The whole of our sociology
knows no other instinct than that of the herd, i.
knows no other instinct than that of the herd, i.
Nietzsche - v14 - Will to Power - a
THE NIHILISTIC MOVEMENT AS AN
EXPRESSION OF DECADENCE.
38.
Just lately an accidental and in every way
inappropriate term has been very much misused
everywhere people are speaking of “Pessimism,"
:
## p. 32 (#54) ##############################################
32
THE WILL TO POWER.
and there is a fight around the question to which
some replies must be forthcoming): which is
right—Pessimism or Optimism?
People have not yet seen what is so terribly
obvious—namely, that Pessimism is not a problem
but a symptom,—that the term ought to be re-
placed by “ Nihilism,"—that the question, “to be
or not to be,” is itself an illness, a sign of
degeneracy, an idiosyncrasy.
The Nihilistic movement is only an expression
of physiological decadence.
39.
To be understood :That every kind of decline
and tendency to sickness has incessantly been at
work in helping to create general evaluations:
that in those valuations which now dominate,
decadence has even begun to preponderate, that
we have not only to combat the conditions which
present misery and degeneration have brought
into being; but that all decadence, previous to
that of our own times, has been transmitted and
has therefore remained an active force amongst
us. A universal departure of this kind, on the
part of man, from his fundamental instincts, such
universal decadence of the valuing judgment, is
the note of interrogation par excellence, the real
riddle, which the animal “man sets to all
philosophers.
40.
The notion “decadence":--Decay, decline, and
waste, are, per se, in no way open to objection;
## p. 33 (#55) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
33
they are the natural consequences of life and vital
growth. The phenomenon of decadence is just
as necessary to life as advance or progress is : we
are not in a position which enables us to suppress
it. On the contrary, reason would have it retain
its rights.
It is disgraceful on the part of socialist-theorists
to argue that circumstances and social combina-
tions could be devised which would put an end
to all vice, illness, crime, prostitution, and poverty.
But that is tantamount to condemning
Life .
. . . a society is not at liberty to remain
young. And even in its prime it must bring
forth ordure and decaying matter.
The more
energetically and daringly it advances, the richer
will it be in failures and in deformities, and the
nearer it will be to its fall. Age is not deferred by
means of institutions. Nor is illness. Nor is vice.
41.
Fundamental aspect of the nature of decadence:
what has heretofore been regarded as its causes
are its effects.
In this way, the whole perspective of the
problems of morality is altered.
All the struggle of morals against vice, luxury,
crime, and even against illness, seems a naïveté, a
superfluous effort: there is no such thing as
“ improvement” (a word against repentance).
Decadence itself is not a thing that can be
withstood: it is absolutely necessary and is proper
to all ages and all peoples. That which must be
C
VOL. I.
## p. 34 (#56) ##############################################
34
THE WILL TO POWER.
withstood, and by all means in our power, is the
spreading of the contagion among the sound parts
of the organism.
Is that done? The very reverse is done. It
is precisely on this account that one makes a
stand on behalf of humanity.
How do the highest values created hitherto
stand in relation to this fundamental question in
biology? Philosophy, religion, morality, art, etc.
(The remedy: militarism, for instance, from
Napoleon onwards, who regarded civilisation as
his natural enemy. )
42.
All those things which heretofore have been
regarded as the causes of degeneration, are really
its effects.
But those things also which have been regarded
as the remedies of degeneration are only palliatives
of certain effects thereof: the "cured” are types
of the degenerate.
The results of decadence : vice-viciousness;
illness-sickliness; crime-criminality; celibacy
-sterility; hysteria—the weakness of the will;
alcoholism; pessimism, anarchy; debauchery (also
of the spirit). The calumniators, underminers,
sceptics, and destroyers,
43.
Concerning the notion “decadence. "
(1) Scepticism is a result of decadence: just
as spiritual debauchery is.
## p. 35 (#57) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
35
(2) Moral corruption is a result of decadence
(the weakness of the will and the need of strong
stimulants).
(3) Remedies, whether psychological or moral,
do not alter the march of decadence, they do
not arrest anything; physiologically they do not
count.
A peep into the enormous futility of these
pretentious“ reactions"; they are forms of
anæsthetising oneself against certain fatal
symptoms resulting from the prevailing condition
of things; they do not eradicate the morbid
element; they are often heroic attempts to cancel
the decadent man, to allow only a minimum of
his deleterious influence to survive.
(4) Nihilism is not a cause, but only the
rationale of decadence.
(5) The “good” and the "bad" are no more
than two types of decadence: they come together
in all its fundamental phenomena.
(6) The social problem is a result of decadence.
(7) Illnesses, more particularly those attacking
the nerves and the head, are signs that the
defensive strength of strong nature is lacking; a
proof of this is that irritability which causes
pleasure and pain to be regarded as problems of
the first order.
44.
The most common types of decadence :
(1) In the belief that they are remedies, cures
are chosen which only precipitate exhaustion ;
this is the case with Christianity (to point to the
## p. 36 (#58) ##############################################
36
THE WILL TO POWER.
7
*****
most egregious example of mistaken instinct);
this is also the case with "progress. "
(2) The power of resisting stimuli is on the
wane—chance rules supreme: events are inflated
and drawn out until they appear monstrous . . .
a suppression of the “personality," a disintegration
of the will; in this regard we may mention a
whole class of morality, the altruistic, that which
is incessantly preaching pity, and whose most
essential feature is the weakness of the personality,
so that it rings in unison, and, like an over-
sensitive string, does not cease from vibrating
extreme irritability.
(3) Cause and effect are confounded : decad-
ence is not understood as physiological, and its
results are taken to be the causes of the general
indisposition:— this applies to all religious
morality.
(4) A state of affairs is desired in which suffer-
ing shall cease ; life is actually considered the
cause of all ills-unconscious and insensitive states
(sleep and syncope) are held in incomparably
higher esteem than the conscious states; hence a
method of life.
45.
Concerning the hygiene of the “weak. " All
that is done in weakness ends in failure. Moral :
do nothing. The worst of it is, that precisely the
strength required in order to stop action, and to
cease from reacting, is most seriously diseased
under the influence of weakness: that one never
## p. 37 (#59) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
37
reacts more promptly or more blindly than when
one should not react at all.
The strength of a character is shown by the
ability to delay and postpone reaction: a certain
ádiapopía is just as proper to it, as involuntari-
ness in recoiling, suddenness and lack of restraint
in "action," are proper to weakness. The will is
weak: and the recipe for preventing foolish acts
would be: to have a strong will and to do nothing
-contradiction. » A sort of self-destruction, the
instinct of self-preservation is compromised. .
The weak man injures himself. . . . That is the
- decadent type.
As a matter of fact, we meet with a vast
amount of thought concerning the means where-
with impassibility may be induced. To this
extent, the instincts are on the right scent;
for to do nothing is more useful than to do
something.
All the practices of private orders, of solitary
philosophers, and of fakirs, are suggested by a
correct consideration of the fact, that a certain
kind of man is most useful to himself when he
hinders his own action as much as possible.
Relieving measures : absolute obedience,
mechanical activity, total isolation from
and things that might exact immediate decisions
and actions.
men
46.
Weakness of Will: this is a fable that can
lead astray. For there is no will, consequently
neither a strong nor a weak one. The multi-
## p. 38 (#60) ##############################################
38
THE WILL TO POWER.
plicity and disintegration of the instincts, the want
of system in their relationship, constitute what is
known as a “weak will”; their co-ordination, under
the government of one individual among them,
results in a "strong will”-in the first case
vacillation and a lack of equilibrium is noticeable:
in the second, precision and definite direction.
47.
That which is inherited is not illness, but a predis-
position to illness : a lack of the powers of resistance
against injurious external influences,etc. etc. , broken
powers of resistance; expressed morally: resigna-
tion and humility in the presence of the enemy.
I have often wondered whether it would not
be possible to class all the highest values of the
philosophies, moralities, and religions which have
been devised hitherto, with the values of the
feeble, the insane and the neurasthenic: in a
milder form, they present the same evils.
The value of all morbid conditions consists
in the fact that they magnify certain normal
phenomena which are difficult to discern in
normal conditions. . .
