No More Learning

8 (#30) ###############################################

8
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
<
3.
Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and
having read between their lines long enough, I now
say to myself that the greater part of conscious
thinking must be counted amongst the instinctive
functions, and it is so even in the case of philo-
sophical thinking; one has here to learn anew, as
one learned anew about heredity and “innateness. ”
As little as the act of birth comes into con-
sideration in the whole process and procedure of
heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" opposed
to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater
part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is
secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into
definite channels. And behind all logic and its
seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valua-
tions, or to speak more plainly, physiological de-
mands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of
life. For example, that the certain is worth more
than the uncertain, that illusion is less valuable
than “truth": such valuations, in spite of their
regulative importance for us, might notwithstanding
be only superficial valuations, special kinds of
niaiserie, such as may be necessary for the main-
tenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing,
in effect, that man is not just the measure of
things. "
4.
The falseness of an opinion is not for us any
objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new
language sounds most strangely. The question is,
how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving,


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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
9
species-preserving, perhaps_speeies Fearing; and
we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the
falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments
a priori betong), are the most indispensable to us;
that without a recognition of logical fictions, with-
out a comparison of reality with the purely imagined
world of the absolute and immutable, without a
constant counterfeiting of the world by means of
numbers, man could not live—that the renuncia-
tion of false opinions would be a renunciation of
life, a negation of life. To recognise untruth as a
condition of life: that is certainly to impugn the call you to
:
question
traditionat ideas of value in a dangerous manner,
and a philosophy which ventures to do so,
thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.
5.
That which causes philosophers to be regarded
half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the
oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are-
how often and easily they make mistakes and lose
their way, in short, how childish and childlike they
are,-but that there is not enough honest dealing
with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous
outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even
hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose
as though their real opinions had been discovered
and attained through the self-evolving of a cold,
pure, divinely indifferent dialectic in contrast to
all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk
of “inspiration"); whereas, in fact, a prejudiced pro-
position, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally
their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is de-
"


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10
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
fended by them with arguments sought out after
the event. They are all advocates who do not wish
to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders,
also, of their prejudices, which they dub “truths,"
-and very far from having the conscience which
bravely admits this to itself; very far from having
the good taste of the courage which goes so far
as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend
or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.
The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally
stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the
dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead)
to his “categorical imperative"-makes us fastidious
ones smile, we who find no small amusement in
spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and
ethical preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-
pocus in mathematical form, by means of which
Spinoza has as it were clad his philosophy in mail
and mask-in fact, the "love of his wisdom," to
translate the term fairly and squarely-in order
thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of
the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on
that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene :-how
much of personal timidity and vulnerability does
this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray !
6.
It has gradually become clear to me what every
great philosophy up till now has consisted of
namely, the confession of its originator, and a species
of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and
moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in
every philosophy has constituted the true vital


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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
II
germ out of which the entire plant has always
grown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest
metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been
arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask
oneself: "What_morality do they (or does he)
aim at? " Accordingly, I do not believe that an
"impulse to knowledge” is the father of philosophy;
but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only
made use of knowledge and mistaken knowledge! )
as an instrument. But whoever considers the funda-
mental impulses of man with a view to determining
how far they may have here acted as inspiring genii
(or as demons and cobolds), will find that they
have all practised philosophy at one time or another,
and that each one of them would have been only
too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of
existence and the legitimate lord over all the other
impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as
such, attempts to philosophise. To be sure, in the
case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men,
it may be otherwise—"better,” if you will ; there
there may really be such a thing as an “impulse to
knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-
work, which, when well wound up, works away in-
dustriously to that end, without the rest of the
scholarly impulses taking any material part therein.
The actual “interests" of the scholar, therefore, are
generally in quite another direction in the family,
perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is,
in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research
his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful
young worker becomes a good philologist, a mush-
room specialist, or a chemist; he is not characterised
>
6


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12
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on
the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal;
and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and
decisive testimony as to who he is,—that is to say, in
what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand
to each other.
-
7.
How malicious philosophers can be! I know of
nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurus took
the liberty of making on Plato and the Platonists:
he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original
sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies
“Flatterers of Dionysius”-consequently, tyrants'
accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however,
it is as much as to say, “ They are all actors, there
is nothing genuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax
was a popular name for an actor). And the latter
is really the malignant reproach that Epicurus cast
upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose
manner, the mise en scène style of which Plato and
his scholars were masters-of which Epicurus was
not a master! He, the old school teacher of Samos,
who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens
and wrote three hundred books, perhaps out of rage
and ambitious envy of Plato, who knows! Greece
!
took a hundred years to find out who the garden-
god Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out?
8
There is a point in every philosophy at which
“conviction" of the philosopher appears on the
»


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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
13
scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient
mystery :
Adventavit asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus.
9.
You desire to live "according to Nature"? Oh,
you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to
yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extra-
vagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or
consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruit-
ful and barren and uncertain : imagine to yourselves
indifference as a power-how could you live in accord-
ance with such indifference? To live-is not that
just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature?
Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being
limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted
that your imperative, “living according to Nature,”
means actually the same as “living according to
life”-how could you do differently? Why should
you make a principle out of what you yourselves are,
and must be? In reality, however, it is quite other-
wise with you: while you pretend to read with
rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want
something quite the contrary, you extraordinary
stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you
wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to
Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you
insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa,"
and would like everything to be made after your
own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and
generalisation of Stoicism! With all your love for
truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persist-


