthy
feeling, and one worthy of sacrifice ": all the moral
dispositions which have been inherited will adopt
it and will add it to the number of those aims which
we consider as moral—and now we imagine that
we are no longer striving after a pleasure, but after
a morality, which greatly increases our confidence
in our aspirations.
III.
To the Admirers of Objectiveness. —He
who, as a child, has observed in his parents and
acquaintances in the midst of whom he has grown
up, certain varied and strong feelings, with but
little subtle discernment and inclination for intel-
lectual justice, and has therefore employed his best
powers and his most precious time in imitating these
feelings, will observe in himself when he arrives
at years of discretion that every new thing or man
he meets with excites in him either sympathy or


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110 THE DAWN OF DAY.
aversion, envy or contempt. Under the domina-
tion of this experience, which he is powerless to
shake off, he admires neutrality of feeling or
"objectivity" as an extraordinary thing, as some-
thing connected with genius or a very rare morality,
and he cannot believe that even this neutrality is
merely the product of education and habit.
112.
On the Natural History of Duty and
RIGHt. —Our duties are the claims which others
have upon us. How did they acquire these claims?
By the fact that they considered us as capable of
making and holding agreements and contracts, by
assuming that we were their like and equals, and
by consequently entrusting something to us, bring-
ing us up, educating us, and supporting us. We
do our duty, i. e. we justify that conception of our
power for the sake of which all these things were
done for us. We return them in proportion as
they were meted out to us. It is thus our pride
that orders us to do our duty—we desire to re-
establish our own independence by opposing to that
which others have done for us something that we
do for them, for in that way the others invade our
sphere of power, and would for ever have a hand
in it if we did not make reprisals by means of
"duty," and thus encroach upon their power. The
rights of others can only have regard to that which
lies within our power; it would be unreasonable
on their part to require something from us which
does not belong to us. To put the matter more


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THE DAWN OF DAY. Iil
accurately, their rights can only relate to what they
imagine to be in our power, provided that it is
something that we ourselves consider as being in
our power. The same error may easily occur on
either side. The feeling of duty depends upon
our having the same belief in regard to the extent
of our power as other people have, i. e. that we can
promise certain things and undertake to do them
freely (" free will").
My rights consist of that part of my power which
others have not only conceded to me, but which
they wish to maintain for me. Why do they do
it? On the one hand they are actuated by wisdom,
fear and prudence: whether they expect something
similar from us (the protection of their rights),
whether they consider a struggle with us as danger-
ous or inopportune, or whether they see a dis-
advantage to themselves in every diminution of our
power, since in that case we should be ill adapted
for an alliance with them against a hostile third
power. On the other hand rights are granted by
donations and cessions. In this latter case, the
other people have not only enough power, but more
than enough, so that they can give up a portion and
guarantee it to the person to whom they give it:
whereby they presuppose a certain restricted sense
of power in the person upon whom they have be-
stowed the gift. In this way rights arise: recog-
nised and guaranteed degrees of power. When
the relations of powers to one another are materially
changed, rights disappear and new ones are formed,
as is demonstrated by the constant flux and reflux
of the rights of nations. When our power dimin-


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112 THE DAWN OF DAY.
ishes to any great extent, the feelings of those who
hitherto guaranteed it undergo some change: they
consider whether they shall once again restore us to
our former possession, and if they do not see their
way to do this they deny our " rights" from that
time forward. In the same way, if our power in-
creases to a considerable extent the feelings of those
who previously recognised it, and whose recognition
we no longer require, likewise change: they will
then try to reduce our power to its former dimen-
sions, and they will endeavour to interfere in our
affairs, justifying their interference by an appeal to
their " duty. " But this is merely useless word-quib-
bling. Where right prevails, a certain state and
degree of power is maintained, and all attempts at
its augmentation and diminution are resisted. The
right of others is the concession of our feeling of
power to the feeling of power in these others.
Whenever our power shows itself to be thoroughly
shattered and broken, our rights cease: on the
other hand, when we have become very much
stronger, the rights of others cease in our minds to be
what we have hitherto admitted them to be. The
man who aims at being just, therefore, must keep a
constant lookout for the changes in the indicator of
the scales in order that he may properly estimate the
degrees of power and right which, with the custom-
ary transitoriness of human things, retain their
equilibrium for only a short time and in most cases
continue to rise and fall. As a consequence it is
thus very difficult to be "just," and requires much
experience, good intentions, and an unusually large
amount of good sense.


