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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? I49

being skip. In that ideal the ascetic priest finds
not only his faith. '^ut "alSo his will, his "p bwSr^ Ms
interestr His HgM to existence stands and falls

with that ideaT '"'What wonder that we here run
lip against a terrible opponent (on the supposition,
of course, that we are the opponents of that ideal),
an opponent fighting for his life against those who
repudiate that ideal ! . . . On the other hand, it
is from the outset improbable that such a biased
attitude towards our problem will do him any
particular good ; the ascetic priest himself will
scarcely prove the happiest champion of his own
ideal (on the same principle on which a woman
usually fails when she wishes to champion
" woman ") — let alone proving the most object-
ive critic and judge of the controversy now raised.
We shall therefore — so much is already obvious —
rather have actually to help him to defend himself
properly against ourselves, than we shall have to
fear being too well beaten by him. The idea,
which is the subject of this dispute, is the value
of our life from the standpoint of the ascetic
priests : this life, then (together with the whole of
which it is a part, " Nature," " the world," the
whole sphere of becoming and passing away), is
placed by them in relation to an existence of
quite another character, which it excludes and to
which it is opposed, unless it deny its own self:
ip this case, the case of an ascetic life, life is taken
as a bridge to another existence. The ascetic
treats life as a maze, in which one must walk
backwards till one comes to the place where it
starts ; or he treats it as arj. error which. 'oQ. e may,



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ISO THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

nay must, refute by action : for he demands that
he should be followed ; he enforces, where hecan,
his valuation of existence. What does this mean ?
Such a monstrous valuation is not an exceptional
case, or a curiosity recorded in human history:' It
is one of the most general and persistent facts thaf
there are'. " The rea3ing from the vantage ^f^a—-
distant sFar of the capital letters of our earthly
life, would perchance lead to the conclusion that
/the earth was the especially ascetic planet, a den
of discontented, arrogant, and repulsive creatures,
who never got rid of a deep disgust of themselves,
of the world, of all life, and did themselves as
much hurt as possible out of pleasure in hurt-
ing — presumably their one and only pleasure!
Let us consider how regularly, how universally;
how practically at every single period the ascetic
priest puts in his appearance : he belongs to" no
particular race ; he thrives everywhere ; he grows
out of all classes. Not that he perhaps bred this
valuation by heredity and propagated it — the
contrary is the case. It must be a necessity of
the first order which makes this species, hostile, as
it is, to life, always grow again and always thrive
again. — LtfejS^cSi must certainly have an interest in
the continuance ofsuch alype of s^lfr^ntradifiltorn—
~F6r_3a_asj:etic life^ is a self-contradiction: here
rules resentment without parallel, the resentmenT"
of an insatiate instinct and ambition, thai would
be master, not over some element in life, but over
life itself, over life's deepest, strongest, inioermost
conditions ; here is an attempt made to utilise
power to dam the sources of power; here does



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? I SI

the green eye of jealousy turn even against physio-
logical well-being, especially against the expres-
sion of such well-being, beauty, joy ; while a sense
of pleasure is experienced and sought in abortion,
in decay, in pain, in misfortune, in ugliness, in
voluntary punishment, in the exercising, flagella-
tion, and sacrifice of the self. All this is in the
highest degree paradoxical : we are here con-
fronted with a rift that wills itself to be a rift,
which enjoys itself in this very suffering, and even
Ibecomes more and more certain of itself, more and
more triumphant, in proportion as its, . . Qjfo , pre-
supposition, physiological vitality, decreases. " The
triumph just in the supreme agony " : under this
extravagant emblem did the ascetic ideal fight
from of old ; in this mystery of seduction, in this
picture of rapture and torture, it recognised its
brightest light, its salvation, its final victory.
Crux, nux, lux — it has all these three in one.

12.