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14
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
no
-
ently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature
falsely, that is to say, Stoically, that you are
longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all,
some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the
Bedlamite hope that because you are able to tyran-
nise over yourselves--Stoicism is self-tyranny-
Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannised over :
is not the Stoic a part of Nature ? . . . But this is
an old and everlasting story: what happened in old
times with the Stoics still happens to-day, as soon
as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It
always creates the world in its own image; it can-
not do otherwise ; philosophy is this tyrannical im-
pulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will
to creation of the world,” the will to the causa
prima.
<<
IO.
The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say
craftiness, with which the problem of “the real and
the apparent world” is dealt with at present
throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought and
attention; and he who hears only a "Will to
Truth” in the background, and nothing else, cannot
certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and
isolated cases, it may really have happened that
such a Will to Truth-a certain extravagant and
adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of
the forlorn hope-has participated therein : that
which in the end always prefers a handful of
“certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful possi-
bilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of
conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in a
"


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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
15
sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain something.
But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despair-
ing, mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the
courageous bearing such a virtue may display. It
seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger and
livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In
that they side against appearance, and speak super-
ciliously of "perspective,” in that they rank the
credibility of their own bodies about as low as the
credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth
stands still,” and thus, apparently, allowing with
complacency their securest possession to escape
(for what does one at present believe in more
firmly than in one's body ? ),—who knows if they are
not really trying to win back something which
was formerly an even securer possession, something
of the old domain of the faith of former times,
perhaps the “immortal soul,” perhaps " the old God,”
in short, ideas by which they could live better, that
is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than
by “modern ideas"? There is distrust of these
modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a
disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday
and to-day; there is perhaps some slight admixture
of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure
the bric-d-brac of ideas of the most varied origin,
such as so-called Positivism at present throws on
the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at
the village-fair motleyness and patchiness of all
these reality-philosophasters, in whom there is
nothing either new or true, except this motleyness.
Therein it seems to me that we should agree
with those sceptical anti-realists and knowledge-
"


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16
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
. .
microscopists of the present day; their instinct,
which repels them from modern reality, is unrefuted
what do their retrograde by-paths concern
us! The main thing about them is not that they
wish to go “ back,” but that they wish to get away
therefrom. A little more strength, swing, courage,
and artistic power, and they would be off--and not
back!
II.
It seems to me that there is everywhere an
attempt at present to divert attention from the
actual influence which Kant exercised on German
philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the
value which he set upon himself. Kant was first
and foremost proud of his Table of Categories;
with it in his hand he said: “This is the most
difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on
behalf of metaphysics. " Let us only understand
this “could be"! He was proud of having dis-
covered a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic
judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived
himself in this matter; the development and rapid
flourishing of German philosophy depended never-
theless on his pride, and on the eager rivalry of the
younger generation to discover if possible something
-at all events new faculties”-of which to be still
prouder! ”-But let us reflect for a moment—it is
high time to do so. “How are synthetic judgments
a priori possible ? " Kant asks himself—and what is
really his answer? “By means of a means (faculty)”
- but unfortunately not in five words, but so
circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display


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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
17
»
6
of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that
one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie
allemande involved in such an answer. People
were beside themselves with delight over this new
faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when
Kant further discovered a moral faculty in man-
for at that time Germans were still moral, not yet
dabbling in the “ Politics of hard fact. " Then came
the honeymoon of German philosophy. All the
young theologians of the Tübingen institution
went immediately into the groves—all seeking for
“faculties. " And what did they not find in that
-
innocent, rich, and still youthful period of the
German spirit, to which Romanticism, the malicious
fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet
distinguish between "finding" and "inventing”!
Above all a faculty for the "transcendental”;
Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition, and
thereby gratified the most earnest longings of
the naturally pious - inclined Germans. One can
do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuber-
ant and eccentric movement (which was really
youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised
itself so boldly in hoary and senile conceptions),
than to take it seriously, or even treat it with
moral indignation. Enough, however-the world
grew older, and the dream vanished. A time
came when people rubbed their foreheads, and
they still rub them to-day. People had been
dreaming, and first and foremost-old Kant. “By
means of a means (faculty)”—he had said, or at
least meant to say. But, is that-an answer?
An
explanation? Or is it not rather merely a repetition
B


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18
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
of the question? How does opium induce sleep?
"By means of a means (faculty)," namely the virtus
dormitiva, replies the doctor in Molière,
Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva,
Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.
But such replies belong to the realm of comedy,
and it is high time to replace the Kantian question,
“How are synthetic judgments a priori possible ? "
by another question, “Why is belief in such judg-
ments necessary ? ”-in effect, it is high time that
we should understand that such judgments must be
believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation
of creatures like ourselves; though they still might
naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly
spoken, and roughly and readily-synthetic judg-
ments a priori should not “ be possible” at all; we
have no right to them; in our mouths they are
nothing but false judgments. Only, of course, the
belief in their truth is necessary, as plausible belief
and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective
view of life. And finally, to call to mind the enor-
mous influence which “German philosophy”-I
hope you understand its right to inverted commas
(goosefeet)? —has exercised throughout the whole
of Europe, there is no doubt that a certain virtus
dormitiva had a share in it; thanks to German
philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the
virtuous, the mystics, the artists, the three-fourths
Christians, and the political obscurantists of all
nations, to find an antidote to the still overwhelming
sensualism which overflowed from the last century
into this, in short—"sensus assoupire. "