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 113
I 13-
Striving for Distinction. —When we strive
after distinction we must ceaselessly keep our eyes
fixed on our neighbour and endeavour to ascertain
what his feelings are; but the sympathy and
knowledge which are necessary to satisfy this desire
are far from being inspired by harmlessness, com-
passion, or kindness. On the contrary, we wish
to perceive or find out in what way our neighbour
suffers from us, either internally or externally, how
he loses control over himself, and yields to the
impression which our hand or even our mere
appearance makes on him. Even when he who
aspires to distinction makes or wishes to make a
joyful, elevating, or cheerful impression, he does
not enjoy this success in that he rejoices, exalts,
or cheers his neighbour, but in that he leaves his
impress on the latter's soul, changing its form and
dominating it according to his will. The desire for
distinction is the desire to subject one's neighbour,
even if it be merely in an indirect fashion, one only
felt or even only dreamt of. There is a long series
of stages in this secretly-desired will to subdue, and
a very complete record of them would perhaps
almost be like an excellent history of culture from
the early distortions of barbarism down to the
caricatures of modern over-refinement and sickly
idealism.
This desire for distinction entails upon our
neighbour—to indicate only a few rungs of the
long ladder—torture first of all, followed by blows,
then terror, anxious surprise, wonder, envy, ad-
H


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114 THE DAWN OF DAY.
miration, elevation, pleasure, joy, laughter, derision,
mockery, sneers,scourging and self-inflicted torture.
There at the very top of the ladder stands the
ascetic and martyr, who himself experiences the
utmost satisfaction, because he inflicts on himself,
as a result of his desire for distinction, that pain
which his opposite, the barbarian on the first rung
of the ladder, inflicts upon those others, upon whom
and before whom he wishes to distinguish himself.
The triumph of the ascetic over himself, his intro- *
spective glance, which beholds a man split up into
a sufferer and a spectator, and which henceforth
never looks at the outside world but to gather from
it, as it were, wood for his own funeral pyre: this
final tragedy of the desire for distinction which
shows us only one person who, so to speak, is con-
sumed internally—that is an end worthy of the
beginning: in both cases there is an inexpressible
happiness at the sight of torture; indeed, happiness
considered as a feeling of power developed to the
utmost, has perhaps never reached a higher pitch
of perfection on earth than in the souls of super-
stitious ascetics. This is expressed by the
Brahmins in the story of King Visvamitra, who
obtained so much strength by thousands of years
of penance that he undertook to construct a new
heaven. I believe that in the entire category of
inward experiences the people of our time are mere
novices and clumsyguessers who "try to have a shot
at it": four thousand years ago much more was
known about these execrable refinements of self-
enjoyment. Perhaps at that time the creation of
the world was imagined by some Hindu dreamer


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 115
to have been an ascetic operation which a god took
upon himself! Perhaps this god may have wished
to join himself to a mobile nature as an instrument
of torture in order thus to feel his happiness and
power doubled! And even supposing him to have
been a god of love: what a delight it would have
been for him to create a suffering mankind in order
that he himself might suffer divinely and super-
humanly from the sight of the continual torture of
his creatures, and thus to tyrannise over himself!
And, again, supposing him to have been not only
a god of love, but also a god of holiness, we can
scarcely conceive the ecstasies of this divine ascetic
while creating sins and sinners and eternal punish-
ment, and an immense place of eternal torture
below his throne where there is a continual weeping
and wailing and gnashing of teeth!
It is not by any means impossible that the soul
of a St. Paul, a Dante, or a Calvin, and people like
them, may once have penetrated into the terrifying
secrets of such voluptuousness of power, and in
view of such souls we may well ask whether the
circle of this desire for distinction has come to a
close with the ascetic. Might it not be possible
for the course of this circle to be traversed a second
time, by uniting the fundamental idea of the as-
cetic, and at the same time that of a compassionate
Deity? In other words, pain would be given to
others in order that pain might be given to one's
self, so that in this way one could triumph over
one's self and one's pity to enjoy the extreme
voluptuousness of power. —Forgive me these
digressions, which come to my mind when I think