Granted that such an incarnate will for contra-
diction and unnaturalness is induced to philosophise ;
on what will it vent its pet caprice? On that
which has been felt with the greatest certainty to
be true, to be real ; it will look for error in those
very places where the life instinct fixes truth with
the greatest positiveness. It will, for instance,
after the example of the ascetics of the Vedanta
Philosophy, re duce matter to an illusion, and
similarly; treat pain, multiplicity, the whole logical
"contrast of^5«? ^? r'arid''' Olject" — errors, msthing-



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152 ■ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

but errors ! To renounce the belief in one's own
ego, to deny to one's self one's^own ''^reality "^^^
what a triumph ! and Here "already we haveXmilCh
higher kind of triumph, which is not merely a
triumph over the senses, over the palpable, mJE~afr~
infliction of violence and cruelty on reason ;'~an&
this ecstasy culminates in the ascetic self-contempt,
the ascetic scorn of one's own "reason making this
decree : there is a domain of truth and of ^ife,, but"
reason is specially excluded therefrom. . . . By
the bye, even in the Kantian idea of " the intel-
legible character of things " there remains a trace
of that schism, so dear to the heart of the ascetic,
that schism which likes to turn reason against
reason ; in fact, " intelligible character " means in
Kant a kind of quality in things of which the
intellect comprehends this much, that for it, the
intellect, it is absolutely incomprehensible. After
all, let us, in our character of knowers, not be
ungrateful towards such determined reversals of
the ordinary perspectives and values, with which
the mind had for too long raged against itself
with an apparently futile sacrilege ! In the same
way the very seeing of another vista, the"vBry-^
wishing to see another vista, is no little training
and preparation of the intellect for its eternal
" Objectivity " — objectivity being understood not
as " contemplation without interest " (for that is
inconceivable and nonsensical), but as the ability
to have the pros and cons in one's fpwer a. ndJio
switch them on and oif, so- as to get, to knovv_how
to utilise, for the advancement of knowledge, the "
difference in the perspective and in the emolional



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 153

inte rpretati ons. ,^ But let us, forsooth, my philo-
sophic colleagues, henceforward guard ourselves
more carefully against this mythology of danger-
ous ancient ideas, which has set up a " pure, will-
less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge " ; let
us guard ourselves from the tentacles of such
contradictory ideas as "' pure reason," "absolute
spirituality,""" knowledge - in - itself" : — in these
theorres^" an "eye that cannot be thought of is
required to think, an eye which ex hypothesi has
no direction at all, an eye in which the active and
interpreting functions are cramped, are absent ;
those functions, I say, by means of which " abstract"
seeing first became seeing something ; in these
theories consequently the absurd and the nonsen-
sical is always demanded of the eye. There is
only a seeing from a perspective, only a " know-
ing '' from a perspective, and the more emotions
we express over a thing, the more eyes, different
eyes, we train on the same thing, the more com-
plete will be our " idea " of that thing, our " objec-
tivity. " But the elimination of the will altogether,
the switching off of the emotions all and sundry,
granted that we could do so, what ! would not
that be called intellectual castration ?

13-

But let us turn back. Such a self-contradic-
tion, as apparently manifests itself among the
ascetics, " Life turned against Life," is — this much
is absolutely obvious — from the physiological and
not now from the psychological standpoint, simply



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154 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

nonsense. It can only be an apparent cont f ^-
diction ; it must be a kind of provisional ex-
pression, an explanation, a formula, an adjustment,
a psychological misunderstanding of something,
whose real nature could not be understQQd_i2Li_
long time, and whose real essence covXd. not be
described; a mere word jamnied into— aaI3l5]"
gap of human knowledge. To put briefly the
facts against its being real : the ascetic ideal springs
from the prophylactic and self -preservative instincts
which mark^^decadent life, which seeks by, every^
means in its power to maintain its position and
>fight for its existence; it points to "a partiat'
physiological depression and exhaustion, against
which the most profound and intact life-instincts
fight ceaselessly with new weapons and dis-
coveries. The ascetic ideal is such a weapon :
its position is consequentlv_^xact! y the re verse
of that which the worshippers of the ideal
imagine — life struggles in it and through ~tt~WTth-
death and against death ; the ascetic"" ideal
is a dodge for the preservation of life. An
important fact is brought out in the extent to
which, as history teaches, this ideal, coijld^rule
and exercise power over man, especially in al!
those places where the civilisation and taming
of man was completed : that fact is, the diseased
state of man up to the present, at any rate, of
the man who has been tamed, the physiological
struggle of man with death (more precisely, with
the disgust with life, with exhaustion, with the
wish for the " end "). The ascetic priest is the
incarnate wish for an existence of another kind.