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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
19
12.
As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the
best refuted theories that have been advanced, and
in Europe there is now perhaps no one in the
learned world so unscholarly as to attach serious sig-
nification to it, except for convenient everyday use
(as an abbreviation of the means of expression)-
thanks chiefly to the Pole Boscovich: he and the
Pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest and
most successful opponents of ocular evidence. For
whilst Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, con-
trary to all the senses, that the earth does not stand
fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in
the last thing that “stood fast” of the earth-the
belief in “substance," in "matter," in the earth-
residuum, and particle - atom: it is the greatest
triumph over the senses that has hitherto been
gained on earth. One must, however, go still
further, and also declare war, relentless war to the
knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which
still lead a dangerous after-life in places where no
one suspects them, like the more celebrated “meta-
physical requirements”: one must also above all
give the finishing stroke to that other and more
portentous atomism which Christianity has taught
best and longest, the soul-atomism. Let it be per-
mitted to designate by this expression the belief
which regards the soul as something indestructible,
eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon : this
belief ought to be expelled from science! Between
ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of “the
soul" thereby, and thus renounce one of the oldest
C
L


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20
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
and most venerated hypotheses—as happens fre-
quently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can
hardly touch on the soul without immediately
losing it. But the way is open for new acceptations
and refinements of the soul-hypothesis ; and such
conceptions as “mortal soul,” and “soul as subjec-
tive multiplicity," and "soul as social structure of
the instincts and passions," want henceforth to have
legitimate rights in science. In that the new psy-
chologist is about to put an end to the supersti-
tions which have hitherto flourished with almost
tropical luxuriance around the idea of the soul,
he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a
new desert and a new distrust-it is possible that
the older psychologists had a merrier and more
comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he
finds that precisely thereby he is also condemned
to invent—and, who knows? perhaps to discover the
new.
13.
Psychologists should bethink themselves before
putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the
cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living
thing seeks above all to discharge its strength-life
itself is Will to Power; self-preservation is only
One of the indirect and most frequent results thereof.
In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of
superfluous teleological principles ! —one of which is
the instinct of self - preservation (we owe it to
Spinoza's inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that
method ordains, which must be essentially economy
of principles.


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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
21
89707
14
It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds
that natural philosophy is only a world-exposition
and world-arrangement (according to us, if I may
say so ! ) and not a world-explanation ; but in so
far as it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded
as more, and for a long time to come must be
regarded as more—namely, as an explanation. It
has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evi-
dence and palpableness of its own: this oper-
ates fascinatingly, persuasively, and convincingly
upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes---
in fact, it follows instinctively the canon of truth
of eternal popular sensualism. What is clear,
what is “explained”? Only that which can be
seen and felt-one must pursue every problem
thus far. Obversely, however, the charm of the
Platonic mode of thought, which was an aristo-
cratic mode, consisted precisely in resistance to
obvious sense-evidence-perhaps among men who
enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses
than our contemporaries, but who knew how to
find a higher triumph in remaining masters of
them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey con-
ceptional networks which they threw over the
motley whirl of the senses—the mob of the senses,
as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and
interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato,
there was an enjoyment different from that which
the physicists of to-day offer us—and likewise the
Darwinists and antiteleologists among the physio-
logical workers, with their principle of the "smallest


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22
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
possible effort," and the greatest possible blunder.
“Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp,
there is also nothing more for men to do”—that
is certainly an imperative different from the Platonic
one, but it may notwithstanding be the right im-
perative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists
and bridge-builders of the future, who have nothing
but rough work to perform.
15.
To study physiology with a clear conscience, one
must insist on the fact that the sense-organs are
not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic
philosophy; as such they certainly could not be
causes ! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regu-
lative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle.
What? And others say even that the external
world is the work of our organs ? But then our
body, as a part of this external world, would be the
work of our organs! But then our organs them-
selves would be the work of our organs! It seems
to me that this is a complete reductio ad absurdum,
if the conception causa sui is something fundament-
ally absurd. Consequently, the external world is
not the work of our organs-- ?
16.
There are still harmless self-observers who be-
lieve that there are “immediate certainties”; for
instance, “I think,” or as the superstition of
Schopenhauer puts it, “I will"; as though cognition
here got hold of its object purely and simply as
“the thing in itself,” without any falsification taking


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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
23
C
(6
:
place either on the part of the subject or the object.
I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that
“immediate certainty," as well as "absolute know-
ledge" and the "thing in itself," involve a contra-
dictio in adjecto; we really ought to free ourselves
from the misleading significance of words! The
people on their part may think that cognition is
knowing all about things, but the philosopher must
say to himself: “When I analyse the process that
is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a
whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative
proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impos-
sible: for instance, that it is I who think, that there
must necessarily be something that thinks, that
thinking is an activity and operation on the part of
a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is
an “ego," and finally, that it is already determined
what is to be designated by thinking—that I
know what thinking is. For if I had not already
decided within myself what it is, by what standard
could I determine whether that which is just
happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'?
In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I
compare my state at the present moment with other
states of myself which I know, in order to deter-
mine what it is; on account of this retrospective
connection with further knowledge,' it has at any
rate no immediate certainty for me. ”—In place of
the “immediate certainty” in which the people
may believe in the special case, the philosopher thus
finds a series of metaphysical questions presented
to him, veritable conscience questions of the in-
tellect, to wit: “From whence did I get the notion
6


