No More Learning

Paul R^e ; the year of its appearance,
1877. I may almost say that I have never read



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6 PREFACE.

anything in which every single dogma and con-
clusion has called forth from me so emphatic a
negation as did that book ; albeit a negation un-
tainted by either pique or intolerance. I referred
accordingly both in season and out of season in
the previous works, at which I was then working,
to the arguments of that book, not to refute them

. for what have I got to do with mere refutations

— but substituting, as is natural to a positive mind,
for an improbable theory one which is more prob-
able, and occasionally no doubt for one philosophic
error another. In that early period I gave, as I
have said, the first public expression to those
theories of origin to which these essays are
devoted, but with a clumsiness which I was the
last to conceal from myself, for I was as yet
cramped, being still without a special language for
these special subjects, still frequently liable to
relapse and to vacillation. To go into details, com-
pare what I say in Human, all-too-Human, part i. ,
about the parallel early history of Good and Evil,
Aph. 45 (namely, their origin from the castes of
the aristocrats and the slaves) ; similarly, Aph.
136 et seq. , concerning the birth and value of
ascetic morality ; similarly, Aphs. 96, 99, vol. ii. ,
Aph. 89, concerning the Morality of Custom, that
far older and more original kind of morality which
is toto ccelo different from the altruistic ethics (in
which Dr. R^e, like all the English moral philo-
sophers, sees the ethical " Thing-in-itself ") ; finally,
Aph. 92. Similarly, Aph. 26 in Human, all-too-
Human, part ii. , and Aph. 112, the Dawn of
Day, concerning the origin of Justice as a balance



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PREFACE. 7

between persons of approximately equal power
(equilibrium as the hypothesis of all contract,
consequently of all law) ; similarly, concerning the
origin of Punishment, Human, ail-too- Human, part
ii. , Aphs. 22, 23, in regard to which__the_^tfii:rent
object is neither ess entiaT" n nr— oriflrinaJ-, (as Dr.
KSeTKir^s : — rather is it that this object is only
imported, under certain definite conditions, and
always as something extra and additional).

In reality I had set my heart at that time on
something much more important than the nature of
the theories of myself or others concerning the origin
of morality (or, more precisely, the real function
from my view of these theories was to point an
end to which they were one among many means).
The issucfbrme was the jvalue of^ morality, ana]
on Jhat subject Lhad. to ,place_. myself . in a state"
oLabfitraction, in which I was almost alone with
my great teacher Schopenhauer, to whom that
book, with all its passion and inherent contra-
diction (for that book also was a polemic), turned
for present help as though he were still alive^
The issue was, strangely enough, the value of the
" unegoistic " instincts, the instincts of pity, self-
denial, and self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had
so persistently painted in golden colours, deified
and etherealised, that eventually they appeared
to him, as it were, high and dry, as " intrinsic
values in themselves," on the strength of which



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8 PREFACE.

he uttered both to Life and to himself his own
negation. But against these very instincts there
voiced itself in my soul a more and more funda-
mental mistrust, a scepticism that dug ever deeper
and deeper : and in this very instinct I saw \h& great
danger of mankind,its most sublime temptation and
seduction — seduction to what ? to nothingness ? —
Tin these very instincts I saw the beginning of the
/ end, stability, the exhaustion that gazes back-
( wards, the will turning against Life, the last illness
announcing itself with its own mincing melancholy :
I realised that the morality of pity which spread
wider and wider, and whose grip infected even
philosophers with its disease, was the most sinister
symptom of our modern European civilisation ; I
realised that it was the route along which that
civilisation slid on its way to — a new Buddhism ?
— a European Buddhism ? — Nihilism f This ex-
aggerated estimation in which modern philosophers
have held pity, is quite a new phenomenon : up to
that time philosophers were absolutely unanimous
as to the worthlessness of pity. I need only
mention Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and
Kant — four minds as mutually different as is
possible, but united on one point ; their contempt
of pity.

6.

This problem of the value of pity and of_Jthe
P'&-BPiLality (I' am an opponent of the modern
infamous emasculation of our emotions) seems at
the first blush a mere isolated problem, a note^ih



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PREFACE.

interrogation for itself ; he, however, who once halts
at this problem, and learns how to put questions,
will experience what I experienced : — a new and
immense vista unfolds itself before him, a sense
of potentiality seizes him like a vertigo, every
species of doubt, mistrust, and fear springs up,
the belief in morality, nay, in all morality, totters,
— finally a new demand voices itself. Let us"
speak out this new demand: we need a critique
of moral values, the value of these Ualues is tor Thg
'fl fst time to be called mto question — and for this
purpose a^knavdedge. ia. necessary of the conditions
and circumstances out of which these values grew,
and untfenrfat d 'i lliey exueiieiice d"TEeir~evolurion

and„tbeir distortion (morality as a result, as a
symptom, as a mask, as Tartuttism, as disease, as
a misunderstanding ; but also morality as a cause,
as a remedy, as a stimulant, as a" fetter,"as a drug),
especially as suchalcnowreageTiaslnelther existed
up to the present time nor is even now generally
clesired. The value of these " values " was taken
for granted as an indisputable fact, which was
beyond all question. No one has, up to the
present, exhibited the faintest doubt or hesitation
in judging the " good man " to be of a higher
value than the '' evil man," of a higher value with
regard specifically to human progress, utility, and
prosperity generally, not forgetting the future.
What? Suppose the converse were the truth!
What ? Suppose there lurked in the " good man "
a symptom of retrogression, such as a danger, a
temptation, a poison, a narcotic, by means of which
the present battened on the future \ More com-



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lO PREFACE.

fortable and less risky perhaps than its opposite,
but also pettier, meaner! So that morality
would really be saddled with the guilt, if the
maximum potentiality of the power and splendour of
the human species were never to be attained?
So that really morality would be the danger of
dangers ?