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? I 55

an existence on another plane, — he is, in fact, the
highest point of this wish, its official ecstasy and
passion : but it is the vety power of this wish
which is the fetter that binds him here ; it is
just that which makes him into a tool that must
labour to create more favourable conditions for
earthly existence, for existence on the human
plane — it is with this very power that he keeps
the whole" herd of failures, distortions, abortions,
unfortunates, sufferers from tlietnselves of every
kind, fast to existence, while he as the herdsnian
goes instinctively on in front. You understand
me already : this ascetic priest, this apparent
enemy of life, ^ thi5 jjenier-r^he . actually belongs,
to the really great conservative and affirmative
forces of life. . . | What does it come from, this
diseased state? For man is more diseased, more
uncertain, more changeable, more unstable than
any other animal, there is no doubt of it — he is
the diseased animal : what does it spring from ?
Certainly he has also dared, innovated, braved
more, challenged fate more than all the other
animals put together ; he, the great experimenter
with himself, the unsatisfied, the insatiate, who
struggles for the supreme mastery with beast,
Nature, and gods, he, the as yet ever uncompelled,
the ever future, who finds no more any rest from
his own aggressive strength, goaded inexorably
on by the spur of the future dug into the flesh
of the present : — how should not so brave and
rich an animal also be the most endangered,
the animal with the longest and deepest sickness
among all sick animals ? . . . Man is sick of it, oft



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156 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

enough there are whole epidemics of this satiety
(as about i 348, the time of the Dance of Death) :
but even this very nausea, this tiredness, this
disgust with himself, all this is discharged from
him with such force that it is immediately made
into a new fetter. His " nay," which he utters
to life, brings to light as though by magic an
abundance of graceful " yeas " ; even when he
wounds himself, this master of destruction, of self-
destruction, it is subsequently the wound itself
that forces him to live.

14.

The more normal is this sickliness in man —
and we cannot dispute this normality— the higher
honour should be paid to the rare cases of
psychical and physical powerfulness, the wind-
falls of humanity, and the more strictly should
the sound be guarded from that worst of air, the
air of the sick-room. Is that done? \The sick
are the greatest danger for the healthy ; it is not
from the strongest that harm comes to the strong,
but from the weakest. I Is that known ? Broadly
considered, it is not for a minute the fear of man,
whose diminution should be wished for ; for this
fear forces the strong to be strong, to be at times
terrible — it preserves in its integrity the sound
type of man. ( What is to be feared, what does
work with a fatality found in no other fate, is not
the great fear of, but the great nausea with, man ;
and equally so the great pity for man^ Sup-
posing that both these things were one day to



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 157

espouse each other, then inevitably the maximum
of monstrousness would immediately come into
the world — the " last will " of man, his will for
nothingness, Nihilism, ^d. in sooth, the way
is well paved thereto. iHe who not only has
his nose to smell with, but also has eyes and
ears, he sniffs almost wherever he goes to-day
an air something like that of a mad-house,
the air of a hospital — 1 am speaking, as stands
to reason, of the cultured areas of mankind, of
every kind of " Europe" that there is in fact in
the world. | [The sick are the great danger of
man, not the evil, not the " beasts of prey. "^ They
who are from the outset botched, oppressed,
broken, those are they, the weakest are they, who
most undermine the life beneath the feet of
man, who instil the most dangerous venom and
scepticism into our trust in life, in man, in our-
selvejjj Where shall we escape from it, from that
covert look (from which we carry away a deep
sadness), from that averted look of him who is
misborn from the beginning, that look which
betrays what such a man says to himself — that
look which is a groan ? " Would that I were
something else," so groans this look, "but there
is no hope. \1 am what I am : how could I ge^
away from myself? And, verily — / am sick of,
myself! " On such a soil of self-contempt, aj
veritable swamp soil, grows that weed, that
poisonous growth, and all so tiny, so hidden, so,
ignoble, so sugary; ]] Here teem the worms of
revenge and vindictiveness ; here the air reeks
of things secret and unmentionable ; here is ever