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24
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
>
of 'thinking'? Why do I believe in cause and
effect? What gives me the right to speak of an
'ego,' and even of an 'ego' as cause, and finally
of an 'ego. as. . . cause of thought? He who
ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at
once by an appeal to a sort of intuitive perception,
like the person who says, “I think, and know that
this, at least, is true, actual, and certain "-will
encounter a smile and two notes of interrogation in
a philosopher nowadays. “Sir,” the philosopher
will perhaps give him to understand, “it is improb-
able that you are not mistaken, but why should it
be the truth? ”
"
"
17.
With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I
shall never tire of emphasising a small, terse fact,
which is unwillingly recognised by these credulous
minds-namely, that a thought comes when "it"
wishes, and not when “I” wish; so that it is a
perversion of the facts of the case to say that the
subject “I” is the condition of the predicate
“think. ” One thinks; but that this “one is
pre-
cisely the famous old "ego," is, to put it mildly,
only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not
an “immediate certainty. ” After all, one has even
gone too far with this one thinks"-even the
"one" contains an interpretation of the process, and
does not belong to the process itself. One infers
here according to the usual grammatical formula-
“To think is an activity; every activity requires
an agency that is active; consequently” . It
was pretty much on the same lines that the older
7
!
.


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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
25
"
atomism sought, besides the operating "power,” the
material particle wherein it resides and out of
which it operates—the atom. More rigorous minds,
however, learnt at last to get along without this
"earth-residuum," and perhaps some day we shall
accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point
of view, to get along without the little "one" (to
which the worthy old "ego” has refined itself).
18.
6
It is certainly not the least charm of a theory
that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it
attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the
hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will”
owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one
is always appearing who feels himself strong enough
to refute it.
19.
Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will
as though it were the best-known thing in the
world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to un-
derstand that the will alone is really known to us,
absolutely and completely known, without deduction
or addition. But it again and again seems to me
that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what
philosophers are in the habit of doing—he seems to
have adopted a popular prejudice and exaggerated
it. Willing—seems to me to be above all something
- complicated, something that is a unity only in name
-and it is precisely in a name that popular preju-
dice lurks, which has got the mastery over the
inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages.
그
​-


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26
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
)
So let us for once be more cautious, let us be “un-
philosophical”: let us say that in all willing there,
is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sen-
sation of the condition
"away from which we go,
the sensation of the condition " towards which we
go," the sensation of this “ from” and “towards”
itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscu-
lar sensation, which, even without our putting
in motion “arms and legs," commences its action
by force of habit, directly we “will ” anything.
,
""
Therefore, just as sensations and indeed many
kinds of sensations) are to be recognised as
ingredients of the will, so, in the second place,
thinking is also to be recognised; in every act of
the will there is a ruling thought;—and let us
not imagine it possible to sever this thought from
the "willing," as if the will would then remain over!
In the third place, the will is not only a complex of
sensation and thinking, but it is above all an emotion,
and in fact the emotion of the command.
That
which is termed “ freedom of the will” is essentially
the emotion of supremacy in respect to him who
must obey: "I am free, 'he' must obey”-this con-
sciousness is inherent in every will; and equally
so the straining of the attention, the straight look
which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the un-
conditional judgment that “this and nothing else is
necessary now," the inward certainty that obedience
will be rendered -and whatever else pertains to the
position of the commander A man who wills
commands something within himself which renders
obedience, or which he believes renders obedience.
But now let us notice what is the strangest thing


## p. 27 (#49) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
27
about the will,—this affair so extremely complex,
for which the people have only one name. Inas-
much as in the given circumstances we are at the
same time the commanding and the obeying parties,
and as the obeying party we know the sensations
of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and
motion, which usually commence immediately after
the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we
are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to
deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic
term “I”: a whole series of erroneous conclusions,
and consequently of false judgments about the will
itself, has become attached to the act of willing-to
such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that
willing suffices for action. Since in the majority of
cases there has only been exercise of will when the
effect of the command—consequently obedience,
and therefore action-was to be expected, the appear-
ance has translated itself into the sentiment, as if
there were there a necessity of effect; in a word,
he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty
that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes
the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will
itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensa-
tion of power which accompanies, all success.
"Freedom of Will”—that is the expression for the
complex state of delight of the person exercising
volition, who commands and at the same time
identifies himself with the executor of the order-
who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles,
but thinks within himself that it was really his own
will that overcame them. In this
way
the
person
exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of
4


## p. 28 (#50) ##############################################

28
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
his successful executive instruments, the useful
“underwills” or under-souls-indeed, our body is
but a social structure composed of many souls—to
his feelings of delight as commander. L'effet c'est
moi : what happens here is what happens in every
well-constructed and happy commonwealth, namely,
that the governing class identifies itself with the
successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is
absolutely a question of commanding and obeying,
on the basis, as already said, of a social structure
composed of many “souls"; on which account a
philosopher should claim the right to include
willing-as-such within the sphere of morals-re-
garded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy
under which the phenomenon of "life. ” manifests
itself.
20.
That the separate philosophical ideas are not
anything optional or autonomously evolving, but
grow up in connection and relationship with each
other ; that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they
seem to appear in the history of thought, they
nevertheless belong just as much
to t system as
the collective members of the fauna of a Continent
-is betrayed in the end by the circumstance: how
unfailingly the most diverse philosophers always fill
in again a definite fundamental scheme of possible
philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always
revolve once more in the same orbit; however
independent of each other they may feel themselves
with their critical or systematic wills, something
within them leads them, something impels them in


