In
Goethe we find a kind of fatalism which is almost joyous and confiding, which neither revolts nor weakens, which strives to make a totality out of itself, in the belief that only in totality does every
thing seem good and justified, and find itself resolved.
Goethe we find a kind of fatalism which is almost joyous and confiding, which neither revolts nor weakens, which strives to make a totality out of itself, in the belief that only in totality does every
thing seem good and justified, and find itself resolved.
Nietzsche - Works - v14 - Will to Power - a
.
history, nature, and man himself!
"Our inability to know the truth is the result of our corruption, of our moral decay," says Pascal. And Schopenhauer says essentially the same.
"The more profound the corruption of reason the more necessary the doctrine salvation"-- or, putting into Schopenhauerian phraseology, negation.
84.
Schopenhauer an epigone (state affairs
? before the eighteenth century.
Revolution):--Pity, sensuality, art,
weakness will, Catholicism the most intel
lectual desires--that bottom, the good old
? ? is, at
of
it
of
as
is
of of
is,
? 7o
THE WILL TO POWER.
Schopenhauer's fundamental misunderstanding of the will (just as though passion, instinct, and
desire were the essential factors of will) is typical:
the depreciation of the will to the extent of mis
taking it altogether. Likewise the hatred of willing: the attempt at seeing something superior
--yea, even superiority itself, and that which really matters, in non-willing, in the "subject-being
without aim or intention. " Great symptom of fatigue or of the weakness of will: for this, in reality, is what treats the passions as master, and
directs them as to the way and to the measure. . . .
85.
The undignified attempt has been made to regard
Wagner and Schopenhauer as types of the mentally
unsound: an infinitely more essential understanding
of the matter would have been gained if the exact
decadent type which each of them represents had been scientifically and a-ccurately defined.
-- * ? 86. )
Henrik Ibsen has become very clear to me.
With all his robust idealism and "Will to Truth,"
he never dared to ring himself free from moral
illusionism which says "freedom," and will not
admit, even to itself, what freedom is: the second stage in the metamorphosis of the "Will to Power,"
in him who lacks the first stage, one
demands justice the hands those who have power. the second, one speaks "freedom,"
? ? ? In
of of
|
at
it.
In
? Christianity And,
NIHILISM.
71
that is to say, one wishes to "shake oneself free" from those who have power. In the third stage, one speaks of "equal rights"--that is to say, so long as one is not a predominant personality one
wishes to prevent one's competitors from growing- 1n power.
87.
The Decline of Protestantism: theoretically and
historically understood as a half-measure. Un
deniable predominance of Catholicism to-day:
Protestant feeling is so dead that the strongest
anti-Protestant movements (Wagner's Parsifal, for
instance) are no longer regarded as such. The
whole of the more elevated intellectuality in France
is Catholic in instinct; Bismarck recognised that
there was no longer any such thing as Protest antism.
88.
Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and
tiresome form of decadence, in which Christianity
has known how to survive in the mediocre North, is something incomplete and complexly valuable
for knowledge, in so far as it was able to bring
experiences of different kinds and origins into the same heads.
89.
What has the German spirit not made out of
and more lounging form of Christian belief be
? to refer to Protestantism again, how much beer is there not still in Pro testant Christianity | Can a crasser, more indolent,
? ? ? 72
THE WILL TO POWER.
imagined, than that of the average German Pro
testant? . . . It is indeed a very humble Christi | anity. I call it the Homoeopathy of Christianity
I am reminded that, to-day, there also exists a less humble sort of Protestantism; it is taught by
royal chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but
nobody has ever maintained that any "spirit" "hovers" over these waters. It is merely a less respectable form of Christian faith, not by any
means a more comprehensible one.
90.
Progress. --Let us be on our guard lest we
deceive ourselves! Time flies forward apace,--
we would fain believe that everything flies forward with it,--that evolution is an advancing develop
ment. . . . That is the appearance of things which deceives the most circumspect. But the nineteenth century shows no advance whatever on the six teenth: and the German spirit of 1888 is an example of a backward movement when compared
succeed, while an incalculable number things fail; where all order, logic, co-ordination, and
? with that of 1788.
advance, it does not even exist. The aspect of the whole is much more like that of a huge experi menting workshop where some things in ages
responsibility lacking.
How dare we blink the
fact that the rise Christianity decadent movement? --that the German Reformation was
recrudescence of Christian barbarism ? --that the Revolution destroyed the instinct for organisa
Mankind does not
? ? - a
is an a
is of
of all
? NIHILISM.
73
tion of society on a large scale? . . . Man is not
an example of progress as compared with animals:
the tender son of culture is an abortion compared
with the Arab or the Corsican; the Chinaman
is a more successful type--that is to say, possess ing more lasting powers than the European.
(b) THE LAST CENTURIES.
9 I.
Gloominess and pessimistic influence necessarily follow in the wake of enlightenment. Towards 177o a falling-off in cheerfulness was already noticeable; women, with that very feminine instinct which always defends virtue, believed that immor
ality was the cause of Galiani hit the bull's
? eye:
quotes Voltaire's verse:
"Un monstre gai vaut mieux
Qu'un sentimental
ennuyeux. "
ahead,
now maintain that am century two enlightenment,
Voltaire and Galiani--who was much more profound, how deeply must have sunk into gloominess! This
also true, and betimes somewhat reluctantly manifested some caution regard the German
and Christian narrowness and
inconsistency
Schopenhauerian or, worse still, Leopardian Pessim
ism, and sought the most characteristic form (Asia).
Tragedy), live alone "without God morality,"
But,
order endure that extreme Pessimism (which here and there peeps out my Birth
? ? to
to
or I I
of or
of
of
by of a
in
in I to
it. I
is
If
he
of
? 74
THE WILL TO POWER.
I was compelled to invent a counter-prop for my
self. Perhaps I know best why man is the only animal that laughs: he alone suffers so excruciat ingly that he was compelled to invent laughter. The unhappiest and most melancholy animal
might have been expected, the most cheerful.
92.
regard German culture, have always had
feeling
know declining form culture has often made
decline. The fact that learned
phenomenon European culture. The Germans always follow some distance behind: they always go the
root things, for instance:--
Dependance upon foreigners; Kant--Rousseau,
sensualists, Hume, Swedenborg. Schopenhauer--the Indians and Romanticism,
Voltaire.
Wagner--the French cult the ugly and grand opera, Paris, and the flight into primitive
barbarism (the marriage brother and sister). The law the laggard (the provinces go
Greek (the more instinct developed, the more tempted run for once into its opposite).
Music the last breath every culture.
93.
Renaissance and Reformation. --What does the Renaissance prove? That the reign the
me unfair towards the whole
? the
Paris, Germany goes
France).
How that precisely Germans discovered the
? ? of
to
toof ofto is,
is
is it
as
of to
of
of is
it is
at a as In
to
of
an
to
of
of
I I
of
a
? NIHILISM.