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IS8 , THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

spun the net of the most malignant conspiracy
— the conspiracy of the sufferers against the sound
and the victorious; here is the sight of the
victorious hated. J And what lying so as not to
acknowledge this hate as hate ! What a show
of big words and attitudes, what an art of
" righteous " calumniation ! These abortions !
what a noble eloquence gushes from their lips!
Pwhat an amount of sugary, slimy, humble sub-
mission oozes in their eyes ! What do they
really want ? At any rate to represent righteous-
ness, love, wisdom, superiority, that is the
ambition of these " lowest ones," these sick gnesjj
And how clever does such an arnbition make
them! You cannot, in fact, but admire the
counterfeiter dexterity with which the stamp of
virtue, even the ring, the golden ring of virtue,
is here imitated. They have taken a lease of
virtue absolutely for themselves, have these
weaklings and wretched invalids, there is no
doubt of it ; " We alone are the good, the righteous^^
so do they speak^' we alone are the homines
bona voluntatis'. ' pThey stalk about in our midst
as living reproaches, as warnings to us — as
though health, fitness, strength, pride, the sensa-
tion of power, were really vicious things in them-
selves, for which one would have some day to do
penance, bitter penance. Oh, how they themselves
are ready in their hearts to exact penance, how
they thirst after being hangmen I j

I Among them is an abundance of revengeful
ones disguised as judges, who ever mouth the
word righteousness like a venomous spittle — with



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 59

mouth, I say, always pursed, always ready to spit
at everything, which does not wear a discontented
look, but is of good cheer as it goes on its wa y. \
Among them, again, is that most loathsome species
of the vain, the lying abortions, who make a point
of representing " beautiful souls," and perchance
of bringing to the market as " purity of heart "
their distorted sensualism swathed in verses and -
other bandages ; the species of " self-comforters "
and masturbators of their own souls. iThe sick -
man's will to represent some form or other of
s uperiority, h i s i tia tit ieiribr crooked-paths-whiich
lead to a' tj^anny over the healthy— wEere^ari it
not be found, thfs' will to_j)qwer of Xlie_very
weakest ? I The sick woman especially : no one
"SBrpassSSTier in refinements for ruling, oppressing,
tyrannising. The sick woman, moreover, spares
nothing living, nothing dead ; she grubs up again
the most buried things (the Bogos say, " Woman
is a hyena "). Look into the background of every
family, of every body, of every community : every-
where the fight of the sick against the healthy —
a silent fight for the most part with minute poisoned
powfiers, with pin-pricks, with spiteful grimaces of
patience, but also at times with that diseased
Pharisaism of pure pantomime, which plays for
choice the r61e of " righteous indignation. " Right
into the hallowed chambers of knowledge can it
make itself heard, can this hoarse yelping of sick
hounds, this rabid lying and frenzy of such " noble "
Pharisees (I remind readers, who have ears, once
more of that Berlin apostle of revenge, Eugen
Duhring, who makes the most disreputable and



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l6o THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