Health and illness are not essentially different,
as the ancient doctors believed and as a few
practitioners still believe to-day. They cannot
be imagined as two distinct principles or entities
which fight for the living organism and make it
their battlefield. That is nonsense and mere idle
gossip, which no longer holds water.
matter of fact, there is only a difference of
As a
## p. 39 (#61) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
39
degree between these two living conditions:
exaggeration, want of proportion, want of harmony
among the normal phenomena, constitute the
morbid state (Claude Bernard).
Just as “evil” may be regarded as exaggeration,
discord, and want of proportion, so can “good” be
regarded as a sort of protective diet against the
danger of exaggeration, discord, and want of
proportion.
Hereditary weakness as a dominant feeling: the
cause of the prevailing values.
N. B. -Weakness is in demand—why? . . .
mostly because people cannot be anything else
than weak.
Weakening considered a duty : The weakening
of the desires, of the feelings of pleasure and
of pain, of the will to power, of the will to pride,
to property and to more property; weakening in
the form of humility; weakening in the form of a
belief; weakening in the form of repugnance and
shame in the presence of all that is natural-in
the form of a denial of life, in the form of illness
and chronic feebleness; weakening in the form of
a refusal to take revenge, to offer resistance, to
become an enemy, and to show anger.
Blunders in the treatment: there is no attempt
at combating weakness by means of any fortifying
system; but by a sort of justification consisting
of moralising; i. e. , by means of interpretation.
Two totally different conditions are confused:
for instance, the repose of strength, which is essen-
tially abstinence from reaction (the prototype of
the gods whom nothing moves), and the peace of
## p. 40 (#62) ##############################################
40
THE WILL TO POWER.
exhaustion, rigidity to the point of anæsthesia.
All these philosophic and ascetic modes of pro-
cedure aspire to the second state, but actually
pretend to attain to the first . . . for they ascribe
to the condition they have reached the attributes
that would be in keeping only with a divine state.
48.
The most dangerous misunderstanding. There
is one concept which apparently allows of no
confusion or ambiguity, and that is the concept
exhaustion. Exhaustion may be acquired or in-
.
herited-in any case it alters the aspect and
value of things.
Unlike him who involuntarily gives of the
superabundance which he both feels and repre-
sents, to the things about him, and who sees
them fuller, mightier, and more pregnant with pro-
mises-who, in fact, can bestow,—the exhausted
one belittles and disfigures everything he sees—he
impoverishes its worth: he is detrimental. . . .
No mistake seems possible in this matter : and
yet history discloses the terrible fact, that the
exhausted have always been confounded with those
with the most abundant resources, and the latter
with the most detrimental.
The pauper in vitality, the feeble one, im-
poverishes even life: the wealthy man, in vital
powers, enriches it. The first is the parasite of
the second : the second is a bestower of his
abundance. How is confusion possible?
When he who was exhausted came forth with
## p. 41 (#63) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
41
the bearing of a very active and energetic man
(when degeneration implied a certain excess of
spiritual and nervous discharge), he was mistaken
for the wealthy man. He inspired terror. The
cult of the madman is also always the cult of him
who is rich in vitality, and who is a powerful
man. The fanatic, the one possessed, the religious
epileptic, all eccentric creatures have been re-
garded as the highest types of power: as divine.
This kind of strength which inspires terror
seemed to be, above all, divine: this was the
starting-point of authority; here wisdom was
interpreted, hearkened to, and sought. Out of
this there was developed, everywhere almost; a
will to “deify," i. e. , to a typical degeneration of
spirit, body, and nerves: an attempt to discover
the road to this higher form of being. To make
oneself ill or mad, to provoke the symptoms of
serious disorder—was called getting stronger,
becoming more superhuman, more terrible and
more wise. People thought they would thus
attain to such wealth of power, that they would
be able to dispense it. Wheresoever there have
been prayers, some one has been sought who had
something to give away.
What led astray, here, was the experience of
intoxication. This increases the feeling of power
to the highest degree, therefore, to the mind of
the ingenuous, it is power. On the highest rung
of power the most intoxicated man must stand, the
ecstatic. (There are two causes of intoxication:
superabundant life, and a condition of morbid
nutrition of the brain. )
, v
## p. 42 (#64) ##############################################
42
THE WILL TO POWER.
49.
Acquired, not inherited exhaustion : (1) inade-
quate nourishment, often the result of ignorance
concerning diet, as, for instance, in the case of
scholars; (2) erotic precocity: the damnation
more especially of the youth of France-Parisian
youths, above all, who are already ruined and
defiled when they step out of their lycées into the
world, and who cannot break the chains of de-
spicable tendencies; ironical and scornful towards
themselves — galley-slaves with every refinement
(moreover, in the majority of cases, already
a symptom of racial and family decadence, as
all hypersensitiveness is; and examples of the
infection of environment: to be influenced by
one's environment is also a sign of decadence);
(3) alcoholism, not the instinct but the habit,
foolish imitation, the cowardly or vain adaptation
to a ruling fashion. What a blessing a Jew is
among Germans ! See the obtuseness, the flaxen
head, the blue eye, and the lack of intellect in the
face, the language, and the bearing; the lazy habit
of stretching the limbs, and the need of repose
among Germans—a need which is not the result
of overwork, but of the disgusting excitation and
over-excitation caused by alcohol.
50.
A theory of exhaustion. — Vice, the insane (also
artists), the criminals, the anarchists-these are
## p. 43 (#65) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
43
not the oppressed classes, but the outcasts of the
community of all classes hitherto.
Seeing that all our classes are permeated by
these elements, we have grasped the fact that
modern society is not a "society" or a “body," but
a diseased agglomeration of Chandala, —a society
which no longer has the strength even to excrete.
To what extent living together for centuries
has very much deepened sickliness :
modern virtue
modern intellect as forms of disease.
modern science
51.
The state of corruption. The interrelation of all
forms of corruption should be understood, and
the Christian form (Pascal as the type), as also
the socialistic and communistic (a result of the
Christian), should not be overlooked (from the
standpoint of natural science, the highest concep-
tion of society according to socialists, is the lowest
in the order of rank among societies); the “Be-
yond "-corruption : as though outside the real
world of Becoming there
a world
of
Being
Here there must be no compromise, but selec-
tion, annihilation, and war—the Christian Nihilistic
standard of value must be withdrawn from all
things and attacked beneath every disguise . . .
for instance, from modern sociology, music, and
Pessimism (all forms of the Christian ideal of
values)
were
## p. 44 (#66) ##############################################
44
THE WILL TO POWER.
Either one thing or the other is true: true—that
is to say, tending to elevate the type man. . . .
The priest, the shepherd of souls, should be
looked upon as a form of life which must be sup-
pressed. All education, hitherto, has been help-
less, adrift, without ballast, and afflicted with the
contradiction of values.
52.
If Nature have no pity on the degenerate, it is
not therefore immoral: the growth of physiological
and moral evils in the human race, is rather the
result of morbid and unnatural morality.
The sen-
sitiveness of the majority of men is both morbid
and unnatural.
Why is it that mankind is corrupt in a moral
and physiological respect? The body degenerates
if one organ is unsound. The right of altruism
cannot be traced to physiology, neither can the
right to help and to the equality of fate: these
are all premiums for degenerates and failures.
There can be no solidarity in a society con-
taining unfruitful, unproductive, and destructive
members, who, by the bye, are bound to have
offspring even more degenerate than they are
themselves,
53.
Decadence exercises a profound and perfectly
unconscious influence, even over the ideals of
science: all our sociology is a proof of this pro-
position, and it has yet to be reproached with the
## p. 45 (#67) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
45
:
-
fact that it has only the experience of society in
the process of decay, and inevitably takes its own
decaying instincts as the basis of sociological
judgment.
The declining vitality of modern Europe formu-
lates its social ideals in its decaying instincts
and these ideals are all so like those of old and
effete races, that they might be mistaken for one
another.
The gregarious instinct, then,—now a sovereign
power,- is something totally different from the
instinct of an aristocratic society: and the value
of the sum depends upon the value of the units
constituting it. . . .