Enough, that after this vista had disclosed
itself to me, I myself had reason to search for
learned, bold, and industrious colleagues (I am
doing it even to this very day). It means travers-
ing with new clamorous questions, and at the same
time with new eyes, the immense, distant, and
completely unexplored land of morality — of a
morality which has actually existed and been
actually lived ! and is this not practically
equivalent to first discovering that land ? If, in
this context, I thought, amongst others, of the
aforesaid Dr. Rde, I did so because I had no
doubt that from the very nature of his questions
he would be compelled to have recourse to a
truer method, in order to obtain his answers.
Have I deceived myself on that score ? I wished
at all events to give a better direction of vision
to an eye of such keenness, and such impartiality.
I wished to direct him to the real history of
morality, and to warn him, while there was yet
time, against a world of English theories that
culminated in the blue vacuum of heaven. Other
colours, of course, rise immediately to one's mind



## p. (#25) #################################################

PREFACE. 1 1

as being a hundred times more potent than blue
for a genealogy of morals : — for instance, grey, by
which I mean authentic facts capable of definite
proof and having actually existed, or, to put it
shortly, the whole of that long hieroglyphic script
(which is so hard to decipher) about the past
history of human morals. This script was un-
known to Dr. R^e ; but he had read Darwin : —
and so in his philosophy the Darwinian beast and
that pink of modernity, the demure weakling and
dilettante, who " bites no longer," shake hands
politely in a fashion that is at least instructive,
the latter exhibiting a certain facial expression of
refined and good-humoured indolence, tinged with
a touch of pessimism and exhaustion ; as if it
really did not pay to take all these things — I
mean moral problems — so seriously. I, on_ the
other han^think that there are no subjects which,
pay better for being^_^Jtak£n. ^-sedQusly ;_part of
this payment is, that perhaps eventually they
admit of being taken gaily. This gaiety indeed,
or, to use my own language, this joyful wisdom, is
a payment; a payment for a protracted, brave,
laborious, and burrowing seriousness, which, it
goes without saying, is the attribute of but a few.
But on that day on which we say from the full-
ness of our hearts, " Forward ! our old morality
too is fit material for Comedyl' we shall have
discovered a new plot, and a new possibility for
the Dionysian drama entitled The Soul's Fate —
and he will speedily utilise it, one can wager
safely, he, the great ancient eternal dramatist of
the comedy of our existence.



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12 PREFACE.

8.

If this writing be obscure to any individual,
and jar on his ears, I do not think that it is
necessarily I who am to blame. It is clear
enough, on the hypothesis which I presuppose,
namely, that the reader has first read my previous
writings and has not grudged them a certain
amount of trouble: it is not, indeed, a simple
matter to get really at their essence. Take, for
instance, my Zarathustra ; I allow no one to pass
muster as knowing that book, unless every single
word therein has at some time wrought in him a
profound wound, and at some time exercised on
him a profound enchantment: then and not till
then can he enjoy the privilege of participating
reverently in the halcyon element, from which
that work is born, in its sunny brilliance, its
distance, its spaciousness, its certainty. In other
cases the aphoristic form produces difficulty, but
this is only because this form is treated too
casually. An aphorism properly coined and
cast into its final mould is far from being
" deciphered " as soon as it has been read ; on the
contrary, it is then that it first requires to be ex-
pounded — of course for that purpose an art of
exposition is necessary. The third essay in this
book provides an example of what is offered, of
what in such cases I call exposition : an aphorism
is prefixed to that essay, the essay itself is its
commentary. Certainly one quality which nowa-
days has been best forgotten — and that is
why it will take some time yet for my writings



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PREFACE. 13

to become readable — is essential in order to
practise reading as an art — a quality for the
exercise of which it is necessary to be a cow,
and under no circumstances a modern man ! —
rumination.

Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine,
July 1887.



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

FIRST ESSAY.
•GOOD AND EVIL. " '«GOOD AND BAD. "



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



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

I.

Those English psychologists, who up to the present
are the only philosophers who are to be thanked
for any endeavour to get as far as a history of
the origin of morality — these men, I say, offer us
in their own personalities no paltry problem ; —
they even have, if I am to be quite frank about
it, in their capacity of living riddles, an advantage
over their books — they themselves are interesting !
These English psychologists — what do they really
mean ? We always find them voluntarily or in-
voluntarily at the same task of pushing to the
front the partie honteuse of our inner world, and
looking for the efficient, governing, and decisive -
principle in that precise quarter where the in-
tellectual self-respect of the race would be the
most reluctant to find it (for example, in the vis
inertice of habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind
and fortuitous mechanism and association of ideas,
or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex,
molecular, or fundamentally stupid) — what is the
real motive power which always impels these
psychologists in precisely this direction ? Is it
an instinct for human disparagement somewhat
sinister, vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps incom-
prehensible even to itself? or perhaps a touch
of pessimistic jealousy, the mistrust of dis-
illusioned idealists who have become gloomy,



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1 8 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

poisoned, and bitter? or a petty subconscious
enmity and rancour against Christianity (and
Plato), that has conceivably never crossed the
threshold of consciousness? or just a vicious
taste for those elements of life which are bizarre^
painfully paradoxical, mystical, and illogical ? or, as
a final alternative, a dash of each of these motives
— a little vulgarity, a little gloominess, a little
anti-Christianity, a little craving for the necessary
piquancy ?

But I am told that it is simply a case of old
frigid and tedious frogs crawling and hopping
around men and inside men, as if they were as
thoroughly at home there, as they would be in a
swamp.

I am opposed to this statement, nay, I do not
believe it ; and if, in the impossibility of knowledge,
one is permitted to wish, so do I wish from my
heart that just the converse metaphor should
apply, and that these analysts with their psycho-
logical microscopes should be, at bottom, brave,
proud, and magnanimous animals who know how
to bridle both their hearts and their smarts, and
have specifically trained themselves to sacrifice
what is desirable to what is true, any truth in fact^
even the simple, bitter, ugly, repulsive, unchristian,
and immoral truths — for there are truths of that
description. ^^

All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would
fain dominate these historians of morality. But
it is certainly a pity that they lack the historiccf



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " ig

sense itself, that they themselves, ar^ quite rie. '^qriherihj
by all the beneficent spirits of histo ry. The
whole train of their thought runs, as was always
the ,_way__5r oldTasEiohecf " pBirosopHefsP^ori
thoroughly unhist6ncaniH5sT"'thef6~ is n5' doubt
on~ THI5''poinl:r~ TTiS ~ crass ineptitude of their
genealogy of morals is immediately apparent
when the question arises of ascertaining the origin *
of the idea and judgment of " good. " " Man
had originally," so speaks their decree, "praised
and calle d ' good ' altciiiatic_acts_lrom -the stand-
point of those on whom they were conferred, that
is, those_lQjffiJiOJ3i_theyjyere «i'^«</^_subsequently
the origin of this praise was forgotten, and altru-
istic acts, siniply 'because, as a sheer matter of
habit, they were praised as g ood, came also Jp be
felt asgood;; — as though they contained in them-
selves some intrinsic goodness. " The thing is
obvious : — this initial derivation contains already
all the typical and idiosyncratic traits of the
English psychologists — we have " utility," " for-
getting/' " habit," and finally " error," the whole
assemblage forming the basis of a system of values,
on which the higher man has up to the present
prided himself as though it were a kind of privi-
lege of man in general. This pride must be
brought low, this system of values^^Ki^it lose its
values : is that attained ?