## p. 29 (#51) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
29
a
definite order the one after the other-to wit, the
innate methodology and relationship of their ideas.
Their thinking is in fact far less a discovery than a
re-recognising, a remembering, a return and a home-
coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of
the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew :
philosophising is so far a kind of atavism of the
highest order. The wonderful family resemblance
of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophising
is easily enough explained. In fact, where there
is affinity of language, owing to the common
philosophy of grammar-I mean owing to the
unconscious domination and guidance of similar
grammatical functions—it cannot but be that every-
thing is prepared at the outset for a similar de-
velopment and succession of philosophical systems;
just as the way seems barred against certain other
possibilities of world-interpretation. It is highly
probable that philosophers within the domain of
the Ural-Altaic languages (where the conception of
the subject is least developed) look otherwise “into
the world," and will be found on paths of thought
different from those of the Indo-Germans and
Mussulmans, the spell of certain grammatical
functions is ultimately also the spell of physiological
valuations and racial conditions. --So much by way
of rejecting Locke's superficiality with regard to
the origin of ideas.
1
21.
The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that
has yet been conceived, it is a sort of logical viola-
tion and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride


## p. 30 (#52) ##############################################

30
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly
and frightfully with this very folly. The desire for
"freedom of will” in the superlative, metaphysical
sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the
,
minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the
entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions
oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors,
chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing
less than to be precisely this causa sui, and, with
more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up
into existence by the hair, out of the slough of
nothingness. If any one should find out in this
manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated con-
ception of “free will” and put it out of his head
altogether, I beg of him to carry his “enlighten-
ment" a step further, and also put out of his head
the contrary of this monstrous conception of "free
will”: I mean “non-free will,” which is tantamount
to a misuse of cause and effect. One should not
wrongly materialise “cause
cause” and “effect," as the
natural philosophers do (and whoever like them
naturalise in thinking at present), according to the
prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the
cause press and push until it "effects” its end; one
should
and “effect" only as pure con-
ceptions, that is to say, as conventional fictions for
the purpose of designation and mutual under-
standing, -not for explanation. In "being-in-
itself” there is nothing of “causal-connection," of
"necessity," or of "psychological non-freedom;
there the effect does not follow the cause, there
“law” does not obtain. It is we_alone who have
devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity,
»
use
“cause


## p. 31 (#53) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
31
"
constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and pur-
pose; and when we interpret and intermix this
symbol-world, as“ being in itself," with things, we
act once more as we have always acted-mytho-
logically. The “non-free will” is mythology; in
real life it is only a question of strong and weak
wills. —It is almost_always a symptom of what
is lacking in himself, when a thinker,. . . in every
* " causal-connection” and “psychological neces-
sity,” manifests something of compulsion, indigence,
obsequiousness, oppression, and non-freedom; it is
suspicious to have such feelings—the person betrays
himself. And in general, if I have observed
correctly, the “non-freedom of the will” is regarded
as a problem from two entirely opposite stand-
points, but always in a profoundly personal manner:
some will not give up their "responsibility,” their
belief in themselves, the personal right to their
merits, at any price (the vain races belong to this
class); others
on the contrary, do not wish to be
answerable for anything, or blamed for anything,
and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to get
out of the business, no matter how. The latter,
when they write books, are in the habit at present
of taking the side of criminals; a sort of socialistic.
sympathy is their favourite disguise. And as a
matter of fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed
embellishes itself surprisingly when it can pose as
“la religion de la souffrance humaine"; that is its
"good taste. "
22.
Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who
cannot desist from the mischief of putting his


## p. 32 (#54) ##############################################

32
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
finger on bad modes of interpretation, but “Nature's
conformity to law," of which you physicists talk so
proudly, as though-why, it exists only owing to
your interpretation and bad “philology. " It is no
matter of fact, no “text,” but rather just a naïvely
humanitarian adjustment and perversion of mean-
ing, with which you make abundant concessions
to the democratic instincts of the modern soul !
"Everywhere equality before the law-Nature is
not different in that respect, nor better than we:”
a fine instance of secret motive, in which the vulgar
antagonism to everything privileged and autocratic
- likewise a second and more refined atheismis
once more disguised. "Ni dieu, ni maître”—that,
also, is what you want; and therefore “Cheers for
natural law ! ”—is it not so? But, as has been said,
that is interpretation, not text; and somebody
might come along, who, with opposite intentions
and modes of interpretation, could read out of the
same “Nature," and with regard to the same pheno-
mena, just the tyrannically inconsiderate and relent-
less enforcement of the claims of power-an inter-
preter who should so place the unexceptionalness
and unconditionalness of all "Will to Power" before
your eyes, that almost every word, and the word
“ tyranny" itself, would eventually seem unsuitable,
or like a weakening and softening metaphor-as
being too human; and who should, nevertheless,
end by asserting the same about this world as you
do, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "calcu-
"
lable" course, not, however, because laws obtain in
it, but because they are absolutely lacking, and
every power effects its ultimate consequences every


## p. 33 (#55) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
33
moment. Granted that this also is only interpreta-
tion—and you will be eager enough to make this
objection ? -well, so much the better.
23.
All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral
prejudices and timidities, it has not dared to launch
out into the depths. In so far as it is allowable to
recognise in that which has hitherto been written,
evidence of that which has hitherto been kept
silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the
notion of psychology as the Morphology and
Development-doctrine of the Will to Power, as I
conceive of it. The power of moral prejudices has
penetrated deeply into the most intellectual world,
the world apparently most indifferent and unpre-
judiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious,
obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner. A
proper physio-psychology has to contend with un-
conscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator,
it has “the heart” against it: even a doctrine of the
reciprocal conditionalness of the “good” and the
" bad” impulses, causes (as refined immorality)
distress and aversion in a still strong and manly
conscience still more so, a doctrine of the deriva-
tion of all good impulses from bad ones. If, how-
ever, a person should regard even the emotions of
hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness as
life-conditioning emotions, as factors which must
be present, fundamentally and essentially, in the
general economy of life (which must, therefore, be
further developed if life is to be further developed),
he will suffer from such a view of things as from
С