The whole of our sociology
knows no other instinct than that of the herd, i. e. ,
of a multitude of mere ciphers—of which every
cipher has “equal rights,” and where it is a virtue
to be-naught.
The valuation with which the various forms of
society are judged to-day is absolutely the same
with that which assigns a higher place to peace
than to war : but this principle is contrary to the
teaching of biology, and is itself a mere outcome
of decadent life. Life is a result of war, society
is a means to war. . . . Mr. Herbert Spencer was
a decadent in biology, as also in morality (he
regarded the triumph of altruism as
sideratum ! ! ! ).
.
a de-
54.
After thousands of years of error and confusion,
it is my good fortune to have rediscovered the
road which leads to a Yea and to a Nay.
## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################
46
THE WILL TO POWER.
I teach people to say Nay in the face of all
that makes for weakness and exhaustion.
I teach people to say Yea in the face of all
that makes for strength, that preserves strength,
and justifies the feeling of strength.
Up to the present, neither the one nor the
other has been taught; but rather virtue, dis-
interestedness, pity, and even the negation of life.
All these are values proceeding from exhausted
people.
After having pondered over the physiology
of exhaustion for some time, I was led to the
question: to what extent the judgments of ex-
hausted people had percolated into the world of
values.
The result at which I arrived was as startling
as it could possibly be—even for one like my-
self who was already at home in many a strange
world: I found that all prevailing values—that is
to say, all those which had gained ascendancy
over humanity, or at least over its tamer portions,
could be traced back to the judgment of exhausted
people.
Under the cover of the holiest names, I found
the most destructive tendencies; people had
actually given the name “God” to all that renders
weak, teaches weakness, and infects with weakness.
I found that the “good man
was a form
of self-affirmation on the part of decadence.
That virtue which Schopenhauer still pro-
claimed as superior to all, and as the most funda-
mental of all virtues; even that same pity I
recognised as more dangerous than any vice.
.
.
## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
47
Deliberately to thwart the law of selection among
species, and their natural means of purging their
stock of degenerate members—this, up to my
time, had been the greatest of all virtues. .
One should do honour to the fatality which
says to the feeble: “perish! ”
The opposing of this fatality, the botching of
mankind and the allowing of it to putrefy, was
given the name “God. " One shall not take the
name of the Lord one's God in vain. . .
The race is corrupted—not by its vices, but by
its ignorance: it is corrupted because it has not
recognised exhaustion as exhaustion : physio-
logical misunderstandings are the cause of all
evil.
Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding.
Problem: how were the exhausted able to
make the laws of values ? In other words, how
did they who are the last, come to power ?
How did the instincts of the animal man ever get
to stand on their heads ?
.
.
4. THE CRISIS: NIHILISM AND THE IDEA OF
RECURRENCE.
55.
Extreme positions are not relieved by more
moderate ones, but by extreme opposite positions.
And thus the belief in the utter immorality of
nature, and in the absence of all purpose and sense,
are psychologically necessary passions when the
## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################
48
THE WILL TO POWER.
belief in God and in an essentially moral order of
things is no longer tenable.
Nihilism now appears, not because the sorrows
of existence are greater than they were formerly,
but because, in a general way, people have grown
suspicious of the “meaning " which might be given
to evil and even to existence. One interpretation
has been overthrown: but since it was held to be
the interpretation, it seems as though there were
no meaning in existence at all, as though every-
thing were in vain.
It yet remains to be shown that this “in vain ! ”
is the character of present Nihilism. The mistrust
of our former valuations has increased to such an
extent that it has led to the question : “are not
all 'values' merely allurements prolonging the
duration of the comedy, without, however, bringing
the unravelment any closer ? ” The “long period
of time” which has culminated in an “in vain "
without either goal or purpose, is the most par-
alysing of thoughts, more particularly when one
sees that one is duped without, however, being
able to resist being duped.
Let us imagine this thought in its worst form:
existence, as it is, without either a purpose or a
goal, but inevitably recurring, without an end in
nonentity: “Eternal Recurrence. "
This is the extremest form of Nihilism : nothing
(purposelessness) eternal!
1
## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
49
European form of Buddhism: the energy of
knowledge and of strength drives us to such a
belief. It is the most scientific of all possible
hypotheses. We deny final purposes. If exist-
ence had a final purpose it would have reached it.
*
It should be understood that what is being
aimed at, here, is a contradiction of Pantheism:
for “everything perfect, divine, eternal,” also leads
to the belief in Eternal Recurrence. Question :
has this pantheistic and affirmative attitude to all
things also been made impossible by morality?
At bottom only the moral
as been overcome.
Is there any sense in imagining a God " beyond
good and evil”? Would Pantheism in this sense
be possible?
Do we withdraw the idea of purpose
from the process, and affirm the process notwith-
standing ? This were so if, within that process,
something were attained every moment-and
always the same thing. Spinoza won an affirma-
tive position of this sort, in the sense that every
moment, according to him, has a logical necessity :
and he triumphed by means of his fundamentally
logical instinct over a like conformation of the
world.
But his case is exceptional. If every funda-
mental trait of character, which lies beneath every
act, and which finds expression in every act, were
recognised by the individual as his fundamental
D
VOL. 1.
## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################
50
THE WILL TO POWER.
trait of character, this individual would be driven
to regard every moment of existence in general,
triumphantly as good. It would simply be neces-
sary for that fundamental trait of character to be
felt in oneself as something good, valuable, and
pleasurable.
<
Now, in the case of those men and classes of
men who were treated with violence and oppressed
by their fellows, morality saved life from despair
and from the leap into nonentity: for impotence
in relation to mankind and not in relation to
Nature is what generates the most desperate
bitterness towards existence. Morality treated
the powerful, the violent, and the “masters" in
general, as enemies against whom the common
man must be protected—that is to say, emboldened,
strengthened. Morality has therefore always taught
the most profound hatred and contempt of the
fundamental trait of character of all rulers—i. e. ,
their Will to Power. To suppress, to deny, and
to decompose this morality, would mean to regard
this most thoroughly detested instinct with the
reverse of the old feeling and valuation. If the
sufferer and the oppressed man were to lose his
belief in his right to contemn the Will to Power,
his position would be desperate. This would be
so if the trait above-mentioned were essential to
life, in which case it would follow that even
that will to morality was only a cloak to this
“Will to Power," as are also even that hatred and
contempt. The oppressed man would then per-
## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
51
ceive that he stands on the same platform with the
oppressor, and that he has no individual privilege,
nor any higher rank than the latter.
*
On the contrary! There is nothing on earth
which can have any value, if it have not a modicum
of power—granted, of course, that life itself is the
Will to Power. Morality protected the botched
and bungled against Nihilism, in that it gave every
one of them infinite worth, metaphysical worth,
and classed them altogether in one order which
did not correspond with that of worldly power and
order of rank: it taught submission, humility, etc.
Admitting that the belief in this morality be destroyed,
the botched and the bungled would no longer have
any comfort, and would perish.
*
This perishing seems like self-annihilation, like
an instinctive selection of that which must de-
stroy. The symptoms of this self-destruction of
the botched and the bungled: self- vivisection,
poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, and, above
all, the instinctive constraint to acts whereby the
powerful are made into mortal enemies (training,
so to speak, one's own hangmen), the will to destruc-
tion as the will of a still deeper instinct-of the
instinct of self-destruction, of the Will to Nonentity.
*
Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled
have no longer any consolation, that they destroy
## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################
52
THE WILL TO POWER.
in order to be destroyed, that, having been deprived
of morality, they no longer have any reason to
“resign themselves,” that they take up their stand
on the territory of the opposite principle, and will
also exercise power themselves, by compelling the
powerful to become their hangmen. This is the
European form of Buddhism, that active negation,
after all existence has lost its meaning.
1
$
It must not be supposed that “distress has
grown more acute, on the contrary !