75
"individual" can be only a short one. The out
put is too great; there is not even the possibility of husbanding or of capitalising forces, and ex
haustion sets in step by step. These are times when everything is squandered, when even the
strength itself with which one collects, capitalises, and heaps riches upon riches, is squandered.
Even the opponents of such movements are driven to preposterous extremes in the dissipation of
their strength: and they too are very soon exhausted, used up, and completely sapped.
In the Reformation we are face to face with
a wild and plebeian counterpart of the Italian Renaissance, generated by similar impulses, except
that the former, in the backward and still vulgar North, had to assume a religious form--there the concept of a higher life had not yet been divorced from that of a religious one.
Even the Reformation was a movement for
individual liberty; "every one his own priest" is really no more than a formula for libertinage. As a
matter of fact, the words "Evangelical freedom" would have sufficed--and all instincts which had
reasons for remaining concealed broke out like wild hounds, the most brutal needs suddenly acquired the courage to show themselves, everything seemed
justified . . . men refused to specify the kind of freedom they had aimed they preferred shut
their eyes. But the fact that their eyes were closed and that their lips were moistened with gushing orations, did not prevent their hands from being ready
? snatch whatever there was
snatch at, that the belly became the god the *
? ? of
to to
to
at
at,
? 76
THE WILL TO POWER.
"free gospel," and that all lusts of revenge and of hatred were indulged with insatiable fury.
This lasted for a while: then exhaustion super
vened, just as it had done in Southern Europe; and again here, it was a low form of exhaustion,
a sort of general ruere in servitium. . . . Then the disreputable century of Germany dawned.
94.
Chivalry--the position won by power: its
gradual break-up (and partial transference to
broader and more bourgeois spheres). In the case of Larochefoucauld we find a knowledge of the actual impulses of a noble temperament--together
with the gloomy Christian estimate of these impulses.
The protraction of Christianity through the
? French Revolution. The seducer is
Rousseau;
he once again liberates woman, who thenceforward is always represented as ever more interesting--
| suffering.
Then come the slaves and Mrs. Beecher
Stowe. Then the poor and the workmen. Then the vicious and the sick--all this is drawn into
the foreground (even for the purpose of disposing people in favour of the genius, it has been custom
ary for five hundred years to press him forward as
the great sufferer! ). Then comes the cursing of all voluptuousness (Beaudelaire and Schopen
hauer); the most decided conviction that the lust of power is the greatest vice; absolute certainty
that morality and disinterestedness are identical things; that the "happiness of all" is a goal worth
? ? ? NIHILISM.
77
striving after (i. e. , Christ's Kingdom of Heaven).
We are on the best road to it: the Kingdom of Heaven of the poor in spirit has begun. --Inter
mediate stages: the bourgeois (as a result of the
nouveau riche) and the workman (as a result of
the machine).
Greek and French culture of the time of Louis
XIV. compared. A decided belief in oneself.
A leisured class which makes things hard for itself
and exercises a great deal of self-control. The
power of form, the will to form oneself. "Happi ness" acknowledged as a purpose. Much strength
and energy behind all formality of manners. Pleasure at the sight of a life that is seemingly so
The Greeks seemed like children to the
? easy. French.
95.
The Three Centuries.
may
perhaps be best expressed as follows:-- Aristocracy: Descartes, the reign of reason,
evidence showing the sovereignty of the will. Feminism : Rousseau, the reign of feeling, evidence showing the sovereignty of the senses;
all lies.
Animalism : Schopenhauer, the reign of passion,
evidence showing the sovereignty of animality, more honest, but gloomy.
The seventeenth century is aristocratic, all for order, haughty towards everything animal, severe in regard to the heart, "austere," and even free from sentiment, "non-German," averse to all that
Their different kinds of sensitiveness
? ? ? 78
THE WILL TO POWER.
is burlesque and natural, generalising and mai taining an attitude of sovereignty towards t
for it believes in itself. At bottom
past
partakes very much of the beast of prey, ar
practises
It is the century of strength of will, as also that strong passion.
The eighteenth century is dominated by woma it is gushing, spiritual, and flat; but with intelle
at the service of aspirations and of the heart, it
a libertine in the pleasures of intellect, underminin authorities; emotionally intoxicated, cheerfi
clear, humane, and sociable, false itself and bottom very rascally.
The nineteenth century more animal, mo
asceticism in order to remain maste
? subterranean, hateful, realistic, plebeian,
that very account "better," "more honest," mo
submissive "reality" what kind soever,
truer; but weak
and fatalistic. reverence, either the "heart";
will, sad, obscurely exactin has no feeling timidity
the presence "reason" thoroughly convinced
dominion the desires (Schopenhauer said "Will
but nothing more characteristic his philosoph
than that entirely lacks all actual willing). Eve morality reduced instinct ("Pity").
Auguste
eighteenth century (the dominion the heart ov the head, sensuality the theory knowledg
Comte the continuation of
altruistic exaltation).
The fact that science has become
sovereig to-day, proves how the nineteenth centul has emancipated itself from the dominion idea.
and
? ? of
of
t. th anc
as it is
all
of of as
of
of of
is
to
in
an
of
. .
isit of is
to
in It of is to
? NIHILISM.
79
A certain absence of "needs" and wishes makes our scientific curiosity and rigour possible--this is
our kind of virtue.
?
Romanticism is the counterstroke of the
eighteenth century; a sort of accumulated longing
for its grand style of exaltation (as a matter of fact,
largely mingled with mummery and self-deception:
the desire was to represent strong nature and strong passion).
The nineteenth century instinctively goes in search of theories by means of which it may feel its fatalistic submission to the empire of facts justified. Hegel's success against sentimentality and romantic idealism was already a sign of fatalistic trend thought, its belief that superior reason belongs the triumphant side,
and justification the actual "state" (in the place "humanity," etc. ). --Schopenhauer: we
are something foolish, and the best self suppressive. The success determinism, the genealogical derivation obligations which were formerly held absolute, the teaching environment and adaptation, the reduction will
process reflex movement, the denial the will "working cause"; finally -- real
? process re-christening:
that the word itself becomes available for another
purpose. Further theories: the teaching objectivity, "will-less" contemplation, the only
road truth, also beauty (also the belief "genius," order have the right
submissive); mechanism, the determinable rigidity the mechanical process; so-called "Naturalism,"
little will observed
? ? of in
to a
in
as
of
to
of
to to
be so
of
of to
in
to
as of a
in of its
of at
be of of its
to
a ofof
as
is
? 8O THE WILL TO POWER.
the elimination of the choosing, directing, inter preting subject, on principle.
Kant, with his "practical reason," with his moral
fanaticism, is quite eighteenth century style; still
completely outside the historical movement, without any notion whatsoever of the reality of his time, for instance, revolution; he is not affected by Greek
philosophy; he is a phantasist of the notion of duty,
a sensualist with a hidden leaning to dogmatic pampering.