Now the first argument that comes ready to
my hand is that the real homestead of the concept
" good " is sought and located in the wrong place :
the judgment " good " did not originate among
those to whom goodness was shown. Much



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20 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

rather has it been the good themselves, that is,
the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed,
the high-minded, who have felt that they them-
selves were good, and that their actions were good,
that is to say of the first order, in contradistinc-
tion to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar,
and the plebeian. It was out of this pathos
of distance that they first arrogated the right
to create values for their own profit, and to coin
the names of such values : what had they to
do with utility? The standpoint of utility is
as alien and as inapplicable as it could possibly
be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an
effervescence of supreme values, creating and
demarcating as they do a hierarchy within them-
selves : it is at this juncture that one arrives at
an appreciation of the contrast to that tepid
temperature, which is the presupposition on which
every combination of worldly wisdom and every
calculation of practical expediency is always
based — and not for one occasional, not for one
exceptional instance, but chronically. The]
pathos of nobility and distance, as I have said,
the chronic and despotic esprit de corps and
fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race
coming into association with a meaner race, an
" under race," this is the origin of the antithesis
of good and badj

(The masters' right of giving names goes so
far that it is permissible to look upon language
itself as the expression of the power of the
masters : they say " this is that, and that," they
seal finally every object and every event with a



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 21

sound, and thereby at the same time take posses-
sion of it. ) It is because of this origin that the
word " good " is far from having any necessary
connection with altruistic acts, in accordance witlW
the superstitious belief of these moral philosophers. '
On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the
decay of aristocratic values, that the antitheses
between " egoistic " and " altruistic '' presses more
and more heavily on the human conscience — it
is, to use my own language, the herd instinct which
finds in this antithesis an expression in many ways.
And even then it takes a considerable time for
this instinct to become sufficiently dominant, for
the valuation to be inextricably dependent on
this antithesis (as is the case in contemporary
Europe) ; for to-day that prejudice is predominant,
which, acting even now with all the intensity of
an obsession and brain disease, holds that " moral,"
"altruistic," and " d^sint&ess^" are concepts of
equal value.

In the second place, quite apart from the fact
that this hypothesis as to the genesis of the value
" good " cannot be historically upheld, it suffers
from an inherent psychological contradiction.
The ,jitjlity;^j^ ^tjruistic^conduct— has- p re su mably

origin h ap hprnmp fnro-nfUjuj — But in what con-
ceivable way is this forgetting . . po^sitde} Has
perchance the utility of such conduct ceased at
some given moment? The contrary is the case.
Thjsjitjljty j^gg ra. thpr hppn experienced every day



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22 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

at all times, and is consequently a feature that
oUtalns a new and regular emphasis with every
fresh day ; it follows that, so far from vanishing
from The consciousness, so far mdeed from^ being
forgotten, it must necessarily become impresse3~
on the consciousness with ever-increasing distmet-
ness. How much more logical is that contrary
theory (it is not the truer for that) which is repre-
sented, for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places
the concept " good " as essentially similar to the
concept " useful," " purposive," so that in the
judgments " good " and " bad " mankind is simply
summarising and investing with a sanction its
unforgotten and unforgettable experiences concern-
ing the " useful-purposive " and the " mischievous-
non-purposive. " According to this theory, " good"
is the attribute of that which has previously shown
itself useful ; and so is able to claim to be con-
sidered " valuable in the highest degree," " valu-
able in itself. " This method of explanation is
also, as I have said, wrong, but at any rate
the explanation itself is coherent, and psycho-
logically tenable.

Th£j[uide^pjt jvhichjfirst put me on the right
track was this question— what is the true etymo;^
logical jignificance of the various symbols for the
idea " good " which haye^been-coinedin the various
languages ? I then found that they all led back toT
the same evolution of the same idea — that every-
where " aristocrat," " noble " (in the social sense), is
the root idea, out of which have necessarily devel-



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 23

Oped " good " in the sense of " with aristocratic
soul," " noble," in the sense of " with a soul of high
calibre," " with a privileged soul " — a development
which invariably runs parallel with that other
evolution by which "vulgar," "plebeian," "low,"
are made to change finally into " bad. " t The
most eloquent proof of this last contention is
the German word ^^ schlecht" itself: this word is
identical with " schlicht" — (compare " schlechtweg"
and " schlechterdings ") — which, originally and
as yet without any sinister innuendo, simply
denoted the plebeian man in contrast to the aristo-
cratic man. It is at the sufficiently late period of
the Thirty Years' War that this sense becomes
changed to the sense now current. From the
standpoint of the Genealogy of Morals this dis-
covery seems to be substantial : the lateness of it
is to be attributed to the retarding influence exer-
cised in the modern world by democratic prejudice
in the sphere of all questions of origin. This ex-
tends, as will shortly be shown, even to the province
of natural science and physiology, vthlchprima facie
is the most objective. The extent of the mischief
which is caused by this prejudice (once it is free of
all trammels except those of its own malice), parti-
cularly to Ethics and History, is shown by the
notorious case of Buckle : it was in Buckle that
that plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is of
English origin, broke out once again from its
malignant soil with all the violence of a slimy
volcano, and with that salted, rampant, and vulgar
eloquence with which up to the present time all
volcanoes have spoken.



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24 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

s.

With regard to our problem, which can justly
be called an intimate problem, and which elects
to appeal to only a limited number of ears: it
is of no small interest to ascertain that in those
words and roots which denote " good " we catch
glimpses of that arch-trait, on the strength of
which the aristocrats feel themselves to be beings
of a higher order than their fellows. Indeed, they
call themselves in perhaps the most frequent
instances simply after their superiority in power
{e. g. " the powerful," " the lords," " the com-
manders "), or after the most obvious sign of their
superiority, as for example " the rich," " the pos-
sessors " (that is the meaning of arva_i and the
Iranian and Slav languages correspond). But
they also call themselves after some characteristic
idiosyncrasy ; and this is the case which now
concerns us. They name themselves, for instance,
" the truthful " : this is first done by the Greek
nobility whose mouthpiece is found in Theognis,
the Megarian poet. The word iaQXo<i, which is
coined for the purpose, signifies etymologically
" one who is" who has reality, who is real, who is
true ; and then with a subjective twist, the " true,"
as the " truthful " : at this stage in the evolution
of the idea, it becomes the motto and party cry of
the nobility, and quite completes the transition to
the meaning " noble," so as to place outside the
pale the lying, vulgar man, as Theognis conceives
and portrays him — till finally the word after the
decay of the nobility is left to delineate psycho-