## p. 34 (#56) ##############################################

34
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
sea-sickness. And yet this hypothesis is far from
being the strangest and most painful in this immense
and almost new domain of dangerous knowledge;
and there are in fact a hundred good reasons why
every one should keep away from it who can do so!
On the other hand, if one has once drifted hither
with one's bark, well! very good! now let us set
our teeth firmly! let us open our eyes and keep
our hand fast on the helm! We sail away right
over morality, we crush out, we destroy perhaps
the remains of our own morality by daring to make
our voyage thither—but what do we matter! Never
yet did a profounder world of insight reveal itself to
daring travellers and adventurers, and the psycho-
logist who thus “makes a sacrifice "—it is not the
sacrifizio dell'intelletto, on the contrary ! -will at
least be entitled to demand in return that psycho-
logy shall once more be recognised as the queen of
the sciences, for whose service and equipment the
other sciences exist. For psychology is once more
the path to the fundamental problems.
9)


## p. 35 (#57) ##############################################

SECOND CHAPTER
THE FREE SPIRIT
24.
OSANCTA simplicitas ! In what strange simplifica-
tion and falsification man lives! One can never
cease wondering when once one has got eyes for
beholding this marvel! How we have made every-
thing around us clear and free and easy and simple!
how we have been able to give our senses a pass-
port to everything superficial, our thoughts a god-
like desire for wanton pranks and wrong inferences !
-how from the beginning, we have contrived to
retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost
inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence,
heartiness, and gaiety--in order to enjoy life! And
only on this solidified, granite-like foundation of
ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the
will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more
powerful will, the will to ignorance, to the uncertain,
to the untrue! Not as its opposite, but-as its
refinement! It is to be hoped, indeed, that lan-
guage, here as elsewhere, will not get over its awk-
wardness, and that it will continue to talk of
opposites where there are only degrees and many
refinements of gradation ; it is equally to be hoped
that the incarnated Tartuffery of morals, which now
belongs to our unconquerable "flesh and blood,” will
-


## p. 36 (#58) ##############################################

36
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
turn the words round in the mouths of us discerning
ones. Here and there we understand it, and laugh
at the way in which precisely the best knowledge
seeks most to retain us in this simplified, thoroughly
artificial, suitably imagined and suitably falsified
world : at the way in which, whether it will or not,
it loves error, because, as living itself, it loves life!
25.
After such a cheerful commencement, a serious
word would fain be heard ; it appeals to the most
serious minds. Take care, ye philosophers and
friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom!
Of suffering " for the truth's sake"! even in your
own defence! It spoils all the innocence and fine
neutrality of your conscience; it makes you head.
strong against objections and red rags ; it stupefies,
animalises, and brutalises, when in the struggle with
danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse
consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your
last card as protectors of truth upon earth-as
though "the Truth” were such an innocent and in-
competent creature as to require protectors ! and
you of all people, ye knights of the sorrowful
countenance, Messrs Loafers and Cobweb-spinners
of the spirit! Finally, ye know sufficiently well
that it cannot be of any consequence if ye just carry
your point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher
has carried his point, and that there might be a
more laudable truthfulness in every little interroga-
tive mark which you place after your special words
and favourite doctrines (and occasionally after your-
selves) than in all the solemn pantomime and


## p. 37 (#59) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
37
>
trumping games before accusers and law-courts !
Rather go out of the way! Flee into concealment !
And have your masks and your ruses, that ye may
be mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared !
And pray, don't forget the garden, the garden with
golden trellis-work! And have people around you
who are as a garden-or as music on the waters at
eventide, when already the day becomes a memory.
Choose the good solitude, the free, wanton, light-
some solitude, which also gives you the right still
to remain good in any sense whatsoever! How
poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war
make one, which cannot be waged openly by means
of force! How personal does a long fear make one,
a long watching of enemies, of possible enemies !
These pariahs of society, these long-pursued, badly-
persecuted ones—also the compulsory recluses, the
Spinozas or Giordano Brunos—always become in
the end, even under the most intellectual masquer-
ade, and perhaps without being themselves aware
of it, refined vengeance-seekers, and poison-brewers
(just lay bare the foundation of Spinoza's ethics
and theology! ), not to speak of the stupidity of
moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a
philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour
has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher,
his “sacrifice for the sake of truth," forces into the
light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in
him; and if one has hitherto contemplated him
only with artistic curiosity, with regard to many a
philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous
desire to see him also in his deterioration (deterior-
ated into a “martyr," into a stage- and tribune
I
»
j


## p. 38 (#60) ##############################################

38
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
bawler). Only, that it is necessary with such a
desire to be clear what spectacle one will see in any
case—merely a satyric play, merely an epilogue
farce, merely the continued proof that the long, real
tragedy is at an end, supposing that every philosophy
has been a long tragedy in its origin.
26.
1
Every select man strives instinctively for a
citadel and a privacy, where he is free from the
crowd, the many, the majority–where he may
forget "men who are the rule," as their exception ;
-exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed
straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as
a discerner in the great and exceptional sense.
Whoever, in intercourse with men, does not occa-
sionally glisten in all the green and grey colours
of distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy,
gloominess and solitariness, is assuredly not a
man of elevated tastes; supposing, however, that
he does not voluntarily take all this burden and
disgust upon himself, that he persistently avoids it,
and remains, as I said, quietly and proudly hidden
in his citadel, one thing is then certain : he was not
made, he was not predestined for knowledge. For
as such, he would one day have to say to himself:
"The devil take my good taste! but the rule' is
more interesting than the exception—than myself,
the exception ! " And he would go down, and
above all, he would go "inside. ” The long and
serious study of the average man-and conse-
quently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity,
and bad intercourse all intercourse is bad inter-
"