The return to Kant in our century means a return to the eighteenth century: people desire to create
themselves a right to the old ideas and to the old exaltation--hence a theory of knowledge which "de scribes limits," that is to say, which admits of the
option of fixing a Beyond to the domain of reason. Hegel's way of thinking is not so very far removed from that of Goethe: see the latter on
the subject of Spinoza, for instance. The will to
deify the All and Life, in order to find both peace and happiness in contemplating them: Hegel looks for reason everywhere--in the presence of
reason man may be submissive and resigned.
In
Goethe we find a kind of fatalism which is almost joyous and confiding, which neither revolts nor weakens, which strives to make a totality out of itself, in the belief that only in totality does every
thing seem good and justified, and find itself resolved.
96.
The period of rationalism --followed by a period of sentimentality. To what extent does
? ? ? ? NIHILISM. 81
Schopenhauer come under "sentimentality"? (Hegel under intellectuality ? )
97.
The seventeenth century suffers from humanity
as from a host of contradictions ("l'amas de con
tradictions" that we are ); it endeavours to discover
man, to co-ordinate him, to excavate him: whereas
the eighteenth century tries to forget what is
known of man's nature, in order to adapt him to its Utopia. "Superficial, soft, humane"--gushes
over "humanity. "
The seventeenth century tries to banish all traces of the individual in order that the artist's
work may resemble life as much as possible. The eighteenth century strives to create interest in
the author by means of the work. The seventeenth century seeks art in art, a piece of culture; the eighteenth uses art in its propaganda for political and social reforms.
"Utopia," the "ideal man," the deification of Nature, the vanity of making one's own personality
the centre of interest, subordination to the propa
ganda of social ideas, charlatanism--all this we derive from the eighteenth century.
The style of the seventeenth century: propre exact et libre.
. The strong individual who is self-sufficient, or
who appeals ardently to God--and that obtrusive ness and indiscretion of modern authors--these
things are opposites. "Showing-oneself-off"--what
a contrast to the Scholars of Port-Royal | VOL. I. F
? ? ? ? 82 THE WILL TO POWER.
Alfieri had a sense for the grand style.
The hate of the burlesque (that which lacks dignity), the lack of a sense of Nature belongs to the seventeenth century.
98.
Against Rousseau. --Alas / man is no longer sufficiently evil; Rousseau's opponents, who say
that "man is a beast of prey," are unfortunately wrong. Not the corruption of man, but the
softening and moralising of him is the curse. In
the sphere which Rousseau attacked most violently, the relatively strongest and most successful type
of man was still to be found (the type which still possessed the great passions intact: Will to Power,
Will to Pleasure, the Will and Ability to Com
mand). The man of the eighteenth century must
be compared with the man of the Renaissance (also
with the man of the seventeenth century in France) if the matter is to be understood at all: Rousseau
is a symptom of self-contempt and of inflamed vanity--both signs that the dominating will is
? lacking:
own misery after the style of a revengeful man in the ruling classes.
he moralises and seeks the cause ofhis
99.
Voltaire -- Rousseau. -- A state of nature is
terrible; man is a beast of prey: our civilisation is an extraordinary triumph over this beast-of
prey
He was conscious of the mildness, the refinements,
in nature--this was Voltaire's conclusion.
? ? ? NIHILISM.
83
the intellectual joys of the civilised state; he despised obtuseness, even in the form of virtue,
and the lack of delicacy even in ascetics and monks.
The moral depravity of man seemed to pre occupy Rousseau; the words "unjust," "cruel," are
the best possible for the purpose of exciting the
instincts of the oppressed, who otherwise find themselves under the ban of the vetitum and of
disgrace; so that their conscience is opposed to their
indulging any
emancipators seek one thing above all: to give
insurrectional desires. These
their party the great accents and attitudes of higher Nature,
? IOO.
Rousseau : the rule founded on
sentiment;
Nature as the source of justice; man perfects
himself in proportion as he approaches Nature
(according to Voltaire, in proportion as he leaves AVature behind). The very same periods seem to
the one to demonstrate the progress of humanity and, to the other, the increase of injustice and | inequality.
* . . . ,'2-4
--
Voltaire,
sense of the Renaissance, as also virti (as "higher
who still understood umanita in the
culture"), fights
gens," "la bonne compagnie," taste, science, arts,
for the cause of the "honne? tes
and even for the cause of progress and civilisation. The flare-up occurred towards 1760 : On the one hand the citizen of Geneva, on the other le
seigneur de Ferney. It is only from that moment and henceforward that Voltaire was the man of
. "
? ? ? 84
THE WILL TO POWER.
his age, the philosopher, the representative
Toleration and of Disbelief (theretofore he ha
been merely un bel esprit). His envy and hatre
of Rousseau's success forced him upwards. "Pour "la canaille' un dieu re? mune? rateur
vengeur"--Voltaire.
The criticism of both standpoints in regard
the value of civilisation. To Voltaire nothir seems finer than the social invention : there
no higher goal than to uphold and perfect L'honne? tete? consists precisely in respecting soci
usage;
various necessary "prejudices" which favour th maintenance of society. Missionary of Cultu, aristocrat, representative of the triumphant ar ruling
virtue in a certain obedience towar.
? classes and their values. But Roussea remained a plebeian, even as hommes de lettres, th was preposterous; his shameless contempt f everything
that was not himself.
The morbid feature in Rousseau is the or
which happens to have been most admired an
imitated. (Lord Byron resembled him somewha
he too screwed himself up to sublime attitude and to revengeful rage--a sign of vulgarity; lat'
on, when Venice restored his equilibrium, he unde
stood what was more alleviating and did mo,
good . . . l'insouciance. )
In spite of his antecedents, Rousseau is prou
of himself; but he is incensed if he is reminded his origin. . . .
In Rousseau there was undoubtedly some brai
trouble; in Voltaire--rare health and lightsome ness. The revengefulness of the sick; his period
? ? ? NIHILISM.
85
of insanity as also those of his contempt of man, and of his mistrust.
Rousseau's defence of Providence (against Vol
taire's Pessimism): he had need of God in order to be able to curse society and civilisation; every
thing must be good per because God had created it; man alone has corrupted man. The "good man" man Nature was pure fantasy;
but with the dogma God's authorship he became
something probable and even not devoid found ation.
Romanticism Rousseau: passion ("the
? sovereign right passion"); "naturalness";
the fascination madness (foolishness reckoned
greatness); the senseless vanity the weak; the
revengefulness the masses elevated the posi tion justice ("in politics, for one hundred years,'
the leader has been an invalid").
IOI.
Kant: makes the scepticism Englishmen, regard the theory knowledge, possible for Germans.