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 25

logical noblesse, and becomes as it were ripe and
mellow. In the word /ca«o? as in SetXos (the
plebeian in contrast to the cuya66<s) the cowardice
is emphasised. This affords perhaps an inkling
on what lines the etymological origin of the very
ambiguous ayaOo^ is to be investigated. In the
Latin malus (which I place side by side with
fjLe\a<s) the vulgar man can be distinguished as
the dark-coloured, and above all as the black-
haired {" kic niger est"), as the pre- Aryan in-
habitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion
formed the clearest feature of distinction from the
dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan conquering
race : — at any rate Gaelic has afforded me the exact
analogue — Fin (for instance, in the name Fin-Gal),
the distinctive word of the nobility, finally — good,
noble, clean, but originally the blonde-haired man
in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals.
The Celts, if I may make a parenthetic statement,
were throughout a blonde race; and it is wrong
to connect, as Virchow still connects, those traces
of an essentially dark-haired population which
are to be seen on the more elaborate ethno-
graphical maps of Germany with any Celtic
ancestry or with any admixture of Celtic blood :
in this context it is rather the pre-Aryan population
of Germany which surges up to these districts.
(The same is true substantially of the whole of
Europe : in point of fact, the subject race has
finally again obtained the upper hand, in com-
plexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps
in the intellectual and social qualities. Who
can guarantee that modern democracy, still more



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26 ' THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

jHodern anarchy, and indeed that tendency to the
" Commune," the most primitive form of society,
which is now common to all the Socialists in
Europe, does not in its real essence signify a
monstrous reversion — and that the conquering
and master race — the Aryan race, is not also
becoming inferior physiologically? ) I believe that
I can explain the Latin bonus as the "warrior":
my hypothesis is that I am right in deriving bonus
from an older duonus (compare bellum = duellum
= duen-lum, in which 'the word duonus appears to
me to be contained). Bonus accordingly as the
man of discord, of variance, " entzweiung " {duo), as
the warrior : one sees what in ancient Rome " the
good" meant for a man. Must not our actual
German word gut mean " the godlike, the man of
godlike race " ? and be identical with the national
name (originally the nobles' name) of the Goths ?
The grounds for this supposition do not apper-
tain to this work.

6.

fAlDove all, there is no exception (though there
are opportunities for exceptions) to this rule, that
the idea of politi cal supe riority, al ways resok es
itsel f into the idea of psycho logical superioritg t
in those cases where the highest caste is at the
same time Xh&priestly caste, and in accordance with
its general characteristics confers on itself the
privilege of a title which alludes specifically to
its priestly function^ It is in these cases, for
instance, that " clean^ and " unclean " confront



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 27

each other fJOTthe first time as badges of class
distigstion^-here again" there develops a"j[ood"
and a " bad," in a sense~wIiicK"Tias ceased to be
merely social. Moreover, care should be taken
not 't6~take these ideas of " clean " and " unclean "
too seriously, too broadly, or too symbolically :
all the ideas of ancient man have, on the contrary,
got to be understood in their initial stages, in a
sense which is, to an almost inconceivable extent,
crude, coarse, physical, and narrow, and above all
essentially unsymbolical. The " clean man " is
originally only a man who washes himself, who
abstains from certain foods which are conducive
to skin diseases, who does not sleep with the
unclean women of the lower classes, who has a
horror of blood — not more, not much more ! On
the other hand, the very nature of a priestly
aristocracy shows the reasons why just at such
an early juncture there should ensue a really
dangerous sharpening and intensification of
opposed values : it is, in fact, through these
opposed values that gulfs are cleft in the social
plane, which a veritable Achilles of free thought
would shudder to cross. There is from the
outset a certain diseased taint in such sacerdotal
aristocracies, and in the habits which prevail in
such societies — habits which, averse as they are
to action, constitute a compound of introspection
and explosive emotionalism, as a result of which
there appears that introspective morbidity and
neurasthenia, which adheres almost inevitably to
all priests at all times : with regard, however, to
the remedy which they themselves have invented



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28 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

for this disease — the philosopher has no option
but to state, that it has proved itself in its effects
a hundred times more dangerous than the disease,
from which it should have been the deliverer.
Humanity itself is still diseased from the effects
of the naivetds of this priestly cure. Take, for
instance, certain kinds of diet (abstention from
flesh), fasts, sexual continence, flight into the
wilderness (a kind of Weir- Mitchell isolation,
though of course without that system of exces-
sive feeding and fattening which is the most
efficient antidote to all the hysteria of the ascetic
ideal) ; consider too the whole metaphysic of the
priests, with its war on the senses, its enerva-
tion, its hair-splitting ; consider its self-hypnotism
on the fakir and Brahman principles (it uses
Brahman as a glass disc and obsession), and that
climax which we can understand only too well
of an unusual satiety with its panacea of nothing-
ness (or God : — the demand for a unto mystica
with God is the demand of the Buddhist for
nothingness, Nirvana — and nothing else ! ). In
sacerdotal societies every element is on a more
dangerous scale, not merely cures and remedies,
but also pride, revenge, cunning, exaltation, love,
ambition, virtue, morbidity :■ — further, it can fairly]
be stated that it is on the soil of this essentially\
dangerous form of human society, the sacerdotal
form, that man really becomes for the first time
an interesting animal, that it is in this form that
the soul of man has in a higher sense attained
depths and become evil — and those are the two
fundamental forms of the superiority which up



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"GOOD AND EVIL," " GOOD AND BAD. " 29

to the present man has exhibited over every other
animal. {

The reader will have already surmised with
what ease the priestly mode of valuation can
branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode,
and then develop into the very antithesis of the
latter: special impetus is given to this opposition,
by every occasion when the castes of the priests
and warriors confront each other with mutual
jealousy and cannot agree over the prize. The
knightly-aristocratic " values " are based on a care-
ful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and
even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably
beyond what is necessary for maintaining life, on
war, adventure, the chase, the dance, the tourney —
on everything, in fact, which is contained in strong,
free, and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic
mode of valuation is — we have seen — based on
other hypotheses : it is bad enough for this class
when it is a question of war ! Yet the priests are,
as is notorious, the worst enemies — why ? Because
they are the weakest. Their weakness causes
their hate to expand into a monstrous and
sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and
most poisonous. The really great haters in the!
history of the world have always been priests, who
are also the cleverest haters — in comparison with
the cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece
of cleverness is practically negligiblej Human
history would be too fatuous for anything were
it not for the cleverness imported into it by the