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Ii6 THE DAWN OF DAY.
of all the possibilities in the vast domain of
psychical debaucheries to which one may be led
by the desire for power!
114.
On the Knowledge of the Sufferer. —
The state of sick men who have suffered long and
terribly from the torture inflicted upon them by
their illness, and whose reason has nevertheless not
been in any way affected, is not without a certain
amount of value in our search for knowledge—
quite apart from the intellectual benefits which
follow upon every profound solitude and every
sudden and justified liberation from duties and
habits. The man who suffers severely looks forth
with terrible calmness from his state of suffering
upon outside things: all those little lying enchant-
ments, by which things are usually surrounded when
seen through the eye of a healthy person, have
vanished from the sufferer; his own life even lies
there before him, stripped of all bloom and colour.
If by chance it has happened that up to then he
has lived in some kind of dangerous fantasy, this
extreme disenchantment through pain is the means,
and possibly the only means, of extricating him
from it . (It is possible that this is what happened
to the Founder of Christianity when suspended
from the Cross; for the bitterest words ever pro-
nounced, " My God, My God, why hast Thou for-
saken Me? " if understood in their deepest sense,
as they ought to be understood, contain the
evidence of a complete disillusionment and en-



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 117
lightenment in regard to the deceptions of life: in
that moment of supreme suffering Christ obtained
a clear insight into Himself, just as in the poet's
narrative did the poor dying Don Quixote. )
The formidable tension of the intellect that
wishes to hold its own against pain shows every-
thing that one now looks upon in a new light, and
the inexpressible charm of this new light is often
powerful enough to withstand all the seductiveness
of suicide and to make the continuation of life seem
very desirable to the sufferer. His mind scornfully
turns to the warm and comfortable dream-world
in which the healthy man moves about thought-
lessly, and he thinks with contempt of the noblest
and most cherished illusions in which he formerly
indulged. He experiences delight in conjuring up
this contempt as if from the depths of hell, and
thus inflicting the bitterest sufferings upon his soul:
it is by this counterpoise that he bears up against
physical suffering—he feels that such a counter-
poise is now essential! In one terrible moment
of clear-sightedness he says to himself, " Be for
once thine own accuser and hangman; for once
regard thy suffering as a punishment which thou
hast inflicted on thyself! Enjoy thy superiority
as a judge: better still, enjoy thine own will and
pleasure, thy tyrannical arbitrariness! Raise thy-
self above thy life as above thy suffering, and look
down into the depth of reason and unreason! "
Our pride revolts as it never did before, it ex-
periences an incomparable charm in defending life
against such a tyrant as suffering and against all
the insinuations of this tyrant, who would fain urge


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Ii8 THE DAWN OF DAY.
us to give evidence against life,—we are taking the
part of life in the face of this tyrant. In this state
of mind we take up a bitter stand against all
pessimism in order that it may not appear to be a
consequence of our condition, and thus humiliate
us as conquered ones. The charm of being just
in our judgments was also never greater than now;
for now this justice is a triumph over ourselves and
over so irritated a state of mind that unfairness of
judgment might be excused,— but we will not be
excused, it is now, if ever, that we wish to show that
we need no excuse. We pass through downright
orgies of pride.
And now appears the first ray of relief, of re-
covery, and one of its first effects is that we turn
against the preponderance of our pride: we call
ourselves foolish and vain, as if we had undergone
some unique experience. We humiliate ungrate-
fully this all-powerful pride, the aid of which en-
abled us to endure the pain we suffered, and we
call vehemently for some antidote for this pride:
we wish to become strangers to ourselves and to
be freed from our own person after pain has forcibly
made us personal too long. "Away with this
pride," we cry, " it was only another illness and
convulsion! " Once more we look longingly at
men and nature and recollect with a sorrowful smile
that now since the veil has fallen we regard many
things concerning them in a new and different
light,—but we are refreshed by once more seeing
the softened lights of life, and emerge from
that fearfully dispassionate daylight in which we
as sufferers saw things and through things. We
<■
N