(1) By enlisting cause the interest the German's religious and moral needs: just the new academicians used scepticism for the same
reasons, Augustine); scepticism
preparation
for Platonism (vide
just
order
Pascal even used moral provoke (to justify) the
belief;
(2) By complicating and entangling with
need
scholastic flourishes view making more
? ? in
as
in its
of a la
of
of
it it
of
of
as
of
in
a
of of
as a
to
of
of
se,
as of ,
in
as
to
of
of
to
? 86 THE WILL TO POWER.
acceptable to the German's scientific taste in fo
(for Locke and Hume, alone, were too illuminati too clear--that is to say, judged according to
German valuing instinct, "too superficial"). Kant: a poor psychologist and mediocre ju
of human nature, made hopeless mistakes
regard to great historical values (the Fre Revolution); a moral fanatic a la Rousseau; w a subterranean current of Christian values thorough dogmatist,
but bored to extinction this tendency, to the extent of wishing to tyrant
over but quickly tired, even scepticism; not yet affected by any cosmopolitan thought antique beauty dawdler and go-betw.
; not all original (like Leibnitz, something betw
mechanism and spiritualism; like Goethe, someth between the taste the eighteenth century
that the "historical sense" [which essenti sense exoticism]; like German music, betw French and Italian music; like Charles the Gr
who mediated and built bridges between Roman Empire and Nationalism--a dawdler excellence).
O2.
what respect have the Christian centu with their Pessimism been stronger centuries the eighteenth--and how do they corresp.
with the tragic age the Greeks?
The nineteenth century versus the eighteel
How was an heir P--how was step backwa from the latter? (more lacking "spirit"
? ? ? it in a
of a
In it
of
at
it,
of
I
of
a
is t. ::
a
of
. . .
? NIHILISM,
87
in taste)--how did it show an advance on the latter ? (more gloomy, more realistic, stronger).
IO3.
How can we explain the fact that we feel something in common with the Campagna romana P And the high mountain chain?
Chateaubriand in a letter to M. de Fontanes
in 18o3 writes his first impression of the Campagna 70%a/Za.
The President de Brosses says of the Campagna romana: "Il fallait que Romulus fe^t ivre quand il songea a ba? tir une ville dans un terrain aussi laid. "
Even Delacroix would have nothing to do with Rome, it frightened him. He loved Venice, just as Shakespeare, Byron, and Georges Sand did.
The? ophile Gautier's and Richard Wagner's dislike of Rome must not be forgotten.
Lamartine has the language for Sorrento and Posilippo.
Victor Hugo raves about Spain, "parce que
aucune autre nation n'a moins emprunte? a` l'antiquite? , parce qu'elle n'a subi aucune influence classique. "
104. '
The two great attempts that were made to overcome the eighteenth century:
Mapoleon, in that he called man, the soldier, and the great struggle for power, to life again,
? and conceived Europe as a united political power.
Goethe, in that he imagined a European
&:
? ? ? 88 THE WILL TO POWER.
[which would consist of the whole heritage of what humanity had attained to up to his time.
German culture in this century inspires mistrust --the music of the period lacks that complete
element which liberates and binds as well, to wit--Goethe.
The pre-eminence of music in the romanticists
of 1830 and 1840. Delacroix.
passionate musician (admired Gluck, Beethoven, Mozart), said to his pupils in Rome:
"Si je pouvais vous rendre tous musiciens, vous y gagneriez comme peintres"--likewise Horace
Vernet, who was particularly fond of Don Juan (as Mendelssohn assures us, 1831); Stendhal, too, who
says of himself: "Combien de lieues ne ferais-je pas a` pied, et a` combien de jours de prison ne me soumetterais-je pas pour entendre Don Juan ou le
Matrimonio segreto; et je ne sais pour quelle autre
chose je ferais cet effort. " He was then fifty-six years old.
The borrowed forms, for instance: Brahms as
a typical "Epigone," likewise Mendelssohn's cul
tured Protestantism (a former "soul" is turned into poetry posthumously . . . )
--the moral and poetical substitutions in Wagner, who used one art as a stop-gap to make up for what another lacked.
--the "historical sense," inspiration derived from poems, sagas.
--that characteristic transformation of which
G. Flaubert is the most striking example among
Frenchmen, and Richard Wagner the most strik
Ingres--a
Haydn,
? N
ing example among Germans,
shows how the
? ? ? NIHILISM.
89
changes into a longing for nonentity in 1830-50.
romantic belief in love and the future
IO6. --
How is it that German music reaches its culminating point in the age of German romanti *. . . * *
*A*-* *-*
How is it that German music lacks
cism P.
Goethe P On the other hand, how much Schiller,
or more exactly, how much "Thekla. "* is there not in Beethoven |
Eichendorff, Uhland, Heine, Hoffman, Tieck, in him. Richard Wagner has Freischu? tz, Hoffmann, Grimm, the romantic Saga,
the mystic catholicism of instinct, symbolism, "the free-spiritedness of passion" (Rousseau's
intention). The Flying . Dutchman savours of
France, where le te? ne`breux (1830) was the type of the seducer.
The cult of music, the revolutionary romanticism
of form. Wagner synthesises German and French romanticism.
Io? .
From the point of view only of his value to Germany and to German culture, Richard Wagner is still a great problem, perhaps a German mis fortune: in any case, however, a fatality. But
what does it matter? Is he not very much more than a German event? It also seems to
me that to no country on earth is he less related than to Germany; nothing was prepared there for
* Thekla is the sentimental heroine in Schiller's Wallen stein. --TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
Schumann has
? ? ? ? **
90
THE WILL TO POWER.
his advent; his whole type is simply strange amongst Germans; there he stands in their midst,
wonderful, misunderstood, incomprehensible.
people carefully avoid acknowledging this: they are
too kind, too square-headed--too German for that.
"Credo quia absurdus est": thus did the German
spirit wish it to be, in this case too--hence it is
content meanwhile to believe everything Richard
Wagner wanted to have believed about himself. In
all ages the spirit of Germany has been deficient in
subtlety and divining powers concerning psycho
logical matters. Now that it happens to be under the highpressureof patrioticnonsenseandself-adoration,
it is visibly growing thicker and coarser: how could it therefore be equal to the problem of Wagner !
IO8.
The Germans are not yet anything, but they are becoming something; that is why they have not yet any culture;--that is why they cannot yet have any culture l--They are not yet anything:
that means they are all kinds of things. They , are becoming something: that means that they will
one day cease from being all kinds of things. The latter is at bottom only a wish, scarcely a hope
yet. Fortunately
can live, a question of will, of work, of discipline, a question of training, as also of resentment, of longing, of privation, of discomfort,-yea, even of bitterness,--in short, we Germans will get something out of ourselves, something that has not
yet been wanted of us--we want something more !
it is a wish with which one
But
? ? ? ? NIHILISM.
9I
That this "German, as he is not as yet"-- has a right to something better than the present
German "culture"; that all who wish to become something better, must wax angry when they perceive a sort of contentment, an impudent "setting-oneself-at-ease," or "a process of self censing," in this quarter: that is my second principle, in regard to which my opinions have not yet changed.
(c) SIGNS OF INCREASING STRENGTH. I O9.