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30 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

weak — take at once the most important instance.
All the world's efforts against the "aristocrats,"
the " mighty," the " masters," the " holders of
power," are negligible by comparison with what
has been accomplished against those classes by
the Jews — the Jews, that priestly nation which
eventually realised that the one method of effect-
ing satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by
means of a radical transvaluation of values, which
was at the same time an act of the cleverest
revenge. Yet the method was only appropriate
to a nation of priests, to a nation of the most
jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was
the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equa-
tion (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy =
loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying logic
to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to
maintain with the teeth of the most profound
hatred (the hatred of weakness) this contrary
equation, namely, " the wretched are alone the
good ; the poor, the weak, the lowly, are alone
the good ; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the
loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the
only ones who are blessed, for them alone is
salvation — but you, on the other hand, you
aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all
eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the
insatiate, the godless ; eternally also shall you be
the unblessed, the cursed, the damned ! " We
know who it was who reaped the heritage of this
Jewish transvaluation. In the context of the
monstrous and inordinately fateful initiative
which the Jews have exhibited in connection with



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 3 1

this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I
remember the passage which came to my pen on
another occasion {Beyond Good and Evil, Aph.
195) — that it was, in fact, with the Jews that
the revolt of the slaves begins in the sphere of
morals; that revolt which has behind it a history
of two millennia, and which at the present day has
only moved out of our sight, because it — has
achieved victory.

8,

But you understand this not? You have no
eyes for a force which hcis taken two thousand
years to achieve victory? — There is nothing
wonderful in this : all lengthy processes are hard
to see and to realise. But this is what took
place : from the trunk of that tree of revenge and
hate, Jewish hate, — that most profound and
sublime hate, which creates ideals and changes
old values to new creations, the like of which has
never been on earth, — there grew a phenomenon
which was equally incomparable, a new love, the
most profound and sublime of all kinds of love ;
— and from what other trunk could it have
grown ? But beware of supposing that this love
has soared on its upward growth, as in any way
a real negation of that thirst for revenge, as an
antithesis to the Jewish hate ! No, the contrary-
is the truth ! This love grew out of that hate, as its
crown, as its triumphant crown, circling wider and
wider amid the clarity and fulness of the sun, and
pursuing in the very kingdom of light and height
its goal of hatred, its victory, its spoil, its strategy,



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32 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

with the same intensity with which the roots of
that tree of hate sank into everything which was
deep and evil with increasing stability and in-
creasing desire. This Jesus of Nazareth, the
incarnate gospel of love, this " Redeemer " bringing
salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the
sinful — was he not really temptation in its most
sinister and irresistible form, temptation to take
the tortuous path to those very Jewish values and
those very Jewish ideals ? Has not Israel really
obtained the final goal of its sublime revenge, by
the tortuous paths of this " Redeemer," for all
that he might pose as Israel's adversary and
Israel's destroyer? Is it not due to the black
magic of a really great policy of revenge, of a
far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and
calculating with slowness, that Israel himself
must repudiate before all the world the actual
instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the
cross, so that all the world — that is, all the enemies
of Israel — could nibble without suspicion at this
very bait ? Could, moreover, any human mind with
all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait that was
more truly dangerous} Anything that was even
equivalent in the power of its seductive, intoxicat-
ing, defiling, and corrupting influence to that
symbol of the holy cross, to that awful paradox
of a " god on the cross," to that mystery of the
unthinkable, supreme, and utter horror of the
self-crucifixion of a god for the salvation of man ?
It is at least certain that sub hoc signo Israel, with
its revenge and transvaluation of all values, has
up to the present always triumphed again over



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 33

all other ideals, over all more aristocratic
ideals.

9-

" But why do you talk of nobler ideals ? Let
us submit to the facts ; that the people have
triumphed — or the slaves, or the populace, or the
herd, or whatever name you care to give them —
if this has happened through the Jews, so be it !
In that case no nation ever had a greater mission
in the world's history. The ' masters ' have bee^
done away with ; the morality of the vulgar man
has triumphed. This triumph may also be called
a blood - poisoning (it has mutually fused the
races) — I do not dispute it; but there is no
doubt but that this intoxication has succeededj
The ' redemption ' of the human race (that is,
from the masters) is progressing swimmingly ;
everything is obviously becoming Judaised, or
Christianised, or vulgarised (what is there in the
words? ). It seems impossible to stop the
course of this poisoning through the whole body
politic of mankind — but its tempo and pace may
from the present time be slower, more delicate,
quieter, more discreet — there is time enough. In
view of this context has the Church nowadays any
necessary purpose ? has it, in fact, a right to live ?
Or could man get on without it? Qucsritur.
It seems that it fetters and retards this tendency,
instead of accelerating it. Well, even that might
be its utility. The Church certainly is a crude
and boorish institution, that is repugnant to an
intelligence with any pretence at delicacy, to a



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34 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

really modern taste. Should it not at any rate
learn to be somewhat more subtle? It alienates
nowadays, more than it allures. Which of us
would, forsooth, be a freethinker if there were no
Church ? It is the Church which repels us, not
its poison — apart from the Church we like the
poison. " This is the epilogue of a freethinker to
my discourse, of an honourable animal (as he has
given abundant proof), and a democrat to boot;
he had up to that time listened to me, and could
not endure my silence, but for me, indeed, with
regard to this topic there is much on which to
be silent.

lO.

I The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the
very principle of resentment becoming creatiye^nS"
givinglDirth to values — -a,, resentment __exg,erijgDced^
bj^ creatures who, deprived as they are of the
proper outlet of action, are forced to find their_ _
compensation in an imaginary revenge, j Whi]e _
every aristocratic morality s prings from a tri-
umphant affirmation^ of . its own de mands, tBe^
sla ve morality says " no " from the very outsetT 5~'
what is " outside itself," " different from itself,
and "not itself": and this "^"rio " is its creative^
deed. ' This volte-face of thS valuing stan3-
point — this___^wiii2;^Zg. . . . gravitation to the ob-
jective instead of back to the subjecHVe —
is Typical of " resentment " : the "slave- Iflorellit3^^
requires as the ^condition of its existence "arT
external, and objective world, to employ physio-
logical terminology, it requires objectiv e stimu li