## p. 39 (#61) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
39
(
")
course except with one's equals) that constitutes
a necessary part of the life-history of every
philosopher ; perhaps the most disagreeable,
odious, and disappointing part. If he is fortun-
ate, however, as a favourite child of knowledge
should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries
who will shorten and lighten his task; I mean so-
called cynics, those who simply recognise the
animal, the common-place and “the rule” in them-
selves, and at the same time have so much spiritu-
ality and ticklishness as to make them talk of
themselves and their like before witnesses-some-
times they wallow, even in books, as on their own
dung-hill. Cynicism is the only form in which
base souls approach what is called honesty; and
the higher man must open his ears to all the
coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself
when the clown becomes shameless right before
him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There are
even cases where enchantment mixes with the
disgust-namely, where by a freak of nature, genius
is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and
ape, as in the case of the Abbé Galiani, the pro-
foundest, acutest, and perhaps also filthiest man of
his century-he was far profounder than Voltaire,
and consequently also, a good deal more silent.
It happens more frequently, as has been hinted,
that a scientific head is placed on an ape's body, a
fine exceptional understanding in a base soul, an
occurrence by no means rare, especially amongst
doctors and moral physiologists. And whenever
any one speaks without bitterness, or rather quite
innocently of man, as a belly with two requirements,


## p. 40 (#62) ##############################################

40
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
(
G
and a head with one; whenever any one sees, seeks
and wants to see only hunger, sexual instinct, and
vanity as the real and only motives of human
actions; in short, when any one speaks " badly”
-and not even "ill"-of man, then ought the
lover of knowledge to hearken attentively and
diligently; he ought, in general, to have an open
ear wherever there is talk without indignation.
For the indignant man, and he who perpetually
tears and lacerates himself with his own teeth (or,
in place of himself, the world, God, or society), may
indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the
laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other
sense he is the more ordinary, more indifferent, and
less instructive case. And no one is such a liar as
the indignant man.
27
It is difficult to be understood, especially when one
thinks and lives gangasrotogati* among those only
who think and live otherwise-namely, kurmagati, t
or at best" froglike," mandeikagatif (I do everything
to be “difficultly understood " myself! )—and one
should be heartily grateful for the good will to some
refinement of interpretation. As regards "the good
friends,” however, who are always too easy-going,
and think that as friends they have a right to ease,
one does well at the very first to grant them a play-
ground and romping-place for misunderstanding-
one can thus laugh still; or get rid of them alto-
gether, these good friends--and laugh then also!
"
* Like the river Ganges : presto.
+ Like the tortoise : lento. I Like the frog: staccato.
:


## p. 41 (#63) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
41
28.
What is most difficult to render from one language
into another is the tempo of its style, which has its
basis in the character of the race, or to speak more
physiologically, in the average tempo of the
assimilation of its nutriment. There are honestly
meant translations, which, as involuntary vulgarisa-
tions, are almost falsifications of the original,
merely because its lively and merry tempo (which
overleaps and obviates all dangers in word and
expression) could not also be rendered. A German
is almost incapacitated for presto in his language;
consequently also, as may be reasonably inferred,
for many of the most delightful and daring nuances
of free, free-spirited thought. And just as the
buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and
conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are
untranslatable for him. Everything ponderous,
viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded
and wearying species of style, are developed in
profuse variety among Germans-pardon me for
stating the fact that even Goethe's prose, in its
mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception,
as a reflection of the “good old time" to which it
belongs, and as an expression of German taste at a
time when there was still a "German taste," which
was a rococo-taste in moribus et artibus. Lessing
is an exception, owing to his histrionic nature, which
understood much, and was versed in many things;
he who was not the translator of Bayle to no
purpose, who took refuge willingly in the shadow
of Diderot and Voltaire, and still more willingly


## p. 42 (#64) ##############################################

42
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
among the Roman comedy-writers-Lessing loved
also free-spiritism in the tempo, and flight out of
Germany. But how could the German language,
even in the prose of Lessing, imitate the tempo of
Machiavelli, who in his “Principe" makes us breathe
the dry, fine air of Florence, and cannot help pre-
senting the most serious events in a boisterous
allegrissimo, perhaps not without a malicious artistic
sense of the contrast he ventures to present-long,
heavy, difficult, dangerous thoughts, and a tempo of
the gallop, and of the best, wantonest humour ?
Finally, who would venture on a German translation
of Petronius, who, more than any great musician
hitherto, was a master of presto in invention, ideas,
and words? What matter in the end about the
swamps of the sick, evil world, or of the "ancient
world,” when like him, one has the feet of a wind,
the rush, the breath, the emancipating scorn of a
wind, which makes everything healthy, by making
everything run! And with regard to Aristophanes
—that transfiguring, complementary genius, for
whose sake one pardons all Hellenism for having
existed, provided one has understood in its full
profundity all that there requires pardon and trans-
figuration ; there is nothing that has caused me to
meditate more on Plato's secrecy and sphinx-like
nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that
under the pillow of his death-bed there was found
no “ Bible,” nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean,
or Platonic—but a book of Aristophanes. How
could even a Plato have endured life-a Greek life
which he repudiated-without an Aristophanes !
"