First Principle: everything that characterises
modern men savours of decay: but side by side
with the prevailing sickness there are signs of a
strength and powerfulness of soul which are still
untried. The same causes which tend to promote ** the belittling of men, also force the stronger and ,"
rarer individuals upwards to greatness.
I IO.
"Our inability to know the truth is the result of our corruption, of our moral decay," says Pascal. And Schopenhauer says essentially the same.
"The more profound the corruption of reason the more necessary the doctrine salvation"-- or, putting into Schopenhauerian phraseology, negation.
84.
Schopenhauer an epigone (state affairs
? before the eighteenth century.
Revolution):--Pity, sensuality, art,
weakness will, Catholicism the most intel
lectual desires--that bottom, the good old
? ? is, at
of
it
of
as
is
of of
is,
? 7o
THE WILL TO POWER.
Schopenhauer's fundamental misunderstanding of the will (just as though passion, instinct, and
desire were the essential factors of will) is typical:
the depreciation of the will to the extent of mis
taking it altogether. Likewise the hatred of willing: the attempt at seeing something superior
--yea, even superiority itself, and that which really matters, in non-willing, in the "subject-being
without aim or intention. " Great symptom of fatigue or of the weakness of will: for this, in reality, is what treats the passions as master, and
directs them as to the way and to the measure. . . .
85.
The undignified attempt has been made to regard
Wagner and Schopenhauer as types of the mentally
unsound: an infinitely more essential understanding
of the matter would have been gained if the exact
decadent type which each of them represents had been scientifically and a-ccurately defined.
-- * ? 86. )
Henrik Ibsen has become very clear to me.
With all his robust idealism and "Will to Truth,"
he never dared to ring himself free from moral
illusionism which says "freedom," and will not
admit, even to itself, what freedom is: the second stage in the metamorphosis of the "Will to Power,"
in him who lacks the first stage, one
demands justice the hands those who have power. the second, one speaks "freedom,"
? ? ? In
of of
|
at
it.
In
? Christianity And,
NIHILISM.
71
that is to say, one wishes to "shake oneself free" from those who have power. In the third stage, one speaks of "equal rights"--that is to say, so long as one is not a predominant personality one
wishes to prevent one's competitors from growing- 1n power.
87.
The Decline of Protestantism: theoretically and
historically understood as a half-measure. Un
deniable predominance of Catholicism to-day:
Protestant feeling is so dead that the strongest
anti-Protestant movements (Wagner's Parsifal, for
instance) are no longer regarded as such. The
whole of the more elevated intellectuality in France
is Catholic in instinct; Bismarck recognised that
there was no longer any such thing as Protest antism.
88.
Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and
tiresome form of decadence, in which Christianity
has known how to survive in the mediocre North, is something incomplete and complexly valuable
for knowledge, in so far as it was able to bring
experiences of different kinds and origins into the same heads.
89.
What has the German spirit not made out of
and more lounging form of Christian belief be
? to refer to Protestantism again, how much beer is there not still in Pro testant Christianity | Can a crasser, more indolent,
? ? ? 72
THE WILL TO POWER.
imagined, than that of the average German Pro
testant? . . . It is indeed a very humble Christi | anity. I call it the Homoeopathy of Christianity
I am reminded that, to-day, there also exists a less humble sort of Protestantism; it is taught by
royal chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but
nobody has ever maintained that any "spirit" "hovers" over these waters. It is merely a less respectable form of Christian faith, not by any
means a more comprehensible one.
90.
Progress. --Let us be on our guard lest we
deceive ourselves! Time flies forward apace,--
we would fain believe that everything flies forward with it,--that evolution is an advancing develop
ment. . . . That is the appearance of things which deceives the most circumspect. But the nineteenth century shows no advance whatever on the six teenth: and the German spirit of 1888 is an example of a backward movement when compared
succeed, while an incalculable number things fail; where all order, logic, co-ordination, and
? with that of 1788.
advance, it does not even exist. The aspect of the whole is much more like that of a huge experi menting workshop where some things in ages
responsibility lacking.
How dare we blink the
fact that the rise Christianity decadent movement? --that the German Reformation was
recrudescence of Christian barbarism ? --that the Revolution destroyed the instinct for organisa
Mankind does not
? ? - a
is an a
is of
of all
? NIHILISM.
73
tion of society on a large scale? . . . Man is not
an example of progress as compared with animals:
the tender son of culture is an abortion compared
with the Arab or the Corsican; the Chinaman
is a more successful type--that is to say, possess ing more lasting powers than the European.
(b) THE LAST CENTURIES.
9 I.
Gloominess and pessimistic influence necessarily follow in the wake of enlightenment. Towards 177o a falling-off in cheerfulness was already noticeable; women, with that very feminine instinct which always defends virtue, believed that immor
ality was the cause of Galiani hit the bull's
? eye:
quotes Voltaire's verse:
"Un monstre gai vaut mieux
Qu'un sentimental
ennuyeux. "
ahead,
now maintain that am century two enlightenment,
Voltaire and Galiani--who was much more profound, how deeply must have sunk into gloominess! This
also true, and betimes somewhat reluctantly manifested some caution regard the German
and Christian narrowness and
inconsistency
Schopenhauerian or, worse still, Leopardian Pessim
ism, and sought the most characteristic form (Asia).
Tragedy), live alone "without God morality,"
But,
order endure that extreme Pessimism (which here and there peeps out my Birth
? ? to
to
or I I
of or
of
of
by of a
in
in I to
it. I
is
If
he
of
? 74
THE WILL TO POWER.
I was compelled to invent a counter-prop for my
self. Perhaps I know best why man is the only animal that laughs: he alone suffers so excruciat ingly that he was compelled to invent laughter. The unhappiest and most melancholy animal
might have been expected, the most cheerful.
92.
regard German culture, have always had
feeling
know declining form culture has often made
decline. The fact that learned
phenomenon European culture. The Germans always follow some distance behind: they always go the
root things, for instance:--
Dependance upon foreigners; Kant--Rousseau,
sensualists, Hume, Swedenborg. Schopenhauer--the Indians and Romanticism,
Voltaire.
Wagner--the French cult the ugly and grand opera, Paris, and the flight into primitive
barbarism (the marriage brother and sister). The law the laggard (the provinces go
Greek (the more instinct developed, the more tempted run for once into its opposite).
Music the last breath every culture.
93.
Renaissance and Reformation. --What does the Renaissance prove? That the reign the
me unfair towards the whole
? the
Paris, Germany goes
France).
How that precisely Germans discovered the
? ? of
to
toof ofto is,
is
is it
as
of to
of
of is
it is
at a as In
to
of
an
to
of
of
I I
of
a
? NIHILISM.
75
"individual" can be only a short one. The out
put is too great; there is not even the possibility of husbanding or of capitalising forces, and ex
haustion sets in step by step. These are times when everything is squandered, when even the
strength itself with which one collects, capitalises, and heaps riches upon riches, is squandered.