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 35

tn he. capable of a ctioa— aL-all— [^i ts action i s
fundam ental ly a reactio n. The contrary is the '
case when we come to the aristocrat's system of
values : it acts and grows spontaneously, it jmerely
seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a niore
grateful and exulHSE3y^' jolts own self; — its
negative conception, "low," " vulgarT* " " bad," is
merely a pale late-born foil in comparison with its
positive and fundamental conception (saturated as
it is with life and passion), of " we aristocrats, we
good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy ones. ^

When the aristocratic morality goes astray and
commits sacrilege on reality, this is limited to that
particular sphere with which it is not sufficiently
acquainted — a sphere, in fact, from the real
knowledge of which it disdainfully defends itself.
It misjudges, in some cases, the sphere which it
despises, the sphere of the common vulgar man
and the low people : on the other hand, due weight
should be given to the consideration that in any
case the mood of contempt, of disdain, of super-
ciliousness, even on the supposition that it falsely
portrays the object of its contempt, will always
be far removed from that degree of falsity which
will always characterise the attacks — in effigy, of
course — of the vindictive hatred and revengeful-
ness of the weak in onslaughts on their enemies.
In point of fact, there is in contempt too strong
an admixture of nonchalance, of casualness, of
boredom, of impatience, even of personal exultation,
for it to be capable of distorting its victim into a
real caricature or a real monstrosity. Attention
again should be paid to the almost benevolent



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36 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

nuances which, for instance, the Greek nobility
imports into all the words by which it distinguishes
the common people from itself; note how con-
tinuously a kind of pity, care, and consideration
imparts its honeyed flavour, until at last almost all
the words which are applied to the vulgar man
survive finally as expressions for "unhappy,"
" worthy of pity " (compare ieCKd<s, SeiKaio';, irovijpo^,
IwxOrjpo^ ; the latter two names really denoting
the vulgar man as labour-slave and beast of burden)
— and how, conversely, " bad," " low," " unhappy "
have never ceased to ring in the Greek ear with
a tone in which " unhappy " is the predominant
note: this is a heritage of the old noble
aristocratic morality, which remains true to itself
even in contempt (let philologists remember
the sense in which oi^vpo^, dvoX^oi;, rKriimv,
Bvcrrvxelv, ^v/Mpopd used to be employed). The
" well-born " simply /eU themselves the " happy " ;
they did not have to manufacture their happiness
artificially through looking at their enemies, or in
cases to talk and lie themselves into happiness (as
is the custom with all resentful men); and
similarly, complete men as they were, exuberant
with strength, and consequently necessarily ener-
getic, they were too wise to dissociate happi-
ness from action — activity becomes in their
minds necessarily counted as happiness (that is
the etymology of ev irp&TTeiv) — all in sharp con-
trast to the " happiness " of the weak and the
oppressed, with their festering venom and malignity,
among whom happiness appears essentially as
a narcotic, a deadening, a quietude, a peace, a



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 37

"Sabbath," an enervation of the mind and re-
laxation of the limbs, — in short, a purely passive
phenomenon. While the aristocratic man livedi
in confidence and openness with himself (yevvaio';,
" noble-born," emphasises the nuance " sincere,"
and perhaps also " naif"), the resentful man, on
the other hand, is neither sincere nor naif, nor
honest and candid with himself^ His soul squints ;
his mind loves hidden crannies, tortuous paths and
back-doors, everything secret appeals to him as
Ais world, Ms safety, Ais balm ; he is past master
in silence, in not forgetting, in waiting, in provi-
sional self-depreciation and self-abasement. A race
of such resentful men will of necessity eventually
prove more prudent than any aristocratic race, it
will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale,
as, in fact, a paramount condition of existence, while
prudence among aristocratic men is apt to be
tinged with a delicate flavour of luxury and
refinement ; so among them it plays nothing like
so integral a part as that complete certainty of
function of the governing unconscious instincts, or
as indeed a certain lack of prudence, such as
a vehement and valiant charge, whether against
danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic bursts
of rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all
times noble souls have recognised each other.
When the resentment of the aristocratic man
manifests itself, it fulfils and exhausts itself in an
immediate reaction, and consequently instills no
venom : on the other hand, it never manifests itself
at all in countless instances, when in the case of
the feeble and weak it would be inevitablej An



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38 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

inabilit y to take seriously for any I gngth of time
their e nemies, their disasters, th eir misdeeds^^^^^^ ^
"mTTe srVn of thejull_strong n atures who po ssess_a_^
superfluity of moulding plastic force^t hat heals c om-
pleitely and pro duces forget fulngssj^j^oodexaniple^
offfi sTn the modern world is Jlimbeau ^who had n o
memory f or any insults a nd meannesses whic h wer e
practised_on_him, and wjio_wa§_j3n]y:-incapahlpi nf
forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed
shakes off with a shrug many a worm which
would have buried itself in another ; it is only in
characters like these that we see the possibility
(supposing, of course, that there is such a possibility
in the world) of the real " love of one's enemies. "
What respect for his enemies is found, forsooth,
in an aristocratic man — and such a reverence is
already a bridge to love ! He insists on having
his enemy to himself as his distinction. He
tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose
character there is nothing to despise and much
to honour ! On the other hand, imagine the
"enemy" as the resentful man conceives hjm —
and it is here exactly that we see his work, his
creativeness ; he has conceived " the evil enemy,"
the " evil one," and indeed that is the root idea
from which he now evolves as a contrasting and
corresponding figure a " good one," himself — his
very self!

II.

I The method of this man is quite contrary to
that of the aristocratic man, who conceives the
root idea " good " spontaneously and straight



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 39

away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that
material then creates for himself a concept of
" bad "J_J Th. \s^^sd"-. J^i aristocia. tlc^. oti§ia^_and. .
that " evil " out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred

— -the tormer an imitation, an " extra," an additional
nuance; the lafterJ'oiTthe otli«'Tian37tKe~original,
the' "beginning, the ^senlial"act in the conception]
ti f^" srave-mo rality— -thgse . two ffiQld§. ,'l. badI'^ad„
"evil," how "great a ^ig^ence do they, mark, in
spite of the fact that they have an identical con-
tr ary in fhe idea '~good. ^ But the idea " good "
is not the same : much rather let the question be
asked, " Who is re ally evil according to the mean-
ing of the m oJEalitv . of- resentment ? " In all
sternness let it be answered thus -. —just the good
man of the other morality, just the aristocrat, the
powerfuFone^the one who rules, but who is dis-
torted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, into
a new colour, a jiew si^jficatioii,. a new appear-
. ance. _ J his particular point we would be the last
to deny : the man who learnt to know those
" good " ones only as enemies, learnt at the same
time not to know them only as ^^ evil enemies"
and the same men who inter pares were kept so
rigorously in bounds through convention, respect,
custom, and gratitude, though much more through
mutual vigilance and jealousy inter pares, these
men who in their relations with each other find so
many new ways of manifesting consideration, self-
control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship,
these men are in reference to what is outside
their circle (where the foreign element, a
foreign country, begins), not much better than