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 119
do not get angry when we see the charms of
health resume their play, and we contemplate the
sight as if transformed, gently and still fatigued.
In this state we cannot listen to music without
weeping.
115.
The so-called "Ego. "—Language and the
prejudices upon which language is based very often
act as obstacles in our paths when we proceed to
explore internal phenomena and impulses: as one
example, we may instance the fact that theie are
only words to express the superlative degrees of
these phenomena and impulses. Now, it is our
habit no longer to observe accurately when words
fail us, since it is difficult in such cases to think
with precision: in former times, even, people in-
voluntarily came to the conclusion that where the
domain of words ceased, the domain of existence
ceased also. Wrath, hatred, love, pity, desire,
recognition, joy, pain: all these are names indi-
cating extreme conditions; the milder and middle
stages, and even more particularly the ever active
lower stages, escape our attention, and yet it is they
which weave the warp and woof of our character
and destiny. It often happens that these extreme
outbursts—and even the most moderate pleasure
or displeasure of which we are actually conscious,
whether in partaking of food or listening to a sound,
is possibly, if properly estimated, merely an extreme
outburst,—destroy the texture and are then violent
exceptions, in most cases the consequences of some
congestions,—and how easily as such can they


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120 THE DAWN OF DAY.
mislead the observer! as indeed they mislead the
person acting! We are all of us not what we
appear to be according to the conditions for which
alone we have consciousness and words, and con-
sequently praise and blame. We fail to recognise
ourselves after these coarse outbursts which are
known to ourselves alone, we draw conclusions from
data where the exceptions prove stronger than the
rules; we misinterpret ourselves in reading our own
ego's pronouncements, which appeared to be so
clear. But our opinion of ourselves, this so-called
ego which we have arrived at by this wrong method,
contributes henceforth to form our character and
destiny.
116.
The Unknown World of the " Subject. "
—What men have found it so difficult to under-
stand from the most ancient times down to the
present day is their ignorance in regard to them-
selves, not merely with respect to good and evil,
but something even more essential. The oldest of
illusions lives on, namely, that we know, and know
precisely in each case, how human action is origi-
nated. Not only " God who looks into the heart,"
not only the man who acts and reflects upon his
action, but everybody does not doubt that he under-
stands the phenomena of action in every one else.
"I know what I want and what I have done, I am
free and responsible for my act, and I make others
responsible for their acts; I can mention by its
name every moral possibility and every internal
movement which precedes an act,—ye may act as


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 121
ye will, I understand myself and I understand
you all! " Such was what every one thought once
upon a time, and almost every one thinks so even
now. Socrates and Plato, who in this matter were
great sceptics and admirable innovators,were never-
theless intensely credulous in regard to that fatal
prejudice, that profound error, which holds that
"The right knowledge must necessarily be followed
by the right action. " In holding this principle they
were still the heirs of the universal folly and pre-
sumption that knowledge exists concerning the
essence of an action.
"It would indeed be dreadful if the compre-
hension of the essence of a right action were not
followed by that right action itself"—this was the
only manner in which these great men thought it
necessary to demonstrate this idea, the contrary
seemed to them to be inconceivable and mad; and
nevertheless this contrary corresponds to the naked
reality which has been demonstrated daily and
hourly from time immemorial. Is it not a " dread-
ful" truth that all that we know about an act is never
sufficient to accomplish it, that the bridge connect-
ing the knowledge of the act with the act itself has
never yet been built? Acts are never what they
appear to us to be. We have taken great pains
to learn that external things are not as they
appear to us. —Well! It is the same with internal
phenomena. All moral acts are in reality " some-
thing different,"—we cannot say anything more
about them, and all acts are essentially unknown
to us. The general belief, however, has been and
still is quite the contrary: the most ancient realism