revolting use in all present-day Germany of moral
refuse ; DUhring, the paramount moral blusterer
that there is to-day, even among his own kidney,
the Anti-Semites). TThey are all men of , resent-
ment, are these physiological distortions and
worm-riddled objects, a whole quiverinig kingd^^
of burrowing revenge, indefatigable and insatiable"
in its outbursts against the happy, and equallj^sq
in disguises for revenge, in pretexts for revenge^
when will they really reach their final, fondest,
most sublime triumph of revenge ? \ At that time,
doubtless, when they succeed in pushing their own
misery, in fact, all misery, inio the consciousmss pi
the happy ; so that the latter begin one day to be
ashamed of their happiness, and perchance say to
themselves when they meet, " It is a shame to be
happy ! there is too much misery . '". . . But there
could not possibly be a greater and more fatal
misunderstanding than that of the happy, the fit,
the strong in body and soul, beginning in this way
to doubt their right to happiness. Away with
this " perverse world " ! Away with this shameful
soddenness of sentiment ! Preventing the sick
making the healthy sick — for that is what such a
soddenness comes to — this ought to be our supreme
object in the world — but for this it is above all
essential that the healthy should remain separated
from the sick, that they should even guard them-
selves from the look of the sick, that they should
not even associate with the sick. Or may it,
perchance, be their mission to be nurses or doctors ?
But they could not mistake and disown their
mission more grossly-|-the higher must not



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? l6l

degrade itself to be the tool of the lower, the
pathos of distance must to all eternity keep
their missions also separateJ The right of the
happy to existence, the right of bells with a full
tone over the discordant cracked bells, is verily
a thousand times greater : they alone are the
sureties of the future, they alone are bound to
man's future. What they can, what they must do,
that can the sick never do, should never do ! but
if they are to be enabled to do what only they must
do, how can they possibly be free to play the doctor,
the comforter, the " Saviour " of the sick ? . . . And
therefore good air ! good air ! and away, at any
rate, from the neighbourhood of all the madhouses
and hospitals of civilisation ! And therefore good
company, our own company, or solitude, if it must
be so ! but away, at any rate, from the evil fumes
of internal corruption and the secret worm-eat|n
state of the sick ! that, forsooth, my friends,(we
may defend ourselves, at any rate for still a time,
against the two worst plagues that could have
been reserved for us — against the great nausea
with man ! against the great pity for man ! \

IS-

If you have understood in all their depths — and
I demand that you should grasp them profoundly
and understand them profoundly — the reasons for
the impossibility of its being the business of the
healthy to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy,
it follows that you have grasped this further
necessity — the necessity of doctors and nurses
L



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1 62 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

who themselves are sick. And now we have and
hold with both our hands the essence of the
ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be accepted
by us as the predestined saviour, herdsman, and
champion of the sick herd: thereby do we first
understand his awful historic mission. The lord-
ship over sufferers is his kingdom, to that points
his instinct, in that he finds his own special art,
his master-skill, his kind of happiness. He must
himself be sick, he must be kith and kin to the
sick and the abortions so as to understand them,
so as to arrive at an understanding with them ;
but he must also be strong, even more master of
himself than of others, impregnable, forsooth, in his
will for power, so as to acquire the trust and the
awe of the weak, so that he can be their hold,
bulwark, prop, compulsion, overseer, tyrant, god.
He has to protect them, protect his hsxAs— against
whom ? Against the healthy, doubtless also
against the envy towards the healthy. He must
be the natural adversary and scorner of every rough,
stormy, reinless, hard, violently-predatory health
and power. The priest is the first form of the
more delicate animal that scorns more easily than
it hates. He will not be spared the waging of war
with the beasts of prey, a war of guile (of " spirit ")
rather than of force, as is self-evident — he will in
certain cases find it necessary to conjure up out of
himself, or at any rate to represent practically a
new type of the beast of prey — a new animal
monstrosity in which the polar bear, the supple,
cold, crouching panther, and, not least important,
the fox, are joined together in a trinity as fascinating