Even the opponents of such movements are driven to preposterous extremes in the dissipation of
their strength: and they too are very soon exhausted, used up, and completely sapped.
In the Reformation we are face to face with
a wild and plebeian counterpart of the Italian Renaissance, generated by similar impulses, except
that the former, in the backward and still vulgar North, had to assume a religious form--there the concept of a higher life had not yet been divorced from that of a religious one.
Even the Reformation was a movement for
individual liberty; "every one his own priest" is really no more than a formula for libertinage. As a
matter of fact, the words "Evangelical freedom" would have sufficed--and all instincts which had
reasons for remaining concealed broke out like wild hounds, the most brutal needs suddenly acquired the courage to show themselves, everything seemed
justified . . . men refused to specify the kind of freedom they had aimed they preferred shut
their eyes. But the fact that their eyes were closed and that their lips were moistened with gushing orations, did not prevent their hands from being ready
? snatch whatever there was
snatch at, that the belly became the god the *
? ? of
to to
to
at
at,
? 76
THE WILL TO POWER.
"free gospel," and that all lusts of revenge and of hatred were indulged with insatiable fury.
This lasted for a while: then exhaustion super
vened, just as it had done in Southern Europe; and again here, it was a low form of exhaustion,
a sort of general ruere in servitium. . . . Then the disreputable century of Germany dawned.
94.
Chivalry--the position won by power: its
gradual break-up (and partial transference to
broader and more bourgeois spheres). In the case of Larochefoucauld we find a knowledge of the actual impulses of a noble temperament--together
with the gloomy Christian estimate of these impulses.
The protraction of Christianity through the
? French Revolution. The seducer is
Rousseau;
he once again liberates woman, who thenceforward is always represented as ever more interesting--
| suffering.
Then come the slaves and Mrs. Beecher
Stowe. Then the poor and the workmen. Then the vicious and the sick--all this is drawn into
the foreground (even for the purpose of disposing people in favour of the genius, it has been custom
ary for five hundred years to press him forward as
the great sufferer! ). Then comes the cursing of all voluptuousness (Beaudelaire and Schopen
hauer); the most decided conviction that the lust of power is the greatest vice; absolute certainty
that morality and disinterestedness are identical things; that the "happiness of all" is a goal worth
? ? ? NIHILISM.
77
striving after (i. e. , Christ's Kingdom of Heaven).
We are on the best road to it: the Kingdom of Heaven of the poor in spirit has begun. --Inter
mediate stages: the bourgeois (as a result of the
nouveau riche) and the workman (as a result of
the machine).
Greek and French culture of the time of Louis
XIV. compared. A decided belief in oneself.
A leisured class which makes things hard for itself
and exercises a great deal of self-control. The
power of form, the will to form oneself. "Happi ness" acknowledged as a purpose. Much strength
and energy behind all formality of manners. Pleasure at the sight of a life that is seemingly so
The Greeks seemed like children to the
? easy. French.
95.
The Three Centuries.
may
perhaps be best expressed as follows:-- Aristocracy: Descartes, the reign of reason,
evidence showing the sovereignty of the will. Feminism : Rousseau, the reign of feeling, evidence showing the sovereignty of the senses;
all lies.
Animalism : Schopenhauer, the reign of passion,
evidence showing the sovereignty of animality, more honest, but gloomy.
The seventeenth century is aristocratic, all for order, haughty towards everything animal, severe in regard to the heart, "austere," and even free from sentiment, "non-German," averse to all that
Their different kinds of sensitiveness
? ? ? 78
THE WILL TO POWER.
is burlesque and natural, generalising and mai taining an attitude of sovereignty towards t
for it believes in itself. At bottom
past
partakes very much of the beast of prey, ar
practises
It is the century of strength of will, as also that strong passion.
The eighteenth century is dominated by woma it is gushing, spiritual, and flat; but with intelle
at the service of aspirations and of the heart, it
a libertine in the pleasures of intellect, underminin authorities; emotionally intoxicated, cheerfi
clear, humane, and sociable, false itself and bottom very rascally.
The nineteenth century more animal, mo
asceticism in order to remain maste
? subterranean, hateful, realistic, plebeian,
that very account "better," "more honest," mo
submissive "reality" what kind soever,
truer; but weak
and fatalistic. reverence, either the "heart";
will, sad, obscurely exactin has no feeling timidity
the presence "reason" thoroughly convinced
dominion the desires (Schopenhauer said "Will
but nothing more characteristic his philosoph
than that entirely lacks all actual willing). Eve morality reduced instinct ("Pity").
Auguste
eighteenth century (the dominion the heart ov the head, sensuality the theory knowledg
Comte the continuation of
altruistic exaltation).
The fact that science has become
sovereig to-day, proves how the nineteenth centul has emancipated itself from the dominion idea.
and
? ? of
of
t. th anc
as it is
all
of of as
of
of of
is
to
in
an
of
. .
isit of is
to
in It of is to
? NIHILISM.
79
A certain absence of "needs" and wishes makes our scientific curiosity and rigour possible--this is
our kind of virtue.
?
Romanticism is the counterstroke of the
eighteenth century; a sort of accumulated longing
for its grand style of exaltation (as a matter of fact,
largely mingled with mummery and self-deception:
the desire was to represent strong nature and strong passion).
The nineteenth century instinctively goes in search of theories by means of which it may feel its fatalistic submission to the empire of facts justified. Hegel's success against sentimentality and romantic idealism was already a sign of fatalistic trend thought, its belief that superior reason belongs the triumphant side,
and justification the actual "state" (in the place "humanity," etc. ). --Schopenhauer: we
are something foolish, and the best self suppressive. The success determinism, the genealogical derivation obligations which were formerly held absolute, the teaching environment and adaptation, the reduction will
process reflex movement, the denial the will "working cause"; finally -- real
? process re-christening:
that the word itself becomes available for another
purpose. Further theories: the teaching objectivity, "will-less" contemplation, the only
road truth, also beauty (also the belief "genius," order have the right
submissive); mechanism, the determinable rigidity the mechanical process; so-called "Naturalism,"
little will observed
? ? of in
to a
in
as
of
to
of
to to
be so
of
of to
in
to
as of a
in of its
of at
be of of its
to
a ofof
as
is
? 8O THE WILL TO POWER.
the elimination of the choosing, directing, inter preting subject, on principle.
Kant, with his "practical reason," with his moral
fanaticism, is quite eighteenth century style; still
completely outside the historical movement, without any notion whatsoever of the reality of his time, for instance, revolution; he is not affected by Greek
philosophy; he is a phantasist of the notion of duty,
a sensualist with a hidden leaning to dogmatic pampering.
The return to Kant in our century means a return to the eighteenth century: people desire to create
themselves a right to the old ideas and to the old exaltation--hence a theory of knowledge which "de scribes limits," that is to say, which admits of the
option of fixing a Beyond to the domain of reason. Hegel's way of thinking is not so very far removed from that of Goethe: see the latter on
the subject of Spinoza, for instance. The will to
deify the All and Life, in order to find both peace and happiness in contemplating them: Hegel looks for reason everywhere--in the presence of
reason man may be submissive and resigned.