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40 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

beasts of prey, which have been let loose. They
enjoy there freedom from all social control, they
feel that in the wilderness they can give vent with
impunity to that tension which is produced by
enclosure and imprisonment in the peace of society,
they revert to the innocence of the beast-of-prey
conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps
come from a ghastly bout of murder, arson, rape,
and torture, with bravado and a moral equanimity,
as though merely some wild student's prank had
been played, perfectly convinced that the poets
have now an ample theme to sing and celebrate.
It is impossible not to recognise at the core of all
these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the
magnificent blonde brute, avidly rampant for spoil
and victory ; this hidden core needed an outlet
from time to time, the beast must get loose again,
must return into the wilderness — the Roman,
Arabic, German, and Japanese nobility, the
Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings, are
all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic races
who have left the idea " Barbarian " on all the
tracks in which they have marched ; nay, a con-
sciousness of this very barbarianism, and even a
pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest
civilisation (for example, when Pericles says to
his Athenians in that celebrated funeral oration,
" Our audacity has forced a way over every
land and sea, rearing everywhere imperishable
memorials of itself {qx good -axiA for evil"). This
audacity of aristocratic races, mad, absurd, and
spasmodic as may be its expresssion ; the incalcul-
able and fantastic nature of their enterprises, —



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 41

Pericles sets in special relief and glory the padvfiia
of the Athenians, their nonchalance and contempt
for safety, body, life, and comfort, their awful joy
and intense delight in all destruction, in all the
ecstasies of victory and cruelty, — all these features
become crystallised, for those who suffered thereby
in the picture of the " barbarian," of the " evil
enemy," perhaps of the " Goth " and of the
" Vandal. " The profound, icy mistrust which the
German provokes, as soon as he arrives at power, —
even at the present time, — is always still an after-
math of that inextinguishable horror with which
for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath
of the blonde Teuton beast (although between the
old Germans and ourselves there exists scarcely a
psychological, let alone a physical, relationship).
I have once called attention to the embarrassment
of Hesiod, when he conceived the series of social
ages, and endeavoured to express them in gold,
silver, and bronze. He could only dispose of the
contradiction, with which he was confronted, by
the Homeric world, an age magnificent indeed,
but at the same time so awful and so violent, by
making two ages out of one, which he henceforth
placed one behind each other — first, the age of the
heroes and demigods, as that world had remained
in the memories of the aristocratic families, who
found therein their own ancestors ; secondly, the
bronze age, as that corresponding age appeared to
the descendants of the oppressed, spoiled, ill-
treated, exiled, enslaved ; namely, as an age of
bronze, as I have said, hard, cold, terrible, without
feelings and without conscience, crushing every-



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42 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

thing, and bespattering everything with blood.
Grantedjhe truth of the theory now belie_ yed to_
belrue, that the very essence^ of all civilisat ion is to

I train ^^"o'f man, the beast of prey, a ta me and

civilised animal, a domesticatgd animal, it fol lows

indubitably that we must regard as . . the real tools

Vof civilisation all Jhose instincts of reac ti on and

resentment, by the help of which the . Aristocratic.

, races, together with their ideals,, were, J5«aUjj-de. -
graded ^nd overpoweredj though that has not
yet come to be synonymous with saying that the
bearers of those tools also represented the civilisa-
tion. It is rather the contrary that is not only
probable — nay, it is palpable to-day ; these bearers
of vindictive instincts that have to be bottled up,
these descendants of all European and non-
European slavery, especially of the pre-Aryan
population — these people, I say, represent the
decline of humanity ! j^hese " tools of civilisa-
tion " are a disgrace to humanity, and constitute
in reality more of an argument against civilisation,
more of a reason why civilisation should be sus-
pectqdj One may be perfectly justified in being
always afraid of the blonde beast that lies at the
core of all aristocratic races, and in being on
one's guard : but who would not a hundred times
prefer to be afraid, when one at the same time
admires, than to be immune from fear, at the cost
of being perpetually obsessed with the loathsome
spectacle of the distorted, the dwarfed, the stunted,
the envenomed ? And is that not our fate ? What
produces to-day our repulsion towards " man " ?
— for we suffer from " man," there is no doubt



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 43

about it. It IS not fear ; it is rather that we have
nothing more to fear from men ; it is that the
worm " man " is in the foreground and pullulates ;
it is thatjj^e " tame man,'' the wretched jnedipcre
and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider
himself a goal and a pinnacle, an inner meaning,
an hfsTonc principle, a ""'higher man '1; yes, it
is" that he has a certain right so to consider
himself, in so far as he feels that in contrast to
that excess of deformity, disease, exhaustion, and
effeteness whose odour is beginning to pollute
present-day Europe, he at any rate has achieved
a relative success, he at any rate still says " yes "
to life.

12.

I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering
a sigh and one last hope. What is it precisely
which I find intolerable? That which I alone
cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and
faint ? Bad air ! bad air ! That something
misbegotten comes near me; that I must inhale
the odour of the entrails of a misbegotten soul ! —
That excepted, what can one not endure in the
way of need, privation, bad weather, sickness,
toil, solitude? In point of fact, one manages to
get over everything, born as one is to a burrowing
and battling existence ; one always returns once
again to the light, one always lives again one's
golden hour of victory — and then one stands as
one was born, unbreakable, tense, ready for some-
thing more difficult, for something more distant,
like a bow stretched but the tauter by every strain.



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44 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

But from time to time do ye grant me — assuming
that " beyond good and evil " there are goddesses
who can grant — one glimpse, grant me but one
glimpse only, of something perfect, fully realised,
happy, mighty, triumphant, of something that
still gives cause for fear ! A glimpse of a man
that justifies the existence of ftian^_a_glimgse_ ot"
"an lncarnateniirfnarr~hg|^fie"sTTEa t realisS^n d
redeems, -for the sake of^'hich one may holdTfast
to the belief in man ! JForJJifi-jiosiJ'io'n is thja^
in the dwarfing and levelling of the Eur opean
man lurks our greatest perilj for it is this outlook
which fatigues — we see to-day nothing which
wishes to be greater, we^surmi^_that_Jhf prnrpss
is always still backwards^ still backwar^^aJtQSMtfds-
something more attenuated, more inoffensivg,JHflre
cunning, more comfortable, more med iocre, more
indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian — man,
there is no doubt about it, grows always " better "
— the destiny of Europe lies even in thisj j^that
in losing the fear of nian, wejiave also lost_the_
hope in man, yea, the wiU_to. be manJ~TE^light
of man now fatigues^ — What is presenF-day "
Nihilism if it is not that ? — We are tired of^«. ~

13.