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 163

as it is fearsome. If necessity exacts it, then will
he come on the scene with bearish seriousness,
venerable, wise, cold, full of treacherous superiority,
as the herald and mouthpiece of mysterious powers,
sometimes going among even the other kind of
beasts of prey, determined as he is to sow on their
soil, wherever he can, suffering, discord, self-contra-
diction, and only too sure of his art, always to be
lord of sufferers at all times. He brings with him,
doubtless, salve and balsam ; but before he can
play the physician he must first wound ; so, while
he soothes the pain which the wound makes, he at
the same time poisons the wound. (Well versed is
he in this above all things, is this wizard and wild
beast tamer, in whose vicinity everything healthy
must needs become ill, and everything ill must
needs become tam^ He protects, in sooth, his
sick herd well enough, does this strange herdsman ;
he protects them also against themselves, against
the sparks (even in the centre of the herd) of
wickedness, knavery, malice, and all the other ills
that the plaguey and the sick are heir to ; he fights
with cunning, hardness, and stealth against anarchy
and against the ever imminent break-up inside
the herd, where resentment, that most dangerous
brastihg-stuff and explosive, ever accumulates and
accumulates. Getting rid of this blasting-stuff in
such a way that it does not blow up the herd and
the herdsman, that is his real feat, his supreme
utility ; if, you ^wish to comprise in the sh ortest
formula the value of the priestl;>Mife, it would be
correct to say the priest Tslhie diverter of the course
of resentment. Every sufferer," in fa'cf,' searches



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l64 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

instinctively for a cause of his suffering ; to put it
more exactly, a doer, — to put it still more precisely,
a sentient responsible dber, — in brief, something
living, on which, either actually or in effigie, he can
on any pretext vent his emotions. For the venting
of emotions is the sufferer's greatest attempt at
alleviation, that is to say, stupefaction, his mechanic-
ally desired narcotic against pain of any kind.
It is in this phenomenon alone that is found,
according to my judgment, the real physiological
cause of resentment, revenge, and their family is to
be found— ;-that is, in a . demand for i! &s. -deadmiag__
of pain through emotion : this cause is generally, but
in my view very erroneously, looked for in the
defensive parry of a bare protective principle of
reaction, of a " reflex movement " in the case of
any sudden hurt and danger, after the manner
that a decapitated frog still moves in order to get
away from a corrosive acid. But the difference
is fundamental. In one case the object is to
prevent being hurt any more ; in the other case
the object is to deaden a racking, insidious, nearly
unbearable pain by a more violent emotion of
any kind whatsoever, and at any rate for the time
being to drive it out of the consciousness — for
this purpose an emotion is needed, as wild
an emotion as possible, and to excite that
emotion some excuse or other is needed. " It
must be somebody's fault that I feel bad" — this
kind of reasoning is peculiar to all invalids, and
is but the more pronounced, the more ignorant
they remain of the real cause of their feeling bad,
the physiological cause (the cause may lie in a



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? l6S

disease of the nervus sympathicus, or in an ex-
cessive secretion of bile, or in a want of sulphate
and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure
in the bowels which stops the circulation of the
blood, or in degeneration of the ovaries, and so
forth). Ail sufferers have an awful resourcefulness
and ingenuity in finding excuses for painful
emotions ; they even enjoy their jealousy, their
broodings over base actions and apparent injuries,
they burrow through the intestines of their past
and present in their search for obscure mysteries,
wherein they will be at liberty to wallow in a
torturing suspicion and get drunk on the venom
of their own malice — they tear open the oldest
wounds, they make themselves bleed from the
scars which have long been healed, they make
evil-doers out of friends, wife, child, and every-
thing which is nearest to them. " I suffer : it
must be somebody's fault" — so thinks every sick
'sheep. But his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says
to him, " Quite so, my sheep, it must be the
fault of some one ; but thou thyself art that some
one, it is all the fault of thyself alone — it is the
foMtt of thyself alone against thyself" : that is. bold
enough, false enough, but one thing is at least
attained ; thereby, as I have said, the course of
resentment is — diverted.

1 6.

You can see now what the remedial instinct of
life has at least tried to effect, according to my
conception, through the ascetic priest, and the



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1 66 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

purpose for which he had to employ a temporary
, tyranny of such paradoxical and anomalous ideas
as " guilt," " sin," " sinfulness," " corruption,"
I " damnation. " What was done was to make the
; sick harmless up to a certain point, to destroy the
'. incurable by means of themselves, to turn the
'•milder cases severely on to themselves, to give
t their resentment a backward direction ("man
needs but one thing"), and to exploit similarly
the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view to
self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is
obvious that there can be no question at all in
the case of a " medication " of this kind, a mere
emotional medication, of any real healing of the
sick in the physiological sense ; it cannot even
for a moment be asserted that in this connection
the instinct of life has taken healing as its goal
and purpose. tOn the one hand, a kind of con-
gestion and organisation of the sick (the word
" Church" is the most popular name for it)jj on the
other, a kind of provisional safeguarding of the
comparatively healthy, the more perfect specimens,
the cleavage of a rift between healthy and sick —
for a long time that was all ! and it was much ! it
was very much !