“ God,
morality, resignation ” were remedies in the very
deepest stages of misery : active Nihilism made
its appearance in circumstances which were rela-
tively much more favourable. The fact, alone, that
morality is regarded as overcome, presupposes a
certain degree of intellectual culture; while this
very culture, for its part, bears evidence to a
certain relative well-being. A certain intellectual
fatigue, brought on by the long struggle concerning
philosophical opinions, and carried to hopeless
scepticism against philosophy, shows moreover that
the level of these Nihilists is by no means a low
one. Only think of the conditions in which
Buddha appeared! The teaching of the eternal
recurrence would have learned principles to go
upon (just as Buddha's teaching, for instance, had
the notion of causality, etc. ).
*
What do we mean to-day by the words“ botched
and bungled"? In the first place, they are used
## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################
NIHILISM,
53
physiologically and not politically. The unhealthiest
kind of man all over Europe (in all classes) is the
soil out of which Nihilism grows: this species of
man will regard eternal recurrence as damnation-
once he is bitten by the thought, he can no longer
recoil before any action. He would not extirpate
passively, but would cause everything to be extir-
pated which is meaningless and without a goal to
this extent; although it is only a spasm, or sort of
blind rage in the presence of the fact that everything
has existed again and again for an eternity-even
this period of Nihilism and destruction. The value
of such a crisis is that it purifies, that it unites similar
elements, and makes them mutually destructive,
that it assigns common duties to men of opposite
persuasions, and brings the weaker and more un-numerisa
certain among them to the light, thus taking the
first step towards a new order of rank among forces
from the standpoint of health : recognising com-
manders as commanders, subordinates as sub-
ordinates. Naturally irrespective of all the
present forms of society,
What class of men will prove they are strongest
in this new order of things? The most moderate
- they who do not require any extreme forms of
belief, they who not only admit of, but actually
like, a certain modicum of chance and nonsense ;
they who can think of man with a very moderate
view of his value, without becoming weak and
small on that account; the most rich in health,
## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################
54
THE WILL TO POWER
who are able to withstand a maximum amount
of sorrow, and who are therefore not so very much
afraid of sorrow—men who are certain of their
power, and who represent with conscious pride the
state of strength to which man has attained.
How could such a man think of Eternal Re-
currence ?
56.
The Periods of European Nihilism,
The Period of Obscurity : all kinds of groping
measures devised to preserve old institutions and
not to arrest the progress of new ones.
The Period of Light : men see that old and
new are fundamental contraries; that the old
values are born of descending life, and that the
new ones are born of ascending life-that all old
ideals are unfriendly to life (born of decadence
and determining it, however much they may be
decked out in the Sunday finery of morality).
We understand the old, but are far from being
sufficiently strong for the new.
The Periods of the Three Great Passions : con-
tempt, pity, destruction.
The Periods of Catastrophes : the rise of a teach-
ing which will sift mankind . . . which drives
the weak to some decision and the strong also.
1
## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################
II.
CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF
EUROPEANNIHILISM.
(a) MODERN GLOOMINESS.
57.
My friends, we had a hard time as youths; we even
suffered from youth itself as though it were a serious
disease. This is owing to the age in which we were
born—an age of enormous internal decay and dis-
integration which, with all its weakness and even
with the best of its strength, is opposed to the
spirit of youth. Disintegration—that is to say, un-
certaintymis peculiar to this age: nothing stands
on solid ground or on a sound faith. People live
for the morrow, because the day-after-to-morrow is
doubtful. All our road is slippery and dangerous,
while the ice which still bears us has grown un-
conscionably thin: we all feel the mild and grue-
some breath of the thaw-wind-soon, where we are
walking, no one will any longer be able to stand !
>
58.
If this is not an age of decay and of diminishing
vitality, it is at least one of indiscriminate and
arbitrary experimentalising—and it is probable
that out of an excess of abortive experiments there
## p. 56 (#78) ##############################################
56
THE WILL TO POWER.
has grown this general impression, as of decay :
and perhaps decay itself.
59.
Concerning the history of modern gloominess.
The state-nomads (officials, etc. ): "home-
less".
>
The break-up of the family.
The "good man " as a symptom of exhaustion.
Justice as Will to Power (Rearing).
Lewdness and neurosis.
Black music: whither has real music gone?
The anarchist.
Contempt of man, loathing.
Most profound distinction : whether hunger or
superabundance is creative? The first creates the
Ideals of Romanticism.
Northern unnaturalness.
The need of Alcohol : the "need" of the work-
ing classes.
Philosophical Nihilism.
бо.
The slow advance and rise of the middle and
lower classes (including the lower kind of spirit
and body), which was already well under way
before the French Revolution, and would have
made the same progress forward without the latter,
-in short, then, the preponderance of the herd
over all herdsmen and bell-wethers,—-brings in its
train :
(1) Gloominess of spirit (the juxtaposition of
a stoical and a frivolous appearance of happiness,
## p. 57 (#79) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
57
. peculiar to noble cultures, is on the decline; much
suffering is allowed to be seen and heard which
formerly was borne in concealment;
(2) Moral hypocrisy (a way of distinguishing
oneself through morality, but by means of the
values of the herd: pity, solicitude, moderation; and
not by means of those virtues which are recognised
and honoured outside the herd's sphere of power);
(3) A really large amount of sympathy with
both pain and joy (a feeling of pleasure resulting
from being herded together, which is peculiar to
all gregarious animals—"public spirit," "patriot-
ism,” everything, in fact, which is apart from the
individual)
61.
Our age, with its indiscriminate endeavours to
mitigate distress, to honour it, and to wage war in
advance with unpleasant possibilities, is an age of
the poor. Our "rich people"—they are the poorest !
The real purpose of all wealth has been forgotten.
62.
Criticism of modern man :-"the good man," but
corrupted and misled by bad institutions (tyrants
and priests) ;-reason elevated to a position of
authority ;-history is regarded as the surmounting
of errors ;-the future is regarded as progress;
the Christian state (“God of the armies ");-
Christian sexual intercourse (as marriage);—the
realm of “justice” (the cult of "mankind ');-
« freedom. "
The romantic attitudes of the modern man :-
## p. 58 (#80) ##############################################
58
THE WILL TO POWER.
the noble man (Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand);
-taking the part of the oppressed and the bungled
and the botched : motto for historians and
romancers;—the Stoics of duty ;-disinterestedness
regarded as art and as knowledge ;-altruism as
the most mendacious form of egoism (utilitarianism),
the most sentimental form of egoism.
All this savours of the eighteenth century. But
it had other qualities which were not inherited,
namely, a certain insouciance, cheerfulness, ele-
gance, spiritual clearness. The spiritual tempo
has altered; the pleasure which was begotten by
spiritual refinement and clearness has given room
to the pleasure of colour, harmony, mass, reality,
etc. etc. Sensuality in spiritual things. In short,
it is the eighteenth century of Rousseau.
arolini
63.
Taken all in all, a considerable amount of
humanity has been attained by our men of to-day.
That we do not feel this is in itself a proof of the
fact that we have become so sensitive in regard to
small cases of distress, that we somewhat unjustly
overlook what has been achieved.
Here we must make allowances for the fact
that a great deal of decadence is rife, and that,
through such eyes, our world must appear bad and
wretched. But these eyes have always seen in the
same way, in all ages.
(1) A certain hypersensitiveness, even in moral
feelings.
(2) The quantum of bitterness and gloominess,
from. Yo's know your
## p. 59 (#81) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
59
which pessimism bears with it in its judgments-
both together have helped to bring about the pre-
ponderance of the other and opposite point of view,
that things are not well with our morality.
The fact of credit, of the commerce of the world,
and the means of traffic—are expressions of an
extraordinarily mild trustfulness in men, . . . Το
that may also be added-
(3) The deliverance of science from moral and
religious prejudices : a very good sign, though for
the most part misunderstood.
In my own way, I am attempting a justification
of history,
64.
The second appearance of Buddhism. -Its pre-
cursory signs: the increase of pity. Spiritual
exhaustion. The reduction of all problems to the
question of pleasure and pain. The glory of war
which calls forth a counter-stroke. Just as the
sharp demarcation of nations generates a counter-
movement in the form of the most hearty
Fraternity. ” The fact that it is impossible for
religion to carry on its work any longer with
dogma and fables.
The catastrophe of Nihilism will put an end to
all this Buddhistic culture,
st
65.