But let us come back to it ; the problem of
another origin of the good — of the good, as the
resentful man has thought it out — demands its solu-
tion. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear
a grudge against the great birds of prey, but that
\is no reason for blaming the great birds of prey



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 45

sfor taking the little lambs. And when the l^bs^
I say among themselves, " These birds of prey are
evil, and he who is as far removed from being a
bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb, —
is he not good ? " then there is nothing to cavil at
in the setting up of this ideal, though it may also
be that the birds of prey will regard it a little
sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves, " We
bear no grudge against them, these good lambs,
we even like them : nothing is tastier than a
tender lamb. " (To require of strength that it
should not express itself as strength, that it should
not be a wish to overpower, a wish to overthrow,
a wish to become master, a thirst for enemies
and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd
as to require of weakness that it should express
itself as stren gth, fi A quantum o f force is j ust
such a quantum of m oy^nentjj all. action — rath er
i t is nothing else than just those very^^enomena^
of movin g, willing, acting, and can only appear
otherwisejn themisleadingerrors' ot language'
(and the fundamental fallacies of reason which
have become petrified therein), w hich unders tands,
and understands wrongly, all working as con -
ditioned~by a worker, E y''a~^subie ct. " And just
exactly as the people separate the lightning from
its flash, and interpret the latter as a thing done,
as the working of a subject which is called light-
ning, s o also d oes the popular morality separate
strength from tKe" expressiuii — uf htreiig l h^ ay
though behind the stron g man there existed_some
indifferent neutral substratum, which enjoyed a
caprice and option as to whether™or~not it shbul3



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46 \ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

express_sti;ength. But there is no such sui-
' stratum, there is no " being " behmd^ doing,
working, becoming; "the doer" is a nTerkJi^i^
agVio the action. The action is everything. In
point of fact, the people dupUcate the doing,
when they make the lightning lighten, that is a
" doing-doing " : they make the same phenomenon
first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that
cause. The scientists fail to improve matters
when they say, " Force moves, force causes," and
so on. Our whole science is stillj_in^s pite of all its
coldness, of all its freedom from passi on, a dup e
of the tricks of language, and has never succeeded"
in getting rid of that superstitious_chang. e ling "th e
subj,ec4;4U(the atom, to give another instance, is
such a changeling, just as the Kantian " Thing-in-
itself"). W hat wonder, if the suppressed and
stealthily simmering passions of revenge~^d
hatrpd pvplniF tor ffiejrnwn advantage this tjpjjgf,
and indeed hold. „no belief with a more steadfast
enthusiasm than this — "that the strong has~the
option of being weak, and the bir d of prey of B eing
a lamb. " THereby do they win for themselveiTftEr*
riglit of attributing to the birds of prey the re-
sponsibility for being birds of prey : when the
oppressed, down-trodden, and overpowered say to
themselves with the vindictive guile of weakness,
" Let us be otherwise than the evil, namely, good !
and good is every one who does not oppress, who
hurts no one, who does not attack, who does not
pay back, who hands over revenge to God, who
holds himself, as we do, in hiding ; who goes out
of the way of evil, and denia nds, in short, litt le. '



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 47

from life ; like ourselves the patient, the meek, the
just," — yet all this, in its cold and unprejudiced
interpretation, means nothing more than " once for
all, the weak are weak ; it is good to do nothing
for which we are not strong enough " ; but this dismal
state of affairs, this prudence of the lowest order,
which even insects possess (which in a great danger
are fain to sham death so as to avoid doing " too
much "), has, thanks to the counterfeiting and
self-deception of weakness, come to masquerade in
the pomp of an ascetic, mute, and expectant virtue,
JTjust as though the verj/ weakness of the weak —
that is, forsooth, its being, its working, its whole
unique inevitable inseparable reality — were a
voluntary result, something wished, chosen, a deed,
an act of me rit. | This kind^of man finds-the belief
in a neutral, free-choosing " subject" necessary
from— affTTisttnfft of seli-preservation, of self-asser-
tion, in "Which'everyTie is fain to sanctify^ itself.
■Jhe^subject (or, to use jpopular language, the jg^Q. .
has perEaps~proved itself the best dogm. a. in the
world simply because it rendered . possible-to. the
horde of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals
of every kind, that most sublime specimelT o f seTT-
deception, ! He~ interpretation of weakness as
freedom7"o^f~&eing'TKis,~6r being that, as merit.

14.

Will any one look a little into — right into — the
mystery of how ideals are manufactured in this
world ? Who has the courage to do it ? Come !

Here we have a vista opened into these grimy



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48 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

workshops. Wait just a moment, dear Mr. In-
quisitive and Foolhardy ; your eye must first grow
accustomed to this false changing light — Yes!
Enough ! Now speak ! What is happening
below down yonder? Speak out that what yoi
see, man of the most dangerous curiosity — for
now I am the listener.

" I see nothing, I hear the more. It is a
cautious, spiteful, gentle whispering and muttering
together in all the corners and crannies. It seems
to me that they are lying; a sugary softness
adheres to every sound. Weakness is turned to
merit, there is no doubt about it — it is just as
you say. "

Further !

" And the impotence which requites not, is
turned to " goodness,' craven baseness to meek-
ness, submission to those whom one hates, to
obedience (namely, obedience to one of whom
they say that he ordered this submission — they
call him God). The inoffensive character of the
weak, the very cowardice in which he is rich, his
standing at the door, his forced necessity of wait-
ing, gain here fine names, such as ' patience,'
which is also called ' virtue ' ; not being able to
avenge one's self, is called not wishing to avenge
one's self, perhaps even forgiveness (for they know
not what they do — we alone know what they do).
They also talk of the ' love of their enemies ' and
sweat thereby. "

Further !
/ " They are miserable, there is no doubt about
it, all these whisperers and counterfeiters in the



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 49

corners, although they try to get warm by
crouching close to each other, but they tell me
that their misery is a favour and distinction given
to them by God, just as one beats the dogs one
likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a
preparation, a probation, a training ; that perhaps
it is still more something which will one day be
compensated and paid back with a tremendous
interest in gold, nay in happiness.