I am proceeding, as you see, in this essay,
from an hypothesis which, as far as such readers
as I want are concerned, does not require to be
proved ; the hypothesis that " sinfulness " in man
is not an actual fact, but rather merely the inter-
pretation of a fact, of a physiological discomfort,
— a discomfort seen through a moral religious
perspective which is no longer binding upon us.



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 167

The fact, therefore, that any one feels " guilty,"
" sinful," is certainly not yet any proof that he
is right in feeling so, any more than any one is
healthy simply because he feels healthy Re-
member the celebrated witch-ordeals : in those
days the most acute and humane judges had no
doubt but that in these cases they were confronted
with guilt, — the " witches " themselves had no doubt
on the point, — and yet the guilt was lacking. Let
me elaborate this hypothesis : I do not for a
minute accept the very " pain in the soul " as a
real fact, but only as an explanation (a casual
explanation) of facts that could not hitherto be
precisely formulated; I regard it therefore as
something as yet absolutely in the air and devoid
of scientific cogency — ^just a nice fat word in the
place of a lean note of interrogation. When any
one fails to get rid of his " pain in the soul," the
cause is, speaking crudely, to be found not in his
" soul " but more probably in his stomach (speaking
crudely, I repeat, but by no means wishing there-
by that you should listen to me or understand me
in a crude spirit). A strong and well-constituted
man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds
all included) just as he digests his meats, even
when he has some tough morsels to swallow.
If
he fails to " relieve himself" of an experience,
this kind of indigestion is quite as much physio-
logical as the other indigestion — and indeed, in
more ways than one, simply one of the results of
the other. You can adopt such a theory, and yet
entre nous be nevertheless the strongest opponent
of all materialism.



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1 68 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

17.

But is he really 2. physician, this ascetic priest?
We already understand why we are scarcely
allowed to call him a physician, however much
he likes to feel a " saviour " and let himself be
worshipped as a saviour. * It is only the actual
suffering, the discomfort of the sufferer, which he
combats, not its cause, not the actual state of sick-
ness — this needs must constitute our most radical
objection to priestly medication. But just once
put yourself into that point of view, of which the
priests have a monopoly, you will find it hard to
exhaust your amazement, at what from that stand-
point he has completely seen, sought, and found.
The mitigation of suffering, every kind of " con-
soling '' — all this manifests itself as his very genius :
with what ingenuity has he interpreted his mission
of consoler, with what aplomb and audacity has
he chosen weapons necessary for the part. Christi-
anity in particular should be dubbed a great
treasure-chamber of ingenious consolations, — such
a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs
has it accumulated within itself; so many of the
most dangerous and daring expedients has it
hazarded ; with such subtlety, refinement, Oriental
refinement, has it divined what emotional stimu-
lants can conquer, at any rate for a time, the deep
depression, the leaden fatigue, the black melan-
choly of physiological cripples — for, speaking

* In the German text " Heiland. " This has the double
meaning of " healer " and " saviour. " — H. B. S.



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 69

generally, all religions are mainly concerned with
fighting a certain fatigue and heaviness that has
infected everything. You can regard it as prima
facie probable that in certain places in the world
there was almost bound to prevail from time to
time among large masses of the population a
sense of physiological depression, which, however,
owing to their lack of physiological knowledge,
did not appear to their consciousness as such,
so that consequently its " cause " and its cure
can only be sought and essayed in the science
of moral psychology (this, in fact, is my most
general formula for what is generally called a
"religion"^ Such a feeling of depression can
have the most diverse origins ; it may be the
result of the crossing of too heterogeneous races
(or of classes — genealogical and racial differences
are also brought out in the classes : the European
" Weltschmerz," the " Pessimism " of the nineteenth
century, is really the result of an absurd and
sudden class-mixture) ; it may be brought about
by a mistaken emigration — a race falling into
a climate for which its power of adaptation is
insufficient (the case of the Indians in India) ; it
may be the effect of old age and fatigue (the
Parisian pessimism from 1850 onwards); it may
be a wrong diet (the alcoholism of the Middle
Ages, the nonsense of vegetarianism — which,
however, have in their favour the authority of Sir
Christopher in Shakespeare) ; it may be blood-
deterioration, malaria, syphilis, and the like
(German depression after the Thirty Years' War,
which infected half Germany with evil diseases,