That which is most sorely afflicted to-day is
the instinct and will of tradition: all institutions
which owe their origin to this instinct, are opposed
## p.
EXPRESSION OF DECADENCE.
38.
Just lately an accidental and in every way
inappropriate term has been very much misused
everywhere people are speaking of “Pessimism,"
:
## p. 32 (#54) ##############################################
32
THE WILL TO POWER.
and there is a fight around the question to which
some replies must be forthcoming): which is
right—Pessimism or Optimism?
People have not yet seen what is so terribly
obvious—namely, that Pessimism is not a problem
but a symptom,—that the term ought to be re-
placed by “ Nihilism,"—that the question, “to be
or not to be,” is itself an illness, a sign of
degeneracy, an idiosyncrasy.
The Nihilistic movement is only an expression
of physiological decadence.
39.
To be understood :That every kind of decline
and tendency to sickness has incessantly been at
work in helping to create general evaluations:
that in those valuations which now dominate,
decadence has even begun to preponderate, that
we have not only to combat the conditions which
present misery and degeneration have brought
into being; but that all decadence, previous to
that of our own times, has been transmitted and
has therefore remained an active force amongst
us. A universal departure of this kind, on the
part of man, from his fundamental instincts, such
universal decadence of the valuing judgment, is
the note of interrogation par excellence, the real
riddle, which the animal “man sets to all
philosophers.
40.
The notion “decadence":--Decay, decline, and
waste, are, per se, in no way open to objection;
## p. 33 (#55) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
33
they are the natural consequences of life and vital
growth. The phenomenon of decadence is just
as necessary to life as advance or progress is : we
are not in a position which enables us to suppress
it. On the contrary, reason would have it retain
its rights.
It is disgraceful on the part of socialist-theorists
to argue that circumstances and social combina-
tions could be devised which would put an end
to all vice, illness, crime, prostitution, and poverty.
But that is tantamount to condemning
Life .
. . . a society is not at liberty to remain
young. And even in its prime it must bring
forth ordure and decaying matter.
The more
energetically and daringly it advances, the richer
will it be in failures and in deformities, and the
nearer it will be to its fall. Age is not deferred by
means of institutions. Nor is illness. Nor is vice.
41.
Fundamental aspect of the nature of decadence:
what has heretofore been regarded as its causes
are its effects.
In this way, the whole perspective of the
problems of morality is altered.
All the struggle of morals against vice, luxury,
crime, and even against illness, seems a naïveté, a
superfluous effort: there is no such thing as
“ improvement” (a word against repentance).
Decadence itself is not a thing that can be
withstood: it is absolutely necessary and is proper
to all ages and all peoples. That which must be
C
VOL. I.
## p. 34 (#56) ##############################################
34
THE WILL TO POWER.
withstood, and by all means in our power, is the
spreading of the contagion among the sound parts
of the organism.
Is that done? The very reverse is done. It
is precisely on this account that one makes a
stand on behalf of humanity.
How do the highest values created hitherto
stand in relation to this fundamental question in
biology? Philosophy, religion, morality, art, etc.
(The remedy: militarism, for instance, from
Napoleon onwards, who regarded civilisation as
his natural enemy. )
42.
All those things which heretofore have been
regarded as the causes of degeneration, are really
its effects.
But those things also which have been regarded
as the remedies of degeneration are only palliatives
of certain effects thereof: the "cured” are types
of the degenerate.
The results of decadence : vice-viciousness;
illness-sickliness; crime-criminality; celibacy
-sterility; hysteria—the weakness of the will;
alcoholism; pessimism, anarchy; debauchery (also
of the spirit). The calumniators, underminers,
sceptics, and destroyers,
43.
Concerning the notion “decadence. "
(1) Scepticism is a result of decadence: just
as spiritual debauchery is.
## p. 35 (#57) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
35
(2) Moral corruption is a result of decadence
(the weakness of the will and the need of strong
stimulants).
(3) Remedies, whether psychological or moral,
do not alter the march of decadence, they do
not arrest anything; physiologically they do not
count.
A peep into the enormous futility of these
pretentious“ reactions"; they are forms of
anæsthetising oneself against certain fatal
symptoms resulting from the prevailing condition
of things; they do not eradicate the morbid
element; they are often heroic attempts to cancel
the decadent man, to allow only a minimum of
his deleterious influence to survive.
(4) Nihilism is not a cause, but only the
rationale of decadence.
(5) The “good” and the "bad" are no more
than two types of decadence: they come together
in all its fundamental phenomena.
(6) The social problem is a result of decadence.
(7) Illnesses, more particularly those attacking
the nerves and the head, are signs that the
defensive strength of strong nature is lacking; a
proof of this is that irritability which causes
pleasure and pain to be regarded as problems of
the first order.
44.
The most common types of decadence :
(1) In the belief that they are remedies, cures
are chosen which only precipitate exhaustion ;
this is the case with Christianity (to point to the
## p. 36 (#58) ##############################################
36
THE WILL TO POWER.
7
*****
most egregious example of mistaken instinct);
this is also the case with "progress. "
(2) The power of resisting stimuli is on the
wane—chance rules supreme: events are inflated
and drawn out until they appear monstrous . . .
a suppression of the “personality," a disintegration
of the will; in this regard we may mention a
whole class of morality, the altruistic, that which
is incessantly preaching pity, and whose most
essential feature is the weakness of the personality,
so that it rings in unison, and, like an over-
sensitive string, does not cease from vibrating
extreme irritability.
(3) Cause and effect are confounded : decad-
ence is not understood as physiological, and its
results are taken to be the causes of the general
indisposition:— this applies to all religious
morality.
(4) A state of affairs is desired in which suffer-
ing shall cease ; life is actually considered the
cause of all ills-unconscious and insensitive states
(sleep and syncope) are held in incomparably
higher esteem than the conscious states; hence a
method of life.
45.
Concerning the hygiene of the “weak. " All
that is done in weakness ends in failure. Moral :
do nothing. The worst of it is, that precisely the
strength required in order to stop action, and to
cease from reacting, is most seriously diseased
under the influence of weakness: that one never
## p. 37 (#59) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
37
reacts more promptly or more blindly than when
one should not react at all.
The strength of a character is shown by the
ability to delay and postpone reaction: a certain
ádiapopía is just as proper to it, as involuntari-
ness in recoiling, suddenness and lack of restraint
in "action," are proper to weakness. The will is
weak: and the recipe for preventing foolish acts
would be: to have a strong will and to do nothing
-contradiction. » A sort of self-destruction, the
instinct of self-preservation is compromised. .
The weak man injures himself. . . . That is the
- decadent type.
As a matter of fact, we meet with a vast
amount of thought concerning the means where-
with impassibility may be induced. To this
extent, the instincts are on the right scent;
for to do nothing is more useful than to do
something.
All the practices of private orders, of solitary
philosophers, and of fakirs, are suggested by a
correct consideration of the fact, that a certain
kind of man is most useful to himself when he
hinders his own action as much as possible.
Relieving measures : absolute obedience,
mechanical activity, total isolation from
and things that might exact immediate decisions
and actions.
men
46.
Weakness of Will: this is a fable that can
lead astray. For there is no will, consequently
neither a strong nor a weak one. The multi-
## p. 38 (#60) ##############################################
38
THE WILL TO POWER.
plicity and disintegration of the instincts, the want
of system in their relationship, constitute what is
known as a “weak will”; their co-ordination, under
the government of one individual among them,
results in a "strong will”-in the first case
vacillation and a lack of equilibrium is noticeable:
in the second, precision and definite direction.
47.
That which is inherited is not illness, but a predis-
position to illness : a lack of the powers of resistance
against injurious external influences,etc. etc. , broken
powers of resistance; expressed morally: resigna-
tion and humility in the presence of the enemy.
I have often wondered whether it would not
be possible to class all the highest values of the
philosophies, moralities, and religions which have
been devised hitherto, with the values of the
feeble, the insane and the neurasthenic: in a
milder form, they present the same evils.
The value of all morbid conditions consists
in the fact that they magnify certain normal
phenomena which are difficult to discern in
normal conditions. . .