In
Goethe we find a kind of fatalism which is almost joyous and confiding, which neither revolts nor weakens, which strives to make a totality out of itself, in the belief that only in totality does every
thing seem good and justified, and find itself resolved.
96.
The period of rationalism --followed by a period of sentimentality. To what extent does
? ? ? ? NIHILISM. 81
Schopenhauer come under "sentimentality"? (Hegel under intellectuality ? )
97.
The seventeenth century suffers from humanity
as from a host of contradictions ("l'amas de con
tradictions" that we are ); it endeavours to discover
man, to co-ordinate him, to excavate him: whereas
the eighteenth century tries to forget what is
known of man's nature, in order to adapt him to its Utopia. "Superficial, soft, humane"--gushes
over "humanity. "
The seventeenth century tries to banish all traces of the individual in order that the artist's
work may resemble life as much as possible. The eighteenth century strives to create interest in
the author by means of the work. The seventeenth century seeks art in art, a piece of culture; the eighteenth uses art in its propaganda for political and social reforms.
"Utopia," the "ideal man," the deification of Nature, the vanity of making one's own personality
the centre of interest, subordination to the propa
ganda of social ideas, charlatanism--all this we derive from the eighteenth century.
The style of the seventeenth century: propre exact et libre.
. The strong individual who is self-sufficient, or
who appeals ardently to God--and that obtrusive ness and indiscretion of modern authors--these
things are opposites. "Showing-oneself-off"--what
a contrast to the Scholars of Port-Royal | VOL. I. F
? ? ? ? 82 THE WILL TO POWER.
Alfieri had a sense for the grand style.
The hate of the burlesque (that which lacks dignity), the lack of a sense of Nature belongs to the seventeenth century.
98.
Against Rousseau. --Alas / man is no longer sufficiently evil; Rousseau's opponents, who say
that "man is a beast of prey," are unfortunately wrong. Not the corruption of man, but the
softening and moralising of him is the curse. In
the sphere which Rousseau attacked most violently, the relatively strongest and most successful type
of man was still to be found (the type which still possessed the great passions intact: Will to Power,
Will to Pleasure, the Will and Ability to Com
mand). The man of the eighteenth century must
be compared with the man of the Renaissance (also
with the man of the seventeenth century in France) if the matter is to be understood at all: Rousseau
is a symptom of self-contempt and of inflamed vanity--both signs that the dominating will is
? lacking:
own misery after the style of a revengeful man in the ruling classes.
he moralises and seeks the cause ofhis
99.
Voltaire -- Rousseau. -- A state of nature is
terrible; man is a beast of prey: our civilisation is an extraordinary triumph over this beast-of
prey
He was conscious of the mildness, the refinements,
in nature--this was Voltaire's conclusion.
? ? ? NIHILISM.
83
the intellectual joys of the civilised state; he despised obtuseness, even in the form of virtue,
and the lack of delicacy even in ascetics and monks.
The moral depravity of man seemed to pre occupy Rousseau; the words "unjust," "cruel," are
the best possible for the purpose of exciting the
instincts of the oppressed, who otherwise find themselves under the ban of the vetitum and of
disgrace; so that their conscience is opposed to their
indulging any
emancipators seek one thing above all: to give
insurrectional desires. These
their party the great accents and attitudes of higher Nature,
? IOO.
Rousseau : the rule founded on
sentiment;
Nature as the source of justice; man perfects
himself in proportion as he approaches Nature
(according to Voltaire, in proportion as he leaves AVature behind). The very same periods seem to
the one to demonstrate the progress of humanity and, to the other, the increase of injustice and | inequality.
* . . . ,'2-4
--
Voltaire,
sense of the Renaissance, as also virti (as "higher
who still understood umanita in the
culture"), fights
gens," "la bonne compagnie," taste, science, arts,
for the cause of the "honne? tes
and even for the cause of progress and civilisation. The flare-up occurred towards 1760 : On the one hand the citizen of Geneva, on the other le
seigneur de Ferney. It is only from that moment and henceforward that Voltaire was the man of
. "
? ? ? 84
THE WILL TO POWER.
his age, the philosopher, the representative
Toleration and of Disbelief (theretofore he ha
been merely un bel esprit). His envy and hatre
of Rousseau's success forced him upwards. "Pour "la canaille' un dieu re? mune? rateur
vengeur"--Voltaire.
The criticism of both standpoints in regard
the value of civilisation. To Voltaire nothir seems finer than the social invention : there
no higher goal than to uphold and perfect L'honne? tete? consists precisely in respecting soci
usage;
various necessary "prejudices" which favour th maintenance of society. Missionary of Cultu, aristocrat, representative of the triumphant ar ruling
virtue in a certain obedience towar.
? classes and their values. But Roussea remained a plebeian, even as hommes de lettres, th was preposterous; his shameless contempt f everything
that was not himself.
The morbid feature in Rousseau is the or
which happens to have been most admired an
imitated. (Lord Byron resembled him somewha
he too screwed himself up to sublime attitude and to revengeful rage--a sign of vulgarity; lat'
on, when Venice restored his equilibrium, he unde
stood what was more alleviating and did mo,
good . . . l'insouciance. )
In spite of his antecedents, Rousseau is prou
of himself; but he is incensed if he is reminded his origin. . . .
In Rousseau there was undoubtedly some brai
trouble; in Voltaire--rare health and lightsome ness. The revengefulness of the sick; his period
? ? ? NIHILISM.
85
of insanity as also those of his contempt of man, and of his mistrust.
Rousseau's defence of Providence (against Vol
taire's Pessimism): he had need of God in order to be able to curse society and civilisation; every
thing must be good per because God had created it; man alone has corrupted man. The "good man" man Nature was pure fantasy;
but with the dogma God's authorship he became
something probable and even not devoid found ation.
Romanticism Rousseau: passion ("the
? sovereign right passion"); "naturalness";
the fascination madness (foolishness reckoned
greatness); the senseless vanity the weak; the
revengefulness the masses elevated the posi tion justice ("in politics, for one hundred years,'
the leader has been an invalid").
IOI.
Kant: makes the scepticism Englishmen, regard the theory knowledge, possible for Germans.
(1) By enlisting cause the interest the German's religious and moral needs: just the new academicians used scepticism for the same
reasons, Augustine); scepticism
preparation
for Platonism (vide
just
order
Pascal even used moral provoke (to justify) the
belief;
(2) By complicating and entangling with
need
scholastic flourishes view making more
? ? in
as
in its
of a la
of
of
it it
of
of
as
of
in
a
of of
as a
to
of
of
se,
as of ,
in
as
to
of
of
to
? 86 THE WILL TO POWER.
acceptable to the German's scientific taste in fo
(for Locke and Hume, alone, were too illuminati too clear--that is to say, judged according to
German valuing instinct, "too superficial"). Kant: a poor psychologist and mediocre ju
of human nature, made hopeless mistakes
regard to great historical values (the Fre Revolution); a moral fanatic a la Rousseau; w a subterranean current of Christian values thorough dogmatist,
but bored to extinction this tendency, to the extent of wishing to tyrant
over but quickly tired, even scepticism; not yet affected by any cosmopolitan thought antique beauty dawdler and go-betw.