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122 THE DAWN OF DAY.
is against us: up to the present humanity has
thought, "An action is what it appears to be. "
(In re-reading these words a very expressive passage
from Schopenhauer occurs to me, and I will quote
it as a proof that he, too, without the slightest
scruple, continued to adhere to this moral realism:
"Each one of us is in reality a competent and
perfect moral judge, knowing exactly good and
evil, made holy by loving good and despising evil,
—such is every one of us in so far as the acts of
others and not his own are under consideration, and
when he has merely to approve or disapprove, whilst
the burden of the performance of the acts is borne
by other shoulders. Every one is therefore justified
in occupying as confessor the place of God. ")
117.
In PRISOn. —My eye, whether it be keen or
weak, can only see a certain distance, and it is
within this space that I live and move: this
horizon is my immediate fate, greater or lesser,
from which I cannot escape. Thus, a concentric
circle is drawn round every being, which has a centre
and is peculiar to himself. In the same way our
ear encloses us in a small space, and so likewise
does our touch. We measure the world by these
horizons within which our senses confine each of
us within prison walls. We say that this is near
and that is far distant, that this is large and that is
small, that one thing is hard and another soft; and
this appreciation of things we call sensation—but
it is all an error per se! According to the number


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 123
of events and emotions which it is on an average
possible for us to experience in a given space of
time, we measure our lives; we call them short or
long, rich or poor, full or empty; and according to
the average of human life we estimate that of other
beings,—and all this is an error per se\
If we had eyes a hundred times more piercing
to examine the things that surround us, men would
seem to us to be enormously tall; we can even
imagine organs by means of which men would ap-
pear to us to be of immeasurable stature. On the
other hand, certain organs could be so formed as to
permit us to view entire solar systems as if they were
contracted and brought close together like a single
cell: and to beings of an inverse order a single cell
of the human body could be made to appear in its
construction, movement, and harmony as if it were
a solar system in itself. The habits of our senses
have wrapped us up in a tissue of lying sensations
which in their turn lie at the base of all our judg-
ments and our " knowledge,"—there are no means
of exit or escape to the real world! We are like
spiders in our own webs, and, whatever we may
catch in them, it will only be something that our
web is capable of catching.
118.
What is our Neighbour? —What do we con-
ceive of our neighbour except his limits: I mean
that whereby he, as it were, engraves and stamps
himself in and upon us? We can understand
nothing of him except the changes which take place


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124 THE DAWN OF DAY.
upon our own person and of which he is the cause,
what we know of him is like a hollow, modelled
space. We impute to him the feelings which his
acts arouse in us, and thus give him a wrong and
inverted postivity. We form him after our know-
ledge of ourselves into a satellite of our own system,
and if he shines upon us, or grows dark, and we in
any case are the ultimate cause of his doing so, we
nevertheless still believe the contrary! O world
of phantoms in which we live! O world so per-
verted, topsy-turvy and empty, and yet dreamt of
as full and upright!
119.
Experience and Invention. —To however
high a degree a man can attain to knowledge of
himself, nothing can be more incomplete than the
conception which he forms of the instincts constitut-
ing his individuality. He can scarcely name the
more common instincts: their number and force,
their flux and reflux, their action and counteraction,
and, above all, the laws of their nutrition, remain
absolutely unknown to him. This nutrition, there-
fore, becomes a work of chance: the dailyexperiences
of our lives throw their prey now to this instinct and
now to that, and the instincts gradually seize upon
it; but the ebb and flow of these experiences does
not stand in any rational relationship to thenutritive
needs of the total number of the instincts. Two
things, then, must always happen: some cravings
will be neglected and starved to death, while others
will be overfed. Every moment in the life of man
causes some polypous arms of his being to grow and


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 12$
others to wither away, in accordance with the nutri-
ment which that moment may or may not bring with
it. Our experiences, as I have already said, are all
in this sense means of nutriment, but scattered about
with a careless hand and without discrimination
between the hungry and the overfed. As a conse-
quence of this accidental nutrition of each particular
part, the polypus in its complete development will
be something just as fortuitous as its growth.
To put this more clearly: let us suppose that an
instinct or craving has reached that point when it
demands gratification,—either the exercise of its
power or the discharge of it, or the filling up of a
vacuum (all this is metaphorical language),—then
it will examine every event that occurs in the course
of the day to ascertain how it can be utilised with
the object of fulfilling its aim: whether the man
runs or rests, or is angry, or reads or speaks or
fights or rejoices, the unsatiated instinct watches,
as it were, every condition into which the man
enters, and, as a rule, if it finds nothing for itself
it must wait, still unsatisfied. After a little while
it becomes feeble, and at the end of a few days or
a few months, if it has not been satisfied, it will
wither away like a plant which has not been
watered. This cruelty of chance would perhaps be
more conspicuous if all the cravings were as vehe-
ment in their demands as hunger, which refuses to
be satisfied with imaginary dishes; but the great
majority of our instincts, especially those which are
called moral, are thus easily satisfied,—if it be per-
mitted to suppose that our dreams serve as com-
pensation to a certain extent for the accidental