Health and illness are not essentially different,
as the ancient doctors believed and as a few
practitioners still believe to-day. They cannot
be imagined as two distinct principles or entities
which fight for the living organism and make it
their battlefield. That is nonsense and mere idle
gossip, which no longer holds water.
matter of fact, there is only a difference of
As a
## p. 39 (#61) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
39
degree between these two living conditions:
exaggeration, want of proportion, want of harmony
among the normal phenomena, constitute the
morbid state (Claude Bernard).
Just as “evil” may be regarded as exaggeration,
discord, and want of proportion, so can “good” be
regarded as a sort of protective diet against the
danger of exaggeration, discord, and want of
proportion.
Hereditary weakness as a dominant feeling: the
cause of the prevailing values.
N. B. -Weakness is in demand—why? . . .
mostly because people cannot be anything else
than weak.
Weakening considered a duty : The weakening
of the desires, of the feelings of pleasure and
of pain, of the will to power, of the will to pride,
to property and to more property; weakening in
the form of humility; weakening in the form of a
belief; weakening in the form of repugnance and
shame in the presence of all that is natural-in
the form of a denial of life, in the form of illness
and chronic feebleness; weakening in the form of
a refusal to take revenge, to offer resistance, to
become an enemy, and to show anger.
Blunders in the treatment: there is no attempt
at combating weakness by means of any fortifying
system; but by a sort of justification consisting
of moralising; i. e. , by means of interpretation.
Two totally different conditions are confused:
for instance, the repose of strength, which is essen-
tially abstinence from reaction (the prototype of
the gods whom nothing moves), and the peace of
## p. 40 (#62) ##############################################
40
THE WILL TO POWER.
exhaustion, rigidity to the point of anæsthesia.
All these philosophic and ascetic modes of pro-
cedure aspire to the second state, but actually
pretend to attain to the first . . . for they ascribe
to the condition they have reached the attributes
that would be in keeping only with a divine state.
48.
The most dangerous misunderstanding. There
is one concept which apparently allows of no
confusion or ambiguity, and that is the concept
exhaustion. Exhaustion may be acquired or in-
.
herited-in any case it alters the aspect and
value of things.
Unlike him who involuntarily gives of the
superabundance which he both feels and repre-
sents, to the things about him, and who sees
them fuller, mightier, and more pregnant with pro-
mises-who, in fact, can bestow,—the exhausted
one belittles and disfigures everything he sees—he
impoverishes its worth: he is detrimental. . . .
No mistake seems possible in this matter : and
yet history discloses the terrible fact, that the
exhausted have always been confounded with those
with the most abundant resources, and the latter
with the most detrimental.
The pauper in vitality, the feeble one, im-
poverishes even life: the wealthy man, in vital
powers, enriches it. The first is the parasite of
the second : the second is a bestower of his
abundance. How is confusion possible?
When he who was exhausted came forth with
## p. 41 (#63) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
41
the bearing of a very active and energetic man
(when degeneration implied a certain excess of
spiritual and nervous discharge), he was mistaken
for the wealthy man. He inspired terror. The
cult of the madman is also always the cult of him
who is rich in vitality, and who is a powerful
man. The fanatic, the one possessed, the religious
epileptic, all eccentric creatures have been re-
garded as the highest types of power: as divine.
This kind of strength which inspires terror
seemed to be, above all, divine: this was the
starting-point of authority; here wisdom was
interpreted, hearkened to, and sought. Out of
this there was developed, everywhere almost; a
will to “deify," i. e. , to a typical degeneration of
spirit, body, and nerves: an attempt to discover
the road to this higher form of being. To make
oneself ill or mad, to provoke the symptoms of
serious disorder—was called getting stronger,
becoming more superhuman, more terrible and
more wise. People thought they would thus
attain to such wealth of power, that they would
be able to dispense it. Wheresoever there have
been prayers, some one has been sought who had
something to give away.
What led astray, here, was the experience of
intoxication. This increases the feeling of power
to the highest degree, therefore, to the mind of
the ingenuous, it is power. On the highest rung
of power the most intoxicated man must stand, the
ecstatic. (There are two causes of intoxication:
superabundant life, and a condition of morbid
nutrition of the brain. )
, v
## p. 42 (#64) ##############################################
42
THE WILL TO POWER.
49.
Acquired, not inherited exhaustion : (1) inade-
quate nourishment, often the result of ignorance
concerning diet, as, for instance, in the case of
scholars; (2) erotic precocity: the damnation
more especially of the youth of France-Parisian
youths, above all, who are already ruined and
defiled when they step out of their lycées into the
world, and who cannot break the chains of de-
spicable tendencies; ironical and scornful towards
themselves — galley-slaves with every refinement
(moreover, in the majority of cases, already
a symptom of racial and family decadence, as
all hypersensitiveness is; and examples of the
infection of environment: to be influenced by
one's environment is also a sign of decadence);
(3) alcoholism, not the instinct but the habit,
foolish imitation, the cowardly or vain adaptation
to a ruling fashion. What a blessing a Jew is
among Germans ! See the obtuseness, the flaxen
head, the blue eye, and the lack of intellect in the
face, the language, and the bearing; the lazy habit
of stretching the limbs, and the need of repose
among Germans—a need which is not the result
of overwork, but of the disgusting excitation and
over-excitation caused by alcohol.
50.
A theory of exhaustion. — Vice, the insane (also
artists), the criminals, the anarchists-these are
## p. 43 (#65) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
43
not the oppressed classes, but the outcasts of the
community of all classes hitherto.
Seeing that all our classes are permeated by
these elements, we have grasped the fact that
modern society is not a "society" or a “body," but
a diseased agglomeration of Chandala, —a society
which no longer has the strength even to excrete.
To what extent living together for centuries
has very much deepened sickliness :
modern virtue
modern intellect as forms of disease.
modern science
51.
The state of corruption. The interrelation of all
forms of corruption should be understood, and
the Christian form (Pascal as the type), as also
the socialistic and communistic (a result of the
Christian), should not be overlooked (from the
standpoint of natural science, the highest concep-
tion of society according to socialists, is the lowest
in the order of rank among societies); the “Be-
yond "-corruption : as though outside the real
world of Becoming there
a world
of
Being
Here there must be no compromise, but selec-
tion, annihilation, and war—the Christian Nihilistic
standard of value must be withdrawn from all
things and attacked beneath every disguise . . .
for instance, from modern sociology, music, and
Pessimism (all forms of the Christian ideal of
values)
were
## p. 44 (#66) ##############################################
44
THE WILL TO POWER.
Either one thing or the other is true: true—that
is to say, tending to elevate the type man. . . .
The priest, the shepherd of souls, should be
looked upon as a form of life which must be sup-
pressed. All education, hitherto, has been help-
less, adrift, without ballast, and afflicted with the
contradiction of values.
52.
If Nature have no pity on the degenerate, it is
not therefore immoral: the growth of physiological
and moral evils in the human race, is rather the
result of morbid and unnatural morality.
The sen-
sitiveness of the majority of men is both morbid
and unnatural.
Why is it that mankind is corrupt in a moral
and physiological respect? The body degenerates
if one organ is unsound. The right of altruism
cannot be traced to physiology, neither can the
right to help and to the equality of fate: these
are all premiums for degenerates and failures.
There can be no solidarity in a society con-
taining unfruitful, unproductive, and destructive
members, who, by the bye, are bound to have
offspring even more degenerate than they are
themselves,
53.
Decadence exercises a profound and perfectly
unconscious influence, even over the ideals of
science: all our sociology is a proof of this pro-
position, and it has yet to be reproached with the
## p. 45 (#67) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
45
:
-
fact that it has only the experience of society in
the process of decay, and inevitably takes its own
decaying instincts as the basis of sociological
judgment.
The declining vitality of modern Europe formu-
lates its social ideals in its decaying instincts
and these ideals are all so like those of old and
effete races, that they might be mistaken for one
another.
The gregarious instinct, then,—now a sovereign
power,- is something totally different from the
instinct of an aristocratic society: and the value
of the sum depends upon the value of the units
constituting it. . . .
The whole of our sociology
knows no other instinct than that of the herd, i. e. ,
of a multitude of mere ciphers—of which every
cipher has “equal rights,” and where it is a virtue
to be-naught.