; not all original (like Leibnitz, something betw
mechanism and spiritualism; like Goethe, someth between the taste the eighteenth century
that the "historical sense" [which essenti sense exoticism]; like German music, betw French and Italian music; like Charles the Gr
who mediated and built bridges between Roman Empire and Nationalism--a dawdler excellence).
O2.
what respect have the Christian centu with their Pessimism been stronger centuries the eighteenth--and how do they corresp.
with the tragic age the Greeks?
The nineteenth century versus the eighteel
How was an heir P--how was step backwa from the latter? (more lacking "spirit"
? ? ? it in a
of a
In it
of
at
it,
of
I
of
a
is t. ::
a
of
. . .
? NIHILISM,
87
in taste)--how did it show an advance on the latter ? (more gloomy, more realistic, stronger).
IO3.
How can we explain the fact that we feel something in common with the Campagna romana P And the high mountain chain?
Chateaubriand in a letter to M. de Fontanes
in 18o3 writes his first impression of the Campagna 70%a/Za.
The President de Brosses says of the Campagna romana: "Il fallait que Romulus fe^t ivre quand il songea a ba? tir une ville dans un terrain aussi laid. "
Even Delacroix would have nothing to do with Rome, it frightened him. He loved Venice, just as Shakespeare, Byron, and Georges Sand did.
The? ophile Gautier's and Richard Wagner's dislike of Rome must not be forgotten.
Lamartine has the language for Sorrento and Posilippo.
Victor Hugo raves about Spain, "parce que
aucune autre nation n'a moins emprunte? a` l'antiquite? , parce qu'elle n'a subi aucune influence classique. "
104. '
The two great attempts that were made to overcome the eighteenth century:
Mapoleon, in that he called man, the soldier, and the great struggle for power, to life again,
? and conceived Europe as a united political power.
Goethe, in that he imagined a European
&:
? ? ? 88 THE WILL TO POWER.
[which would consist of the whole heritage of what humanity had attained to up to his time.
German culture in this century inspires mistrust --the music of the period lacks that complete
element which liberates and binds as well, to wit--Goethe.
The pre-eminence of music in the romanticists
of 1830 and 1840. Delacroix.
passionate musician (admired Gluck, Beethoven, Mozart), said to his pupils in Rome:
"Si je pouvais vous rendre tous musiciens, vous y gagneriez comme peintres"--likewise Horace
Vernet, who was particularly fond of Don Juan (as Mendelssohn assures us, 1831); Stendhal, too, who
says of himself: "Combien de lieues ne ferais-je pas a` pied, et a` combien de jours de prison ne me soumetterais-je pas pour entendre Don Juan ou le
Matrimonio segreto; et je ne sais pour quelle autre
chose je ferais cet effort. " He was then fifty-six years old.
The borrowed forms, for instance: Brahms as
a typical "Epigone," likewise Mendelssohn's cul
tured Protestantism (a former "soul" is turned into poetry posthumously . . . )
--the moral and poetical substitutions in Wagner, who used one art as a stop-gap to make up for what another lacked.
--the "historical sense," inspiration derived from poems, sagas.
--that characteristic transformation of which
G. Flaubert is the most striking example among
Frenchmen, and Richard Wagner the most strik
Ingres--a
Haydn,
? N
ing example among Germans,
shows how the
? ? ? NIHILISM.
89
changes into a longing for nonentity in 1830-50.
romantic belief in love and the future
IO6. --
How is it that German music reaches its culminating point in the age of German romanti *. . . * *
*A*-* *-*
How is it that German music lacks
cism P.
Goethe P On the other hand, how much Schiller,
or more exactly, how much "Thekla. "* is there not in Beethoven |
Eichendorff, Uhland, Heine, Hoffman, Tieck, in him. Richard Wagner has Freischu? tz, Hoffmann, Grimm, the romantic Saga,
the mystic catholicism of instinct, symbolism, "the free-spiritedness of passion" (Rousseau's
intention). The Flying . Dutchman savours of
France, where le te? ne`breux (1830) was the type of the seducer.
The cult of music, the revolutionary romanticism
of form. Wagner synthesises German and French romanticism.
Io? .
From the point of view only of his value to Germany and to German culture, Richard Wagner is still a great problem, perhaps a German mis fortune: in any case, however, a fatality. But
what does it matter? Is he not very much more than a German event? It also seems to
me that to no country on earth is he less related than to Germany; nothing was prepared there for
* Thekla is the sentimental heroine in Schiller's Wallen stein. --TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
Schumann has
? ? ? ? **
90
THE WILL TO POWER.
his advent; his whole type is simply strange amongst Germans; there he stands in their midst,
wonderful, misunderstood, incomprehensible.
people carefully avoid acknowledging this: they are
too kind, too square-headed--too German for that.
"Credo quia absurdus est": thus did the German
spirit wish it to be, in this case too--hence it is
content meanwhile to believe everything Richard
Wagner wanted to have believed about himself. In
all ages the spirit of Germany has been deficient in
subtlety and divining powers concerning psycho
logical matters. Now that it happens to be under the highpressureof patrioticnonsenseandself-adoration,
it is visibly growing thicker and coarser: how could it therefore be equal to the problem of Wagner !
IO8.
The Germans are not yet anything, but they are becoming something; that is why they have not yet any culture;--that is why they cannot yet have any culture l--They are not yet anything:
that means they are all kinds of things. They , are becoming something: that means that they will
one day cease from being all kinds of things. The latter is at bottom only a wish, scarcely a hope
yet. Fortunately
can live, a question of will, of work, of discipline, a question of training, as also of resentment, of longing, of privation, of discomfort,-yea, even of bitterness,--in short, we Germans will get something out of ourselves, something that has not
yet been wanted of us--we want something more !
it is a wish with which one
But
? ? ? ? NIHILISM.
9I
That this "German, as he is not as yet"-- has a right to something better than the present
German "culture"; that all who wish to become something better, must wax angry when they perceive a sort of contentment, an impudent "setting-oneself-at-ease," or "a process of self censing," in this quarter: that is my second principle, in regard to which my opinions have not yet changed.
(c) SIGNS OF INCREASING STRENGTH. I O9.
First Principle: everything that characterises
modern men savours of decay: but side by side
with the prevailing sickness there are signs of a
strength and powerfulness of soul which are still
untried. The same causes which tend to promote ** the belittling of men, also force the stronger and ,"
rarer individuals upwards to greatness.
I IO.