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126 THE DAWN OF DAY.
absence of " nutriment" during the day. Why was
last night's dream full of tenderness and tears, that
of the night before amusing and gay, and the
previous one adventurous and engaged in some
continual obscure search? How does it come about
that in this dream I enjoy indescribable beauties of
music, and in that one I soar and fly upwards with
the delight of an eagle to the most distant heights?
These inventions in which our instincts of tender-
ness, merriment, or adventurousness, or our desire
for music and mountains, can have free play and
scope—and every one can recall striking instances
—are interpretations of our nervous irritations
during sleep, very free and arbitrary interpretations
of the movements of our blood and intestines, and
the pressure of our arm and the bed coverings, or
the sound of a church bell, the weathercocks, the
moths, and so on. That this text, which on the
whole is very much the same for one night as
another, is so differently commented upon, that our
creative reason imagines such different causes for
the nervous irritations of one day as compared with
another, may be explained by the fact that the
prompter of this reason was different to-day from
yesterday—another instinct or craving wished to
be satisfied, to show itself, to exercise itself and be
refreshed and discharged: this particular one being
at its height to-day and another one being at its
height last night. Real life has not the freedom
of interpretation possessed by dream life; it is less
poetic and less unrestrained—but is it necessary for
me to show that our instincts, when we are awake,
likewise merely interpret our nervous irritations and


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 127
determine their "causes " in accordance with their
requirements? that there is no really essential
difference between waking and dreaming! that
even in comparing different degrees of culture, the
freedom of the conscious interpretation of the one
is not in any way inferior to the freedom in dreams
of the other! that our moral judgments and valua-
tions are only images and fantasies concerning
physiological processes unknown to us, a kind of
habitual language to describe certain nervous irrita-
tions? that all our so-called consciousness is a more
or less fantastic commentary of an unknown text,
one which is perhaps unknowable but yet felt?
Consider some insignificant occurrence. Let us
suppose that some day as we pass along a public
street we see some one laughing at us. In accord-
ance with whatever craving has reached its culmin-
ating point within us at that moment, this incident
will have this or that signification for us; and it
will be a very different occurrence in accordance
with the class of men to which we belong. One
man will take it like a drop of rain, another will
shake it off like a fly, a third person will try to pick
a quarrel on account of it, a fourth will examine
his garments to see if there is anything about them
likely to cause laughter, and a fifth will in conse-
quence think about what is ridiculous/^r se, a sixth
will be pleased at having involuntarily contributed
to add a ray of sunshine and mirth to the world,—
in all these cases some craving is gratified, whether
anger, combativeness, meditation, or benevolence.
This instinct, whatever it may be, has seized upon
that incident as its prey: why that particular one?


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128 THE DAWN OF DAY.
Because, hungry and thirsty, it was lying in
ambush.
Not long ago at 11 o'clock in the morning a man
suddenly collapsed and fell down in front of me as
if struck by lightning. All the women who were
near at once gave utterance to cries of horror, while
I set the man on his feet again and waited until
he recovered his speech. During this time no
muscle of my face moved and I experienced no
sensation of fear or pity; I simply did what was
most urgent and reasonable and calmly proceeded
on my way. Supposing some one had told me on
the previous evening that at 11 o'clock on the
following day a man would fall down in front of
me like this, I should have suffered all kinds of
agonies in the interval, lying awake all night, and
at the decisive moment should also perhaps have
fallen down like the man instead of helping him;
for in the meantime all the imaginable cravings
within me would have had leisure to conceive and
to comment upon this incident. What are our ex-
periences, then? Much more what we attribute to
them than what they really are. Or should we
perhaps say that nothing is contained in them?
that experiences in themselves are merely works of
fancy?
120.
To Tranquiluse the Sceptic. —" I don't
know at all what I am doing. I don't know in
the least what I ought to do ! "—You arc right, but
be sure of this: you are being done at every
moment! Mankind has at all times mistaken the