## p. 43 (#65) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
43
29.
It is the business of the very few to be inde-
pendent; it is a privilege of the strong. And who-
ever attempts it, even with the best right, but
without being obliged to do so, proves that he is
probably not only strong, but also daring beyond
measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies
a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself
already brings with it; not the least of which is
that no one can see how and where he loses his
way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by
some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a
one comes to grief, it is so far from the compre-
hension of men that they neither feel it, nor
sympathise with it. And he cannot any longer go
back! He cannot even go back again to the
sympathy of men!
30.
Our deepest insights must-and should-appear
as follies, and under certain circumstances as crimes,
when they come unauthorisedly to the ears of those
who are not disposed and predestined for them.
The exoteric and the esoteric, as they were formerly
distinguished by philosophers—among the Indians,
as among the Greeks, Persians, and Mussulmans,
in short, wherever people believed in gradations of
rank and not in equality and equal rights--are not
so much in contradistinction to one another in
respect to the exoteric class, standing without, and
viewing, estimating, measuring, and judging from
the outside, and not from the inside ; the more


## p. 44 (#66) ##############################################

44
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
essential distinction is that the class in question
views things from below upwards — while the
esoteric class views things from above downwards.
There are heights of the soul from which tragedy
itself no longer appears to operate tragically; and
if all the woe in the world were taken together, who
would dare to decide whether the sight of it would
necessarily seduce and constrain to sympathy, and
thus to a doubling of the woe? . . . That which
serves the higher class of men for nourishment or
refreshment, must be almost poison to an entirely
different and lower order of human beings. The
virtues of the common man would perhaps mean
vice and weaknesses in a philosopher; it might be
possible for a highly developed man, supposing him
to degenerate and go to ruin, to acquire qualities
thereby alone, for the sake of which he would have
to be honoured as a saint in the lower world into
which he had sunk. There are books which have
an inverse value for the soul and the health accord-
ing as the inferior soul and the lower vitality, or the
higher and more powerful, make use of them. In
the former case they are dangerous, disturbing, un-
settling books, in the latter case they are herald-
calls which summon the bravest to their bravery.
Books for the general reader are always ill-smelling
books, the odour of paltry people clings to them.
Where the populace eat and drink, and even
where they reverence, it is accustomed to stink.
One should not go into churches if one wishes
to breathe pure air.


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THE FREE SPIRIT.
45
31.
In our youthful years we still venerate and
despise without the art of nuance, which is the best
gain of life, and we have rightly to do hard penance
for having fallen upon men and things with Yea and
Nay. Everything is so arranged that the worst of
all tastes, the taste for the unconditional, is cruelly
befooled and abused, until a man learns to introduce
a little art into his sentiments, and prefers to try
conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists
of life. The angry and reverent spirit peculiar to
youth appears to allow itself no peace, until it has
suitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent
its passion upon them : youth in itself even, is some-
thing falsifying and deceptive. Later on, when the
young soul, tortured by continual disillusions, finally
turns suspiciously against itself-still ardent and
savage even in its suspicion and remorse of con-
science: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it
tears itself, how it revenges itself for its long self-
blinding, as though it had been a voluntary blind-
ness! In this transition one punishes oneself by
!
distrust of one's sentiments; one tortures one's
enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good
conscience to be a danger, as if it were the self-
concealment and lassitude of a more refined up-
rightness; and above all, one espouses upon prin-
ciple the cause against "youth. ”-A decade later,
and one comprehends that all this also was still--
youth !


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46
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
32.
Throughout the longest period of human history
-one calls it the prehistoric period—the value o
non-value of an action was inferred from its con-
sequences; the action in itself was not taken into
consideration, any more than its origin; but pretty
much as in China at present, where the distinction
or disgrace of a child redounds to its parents, the
retro-operating power of success or failure was what
induced men to think well or ill of an action. Let
us call this period the pre-moral period of mankind;
the imperative, “know thyself ! ” was then still un-
known. In the last ten thousand years, on the
other hand, on certain large portions of the earth,
one has gradually got so far, that one no longer lets
the consequences of an action, but its origin, decide
with regard to its worth : a great achievement as a
whole, an important refinement of vision and of
criterion, the unconscious effect of the supremacy
of aristocratic values and of the belief in "origin,"
the mark of a period which may be designated in
the narrower sense as the moral one: the first
attempt at self-knowledge is thereby made. In-
stead of the consequences, the origin-what an
inversion of perspective! And assuredly an in-
version effected only after long struggle and
wavering! To be sure, an ominous new superstition,
a peculiar narrowness of interpretation, attained
supremacy precisely thereby: the origin of an action
was interpreted in the most definite sense possible,
as origin out of an intention; people were agreed
in the belief that the value of an action lay in the
))


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THE FREE SPIRIT.
47
value of its intention. The intention as the sole
origin and antecedent history of an action: under
the influence of this prejudice moral praise and
blame have been bestowed, and men have judged
and even philosophised almost up to the present
day. -Is it not possible, however, that the necessity
may now have arisen of again making up our minds
with regard to the reversing and fundamental shift-
ing of values, owing to a new self-consciousness and
acuteness in man-is it not possible that we may
be standing on the threshold of a period which to
begin with, would be distinguished negatively as
ultra-moral: nowadays when, at least amongst us
immoralists, the suspicion arises that the decisive
value of an action lies precisely in that which is not
intentional, and that all its intentionalness, all that
is seen, sensible, or “sensed” in it, belongs to its
surface or skin—which, like every skin, betrays
something, but conceals still more?