The valuation with which the various forms of
society are judged to-day is absolutely the same
with that which assigns a higher place to peace
than to war : but this principle is contrary to the
teaching of biology, and is itself a mere outcome
of decadent life. Life is a result of war, society
is a means to war. . . . Mr. Herbert Spencer was
a decadent in biology, as also in morality (he
regarded the triumph of altruism as
sideratum ! ! ! ).
.
a de-
54.
After thousands of years of error and confusion,
it is my good fortune to have rediscovered the
road which leads to a Yea and to a Nay.
## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################
46
THE WILL TO POWER.
I teach people to say Nay in the face of all
that makes for weakness and exhaustion.
I teach people to say Yea in the face of all
that makes for strength, that preserves strength,
and justifies the feeling of strength.
Up to the present, neither the one nor the
other has been taught; but rather virtue, dis-
interestedness, pity, and even the negation of life.
All these are values proceeding from exhausted
people.
After having pondered over the physiology
of exhaustion for some time, I was led to the
question: to what extent the judgments of ex-
hausted people had percolated into the world of
values.
The result at which I arrived was as startling
as it could possibly be—even for one like my-
self who was already at home in many a strange
world: I found that all prevailing values—that is
to say, all those which had gained ascendancy
over humanity, or at least over its tamer portions,
could be traced back to the judgment of exhausted
people.
Under the cover of the holiest names, I found
the most destructive tendencies; people had
actually given the name “God” to all that renders
weak, teaches weakness, and infects with weakness.
I found that the “good man
was a form
of self-affirmation on the part of decadence.
That virtue which Schopenhauer still pro-
claimed as superior to all, and as the most funda-
mental of all virtues; even that same pity I
recognised as more dangerous than any vice.
.
.
## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
47
Deliberately to thwart the law of selection among
species, and their natural means of purging their
stock of degenerate members—this, up to my
time, had been the greatest of all virtues. .
One should do honour to the fatality which
says to the feeble: “perish! ”
The opposing of this fatality, the botching of
mankind and the allowing of it to putrefy, was
given the name “God. " One shall not take the
name of the Lord one's God in vain. . .
The race is corrupted—not by its vices, but by
its ignorance: it is corrupted because it has not
recognised exhaustion as exhaustion : physio-
logical misunderstandings are the cause of all
evil.
Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding.
Problem: how were the exhausted able to
make the laws of values ? In other words, how
did they who are the last, come to power ?
How did the instincts of the animal man ever get
to stand on their heads ?
.
.
4. THE CRISIS: NIHILISM AND THE IDEA OF
RECURRENCE.
55.
Extreme positions are not relieved by more
moderate ones, but by extreme opposite positions.
And thus the belief in the utter immorality of
nature, and in the absence of all purpose and sense,
are psychologically necessary passions when the
## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################
48
THE WILL TO POWER.
belief in God and in an essentially moral order of
things is no longer tenable.
Nihilism now appears, not because the sorrows
of existence are greater than they were formerly,
but because, in a general way, people have grown
suspicious of the “meaning " which might be given
to evil and even to existence. One interpretation
has been overthrown: but since it was held to be
the interpretation, it seems as though there were
no meaning in existence at all, as though every-
thing were in vain.
It yet remains to be shown that this “in vain ! ”
is the character of present Nihilism. The mistrust
of our former valuations has increased to such an
extent that it has led to the question : “are not
all 'values' merely allurements prolonging the
duration of the comedy, without, however, bringing
the unravelment any closer ? ” The “long period
of time” which has culminated in an “in vain "
without either goal or purpose, is the most par-
alysing of thoughts, more particularly when one
sees that one is duped without, however, being
able to resist being duped.
Let us imagine this thought in its worst form:
existence, as it is, without either a purpose or a
goal, but inevitably recurring, without an end in
nonentity: “Eternal Recurrence. "
This is the extremest form of Nihilism : nothing
(purposelessness) eternal!
1
## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
49
European form of Buddhism: the energy of
knowledge and of strength drives us to such a
belief. It is the most scientific of all possible
hypotheses. We deny final purposes. If exist-
ence had a final purpose it would have reached it.
*
It should be understood that what is being
aimed at, here, is a contradiction of Pantheism:
for “everything perfect, divine, eternal,” also leads
to the belief in Eternal Recurrence. Question :
has this pantheistic and affirmative attitude to all
things also been made impossible by morality?
At bottom only the moral
as been overcome.
Is there any sense in imagining a God " beyond
good and evil”? Would Pantheism in this sense
be possible?
Do we withdraw the idea of purpose
from the process, and affirm the process notwith-
standing ? This were so if, within that process,
something were attained every moment-and
always the same thing. Spinoza won an affirma-
tive position of this sort, in the sense that every
moment, according to him, has a logical necessity :
and he triumphed by means of his fundamentally
logical instinct over a like conformation of the
world.
But his case is exceptional. If every funda-
mental trait of character, which lies beneath every
act, and which finds expression in every act, were
recognised by the individual as his fundamental
D
VOL. 1.
## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################
50
THE WILL TO POWER.
trait of character, this individual would be driven
to regard every moment of existence in general,
triumphantly as good. It would simply be neces-
sary for that fundamental trait of character to be
felt in oneself as something good, valuable, and
pleasurable.
<
Now, in the case of those men and classes of
men who were treated with violence and oppressed
by their fellows, morality saved life from despair
and from the leap into nonentity: for impotence
in relation to mankind and not in relation to
Nature is what generates the most desperate
bitterness towards existence. Morality treated
the powerful, the violent, and the “masters" in
general, as enemies against whom the common
man must be protected—that is to say, emboldened,
strengthened. Morality has therefore always taught
the most profound hatred and contempt of the
fundamental trait of character of all rulers—i. e. ,
their Will to Power. To suppress, to deny, and
to decompose this morality, would mean to regard
this most thoroughly detested instinct with the
reverse of the old feeling and valuation. If the
sufferer and the oppressed man were to lose his
belief in his right to contemn the Will to Power,
his position would be desperate. This would be
so if the trait above-mentioned were essential to
life, in which case it would follow that even
that will to morality was only a cloak to this
“Will to Power," as are also even that hatred and
contempt. The oppressed man would then per-
## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
51
ceive that he stands on the same platform with the
oppressor, and that he has no individual privilege,
nor any higher rank than the latter.
*
On the contrary! There is nothing on earth
which can have any value, if it have not a modicum
of power—granted, of course, that life itself is the
Will to Power. Morality protected the botched
and bungled against Nihilism, in that it gave every
one of them infinite worth, metaphysical worth,
and classed them altogether in one order which
did not correspond with that of worldly power and
order of rank: it taught submission, humility, etc.
Admitting that the belief in this morality be destroyed,
the botched and the bungled would no longer have
any comfort, and would perish.
*
This perishing seems like self-annihilation, like
an instinctive selection of that which must de-
stroy. The symptoms of this self-destruction of
the botched and the bungled: self- vivisection,
poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, and, above
all, the instinctive constraint to acts whereby the
powerful are made into mortal enemies (training,
so to speak, one's own hangmen), the will to destruc-
tion as the will of a still deeper instinct-of the
instinct of self-destruction, of the Will to Nonentity.
*
Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled
have no longer any consolation, that they destroy
## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################
52
THE WILL TO POWER.
in order to be destroyed, that, having been deprived
of morality, they no longer have any reason to
“resign themselves,” that they take up their stand
on the territory of the opposite principle, and will
also exercise power themselves, by compelling the
powerful to become their hangmen. This is the
European form of Buddhism, that active negation,
after all existence has lost its meaning.
1
$
It must not be supposed that “distress has
grown more acute, on the contrary !
“ God,
morality, resignation ” were remedies in the very
deepest stages of misery : active Nihilism made
its appearance in circumstances which were rela-
tively much more favourable. The fact, alone, that
morality is regarded as overcome, presupposes a
certain degree of intellectual culture; while this
very culture, for its part, bears evidence to a
certain relative well-being. A certain intellectual
fatigue, brought on by the long struggle concerning
philosophical opinions, and carried to hopeless
scepticism against philosophy, shows moreover that
the level of these Nihilists is by no means a low
one. Only think of the conditions in which
Buddha appeared! The teaching of the eternal
recurrence would have learned principles to go
upon (just as Buddha's teaching, for instance, had
the notion of causality, etc. ).