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 129
active for the passive: it is its eternal grammatical
blunder.
121.
Cause and Effect. —On this mirror—and our
intellect is a mirror—something is going on that
indicates regularity: a certain thing is each time fol-
lowed by another certain thing. When we perceive
this and wish to give it a name, we call it cause and
effect,—fools that we are! as if in this we had
understood or could understand anything! For, of
course, we have seen nothing but the images of
causes and effects, and it is just this figurativeness
which renders it impossible for us to see a more
substantial relation than that of sequence!
122.
The Purposes in Nature. —Any impartial
investigator who examines the history of the eye
and its form in the lower creatures, and sees how
the visual organ was slowly developed, cannot help
recognising that sight was not the first purpose of
the eye, but probably only asserted itself when pure
hazard had contributed to bring together the appar-
atus. One single example of this kind, and the
"final purposes" fall from our eyes like scales.
123.
Reason. — How did reason come into the
world? As is only proper, in an irrational manner;
by accident. We shall have to guess at this acci-
dent as a riddle.
I


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130 THE DAWN OF DAY.
124.
What is Volition? —We laugh at a man
who, stepping out of his room at the very minute
when the sun is rising, says, " It is my will that the
sun shall rise"; or at him who, unable to stop a
wheel, says, "I wish it to roll"; or, again, at him who,
thrown in a wrestling match, says, " Here I lie, but
here I wish to lie. " But, joking apart, do we not
act like one of these three persons whenever we use
the expression " I wish "?
125.
On the Domain of Freedom. —We can think
many more things than we can do and experience
—i. e. our faculty of thinking is superficial and is
satisfied with what lies on the surface, it does not
even perceive this surface. If our intellect were
strictly developed in proportion to our power, and
our exercise of this power, the primary principle of
our thinking would be that we can understand only
that which we are able to do—if, indeed, there is
any understanding at all. The thirsty man is
without water, but the creations of his imagination
continually bring the image of water to his sight,
as if nothing could be more easily procured. The
superficial and easily satisfied character of the in-
tellect cannot understand real need, and thus feels
itself superior. It is proud of being able to do more,
to run faster, and to reach the goal almost within the
twinkling of an eye: and in this way the domain
of thought, when contrasted with the domain of



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 131
action, volition, and experience, appears to be the
domain of liberty, while, as I have already stated,
it is nothing but the domain of superficiality and
self-sufficiency.
126.
FORGETFulNESs. —It has never yet been proved
that there is such a thing as forgetfulness: all that
we know is that we have no power over recollection.
In the meantime we have filled up this gap in our
power with the word " forgetfulness," exactly as if
it were another faculty added to our list. But, after
all, what is within our power? If that word fills
up a gap in our power, might not the other words
be found capable of filling up a gap in the know-
ledge which we possess of our power?
127.
For a Definite Purpose. —Of all human ac-
tions probably the least understood are those which
are carried out for a definite purpose, because they
have always been regarded as the most intelligible
and commonplace to our intellect. The great prob-
lems can be picked up in the highways and byways.
128.
Dreaming and Responsibility. —You would
wish to be responsible for everything except your
dreams! What miserable weakness, what lack of
logical courage! Nothing contains more of your


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132 THE DAWN OF DAY.
own work than your dreams! Nothing belongs to
you so much! Substance, form, duration, actor,
spectator—in these comedies you act as your
complete selves! And yet it is just here that you
are afraid and ashamed of yourselves, and even
Oedipus, the wise Oedipus, derived consolation
from the thought that we cannot be blamed for
what we dream. From this I must conclude that
the great majority of men must have some dreadful
dreams to reproach themselves with. If it were
otherwise, to how great an extent would these
nocturnal fictions have been exploited in the
interests of man's pride! Need I add that the
wise Oedipus was right, that we are really not
responsible for our dreams any more than for our
waking hours, and that the doctrine of free will has
as its parents man's pride and sense of power!
Perhaps I say this too often; but that does not
prove that it is not true.
129.
The Alleged Combat of Motives. —People
speak of the " combat of motives," but they desig-
nate by this expression that which is not a com-
bat of motives at all. What I mean is that, in
our meditative consciousness, the consequences of
different actions which we think we are able to
carry out present themselves successively, one after
the other, and we compare these consequences in
our mind. We think we have come to a decision
concerning an action after we have established to
our own satisfaction that the consequences of this



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 133
action will be favourable. Before we arrive at this
conclusion, however, we often seriously worry be-
cause of the great difficulties we experience in
guessing what the consequences are likely to be,
and in seeing them in their full importance, without
exception—and,after all this, we must reckon up any
fortuitous elements that are likely to arise. Then
comes the chief difficulty: all the consequences
which we have with such difficulty determined one
by one must be weighed on some scales against
each other; and it only too often comes about that,
owing to the difference in the quality of all the con-
ceivable consequences, both scales and weights are
lacking for this casuistry of advantage.
Even supposing, however, that in this case we
are able to overcome the difficulty, and that mere
hazard has placed in our scales results which permit
of a mutual balance, we have now, in the idea of
the consequences of a particular action, a motive
for performing this very action, but only one motive!
When we have finally decided to act, however, we
are fairly often influenced by another order of mo-
tives than those of the " image of the consequences. "
What brings this about may be the habitual work-
ing of our inner machinery, or some little encourage-
ment on the part of a person whom we fear or
honour or love, or the love of comfort which prefers
to do that which lies nearest; or some stirring of
the imagination provoked at the decisive moment
by some event of trifling importance; or some
physical influence which manifests itself quite un-
expectedly; a mere whim brings it about; or
the outburst of a passion which, as it accidentally


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134 THE DAWN OF DAY.
happens, is ready to burst forth—in a word, motives
operate which we do not understand very well, or
which we do not understand at all, and which
we can never balance against one another in
advance.
It is probable that a contest is going on among
these motives too, a driving backwards and for-
wards, a rising and lowering of the parts, and it is
this which would be the real "contest of motives,"
something quite invisible and unknown to us. I
have calculated the consequences and the successes,
and in doing so have set a very necessary motive
in the line of combat with the other motives,—but
I am as little able to draw up this battle line as to
see it: the battle itself is hidden from my sight,
as likewise is the victory, as victory; for I certainly
come to know what I shall finally do, but I cannot
know what motive has in the end proved to be the
victor. Nevertheless, we are decidedly not in the
habit of taking all these unconscious phenomena
into account, and we generally conceive of the pre-
liminary stages of an action only so far as they
are conscious: thus we mistake the combat of the
motives for a comparison of the possible con-
sequences of different actions,—a mistake that
brings with it most important consequences, and
consequences that are most fatal to the develop-
ment of morals.
130.
AiMS? WILL ? —We have accustomed ourselves
to believe in two kingdoms, the domain of pur-
poses and volition, and the domain of chance. In



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 135
this latter domain everything is done senselessly,
there is a continual going to and fro without any
one being able to say why or wherefore. We stand
in awe of this powerful realm of the great cosmic
stupidity, for in most instances we learn to know
it when it falls down upon the other world, that
of aims and intentions, like a slate from a roof,
always overwhelming some beautiful purpose of
ours.
This belief in these two kingdoms arises from
ancient romanticism and legend: we clever dwarfs,
with all our will and aims, are interfered with,
knocked down, and very often crushed to death
by those ultra-stupid giants, the accidents,—but
in spite of this we should not like to be deprived
of the fearful poetry of their proximity, for these
monsters very often make their appearance when
life in the spider's web of definite aims has become
too tiresome or too anxious for us, and they some-
times bring about a divine diversion when their
hands for once tear the whole web in pieces,—not
that these irrational beings ever intend to do what
they do, or even observe it. But their coarse and
bony hands rend our web as if it were thin air.
Moira was the name given by the Greeks to
this realm of the incalculable and of sublime and
eternal limitedness; and they set it round their
gods like a horizon beyond which they could neither
see nor act,—with that secret defiance of the gods
which one meets with in different nations: the gods
are worshipped, but a final trump card is held in
readiness to play against them.