*
What do we mean to-day by the words“ botched
and bungled"? In the first place, they are used
## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################
NIHILISM,
53
physiologically and not politically. The unhealthiest
kind of man all over Europe (in all classes) is the
soil out of which Nihilism grows: this species of
man will regard eternal recurrence as damnation-
once he is bitten by the thought, he can no longer
recoil before any action. He would not extirpate
passively, but would cause everything to be extir-
pated which is meaningless and without a goal to
this extent; although it is only a spasm, or sort of
blind rage in the presence of the fact that everything
has existed again and again for an eternity-even
this period of Nihilism and destruction. The value
of such a crisis is that it purifies, that it unites similar
elements, and makes them mutually destructive,
that it assigns common duties to men of opposite
persuasions, and brings the weaker and more un-numerisa
certain among them to the light, thus taking the
first step towards a new order of rank among forces
from the standpoint of health : recognising com-
manders as commanders, subordinates as sub-
ordinates. Naturally irrespective of all the
present forms of society,
What class of men will prove they are strongest
in this new order of things? The most moderate
- they who do not require any extreme forms of
belief, they who not only admit of, but actually
like, a certain modicum of chance and nonsense ;
they who can think of man with a very moderate
view of his value, without becoming weak and
small on that account; the most rich in health,
## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################
54
THE WILL TO POWER
who are able to withstand a maximum amount
of sorrow, and who are therefore not so very much
afraid of sorrow—men who are certain of their
power, and who represent with conscious pride the
state of strength to which man has attained.
How could such a man think of Eternal Re-
currence ?
56.
The Periods of European Nihilism,
The Period of Obscurity : all kinds of groping
measures devised to preserve old institutions and
not to arrest the progress of new ones.
The Period of Light : men see that old and
new are fundamental contraries; that the old
values are born of descending life, and that the
new ones are born of ascending life-that all old
ideals are unfriendly to life (born of decadence
and determining it, however much they may be
decked out in the Sunday finery of morality).
We understand the old, but are far from being
sufficiently strong for the new.
The Periods of the Three Great Passions : con-
tempt, pity, destruction.
The Periods of Catastrophes : the rise of a teach-
ing which will sift mankind . . . which drives
the weak to some decision and the strong also.
1
## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################
II.
CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF
EUROPEANNIHILISM.
(a) MODERN GLOOMINESS.
57.
My friends, we had a hard time as youths; we even
suffered from youth itself as though it were a serious
disease. This is owing to the age in which we were
born—an age of enormous internal decay and dis-
integration which, with all its weakness and even
with the best of its strength, is opposed to the
spirit of youth. Disintegration—that is to say, un-
certaintymis peculiar to this age: nothing stands
on solid ground or on a sound faith. People live
for the morrow, because the day-after-to-morrow is
doubtful. All our road is slippery and dangerous,
while the ice which still bears us has grown un-
conscionably thin: we all feel the mild and grue-
some breath of the thaw-wind-soon, where we are
walking, no one will any longer be able to stand !
>
58.
If this is not an age of decay and of diminishing
vitality, it is at least one of indiscriminate and
arbitrary experimentalising—and it is probable
that out of an excess of abortive experiments there
## p. 56 (#78) ##############################################
56
THE WILL TO POWER.
has grown this general impression, as of decay :
and perhaps decay itself.
59.
Concerning the history of modern gloominess.
The state-nomads (officials, etc. ): "home-
less".
>
The break-up of the family.
The "good man " as a symptom of exhaustion.
Justice as Will to Power (Rearing).
Lewdness and neurosis.
Black music: whither has real music gone?
The anarchist.
Contempt of man, loathing.
Most profound distinction : whether hunger or
superabundance is creative? The first creates the
Ideals of Romanticism.
Northern unnaturalness.
The need of Alcohol : the "need" of the work-
ing classes.
Philosophical Nihilism.
бо.
The slow advance and rise of the middle and
lower classes (including the lower kind of spirit
and body), which was already well under way
before the French Revolution, and would have
made the same progress forward without the latter,
-in short, then, the preponderance of the herd
over all herdsmen and bell-wethers,—-brings in its
train :
(1) Gloominess of spirit (the juxtaposition of
a stoical and a frivolous appearance of happiness,
## p. 57 (#79) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
57
. peculiar to noble cultures, is on the decline; much
suffering is allowed to be seen and heard which
formerly was borne in concealment;
(2) Moral hypocrisy (a way of distinguishing
oneself through morality, but by means of the
values of the herd: pity, solicitude, moderation; and
not by means of those virtues which are recognised
and honoured outside the herd's sphere of power);
(3) A really large amount of sympathy with
both pain and joy (a feeling of pleasure resulting
from being herded together, which is peculiar to
all gregarious animals—"public spirit," "patriot-
ism,” everything, in fact, which is apart from the
individual)
61.
Our age, with its indiscriminate endeavours to
mitigate distress, to honour it, and to wage war in
advance with unpleasant possibilities, is an age of
the poor. Our "rich people"—they are the poorest !
The real purpose of all wealth has been forgotten.
62.
Criticism of modern man :-"the good man," but
corrupted and misled by bad institutions (tyrants
and priests) ;-reason elevated to a position of
authority ;-history is regarded as the surmounting
of errors ;-the future is regarded as progress;
the Christian state (“God of the armies ");-
Christian sexual intercourse (as marriage);—the
realm of “justice” (the cult of "mankind ');-
« freedom. "
The romantic attitudes of the modern man :-
## p. 58 (#80) ##############################################
58
THE WILL TO POWER.
the noble man (Byron, Victor Hugo, George Sand);
-taking the part of the oppressed and the bungled
and the botched : motto for historians and
romancers;—the Stoics of duty ;-disinterestedness
regarded as art and as knowledge ;-altruism as
the most mendacious form of egoism (utilitarianism),
the most sentimental form of egoism.
All this savours of the eighteenth century. But
it had other qualities which were not inherited,
namely, a certain insouciance, cheerfulness, ele-
gance, spiritual clearness. The spiritual tempo
has altered; the pleasure which was begotten by
spiritual refinement and clearness has given room
to the pleasure of colour, harmony, mass, reality,
etc. etc. Sensuality in spiritual things. In short,
it is the eighteenth century of Rousseau.
arolini
63.
Taken all in all, a considerable amount of
humanity has been attained by our men of to-day.
That we do not feel this is in itself a proof of the
fact that we have become so sensitive in regard to
small cases of distress, that we somewhat unjustly
overlook what has been achieved.
Here we must make allowances for the fact
that a great deal of decadence is rife, and that,
through such eyes, our world must appear bad and
wretched. But these eyes have always seen in the
same way, in all ages.
(1) A certain hypersensitiveness, even in moral
feelings.
(2) The quantum of bitterness and gloominess,
from. Yo's know your
## p. 59 (#81) ##############################################
NIHILISM.
59
which pessimism bears with it in its judgments-
both together have helped to bring about the pre-
ponderance of the other and opposite point of view,
that things are not well with our morality.
The fact of credit, of the commerce of the world,
and the means of traffic—are expressions of an
extraordinarily mild trustfulness in men, . . . Το
that may also be added-
(3) The deliverance of science from moral and
religious prejudices : a very good sign, though for
the most part misunderstood.
In my own way, I am attempting a justification
of history,
64.
The second appearance of Buddhism. -Its pre-
cursory signs: the increase of pity. Spiritual
exhaustion. The reduction of all problems to the
question of pleasure and pain. The glory of war
which calls forth a counter-stroke. Just as the
sharp demarcation of nations generates a counter-
movement in the form of the most hearty
Fraternity. ” The fact that it is impossible for
religion to carry on its work any longer with
dogma and fables.
The catastrophe of Nihilism will put an end to
all this Buddhistic culture,
st
65.
That which is most sorely afflicted to-day is
the instinct and will of tradition: all institutions
which owe their origin to this instinct, are opposed
## p.