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I70 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

and thereby paved the way for German servility,
for German pusillanimity). In such a case there
is invariably recourse to a war on a grand scale
with the feeling of depression ; let us inform our-
selves briefly on its most important practices and
phases (I leave on one side, as stands to reason,
the actual philosophic war against the feeling of
depression which is usually simultaneous — it is
interesting enough, but too absurd, too practically
negligible, too full of cobwebs, too much of a
hole-and-corner affair, especially when pain is
proved to be a mistake, on the naif hypothesis
that pain must needs vanish when the mistake
underlying it is recognised — but behold ! it does
anything but vanish . . . ). That dominant de-
pression is primarily fought by weapons which
reduce the consciousness of life itself to the
lowest degree. Wherever possible, no more wishes,
no more wants ; shun everything which produces
emotion, which produces " blood " (eating no salt,
the fakir hygiene) ; no love ; no hate ; equanimity ;
no revenge ; no getting rich ; no work ; begging ;
as far as possible, no woman, or as little woman
as possible ; as far as the intellect is concerned,
Pascal's principle, " il faut s'abetir. " To put the
result in ethical and psychological language, " self-
annihilation," " sanctification " ; to put it in physio-
logical language, " hypnotism " — the attempt to
find some approximate human equivalent for what
hibernation is for certain animals, for what cestiva-
tion is for many tropical plants, a minimum of
assimilation and metabolism in which life just
manages to subsist without really coming into the



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEAL,S ? 171

consciousness. An amazing amount of human
energy has been devoted to this object — perhaps
uselessly? There cannot be the slightest doubt
but that such sportsmen of " saintliness," in whom
at times nearly every nation has abounded, have
really found a genuine relief from that which
they have combated with such a rigorous training
— in countless cases they really escaped by the
help of their system of hypnotism away from deep
physiological depression ; their method is conse-
quently counted among the most universal ethno-
logical facts. Similarly it is improper to consider
such a plan for starving the physical element and
the desires, as in itself a symptom of insanity (as a
clumsy species of roast-beef-eating " freethinkers "
and Sir Christophers are fain to do) ; all the more
certain is it that their method can and does pave
the way to all kinds of mental disturbances, for
instance, " inner lights " (as far as the case of
the Hesychasts of Mount Athos), auditory and
visual hallucinations, voluptuous ecstasies and
effervescences of sensualism (the history of St.
Theresa). The explanation of such events given
by the victims is always the acme of fanatical
falsehood ; this is self-evident. Note well, however,
the tone of implicit gratitude that rings in the
very will for an explanation of such a character.
The supreme state, salvation itself, that. £nal. goal
of uriiversal hypnosis and peace, is always regarded
by them as the mystery of mysteries, which even
the most supreme symbols are inadequate to ex-
press; it is regarded as an entry arid homecsining
to the essence of things, as a liberation from all



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172 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

illusions, as " knowledge," as " truth," as " heing" as
t an escape from every end, every wish, every action,
i as something even beyond Good and Evil.
I " Good and Evil," quoth the Buddhists, " both are
fetters. The perfect man is master of them both. "
" The done and the undone," quoth the disciple
of the Vedanta, " do him no hurt ; the good and
the evil he shakes from off him, sage that he is;
his kingdom suffers no more from any act ; good
and evil, he goes beyond them both. " — An ab-
solutely Indian conception, as much Brahmanist
as Buddhist. Neither in the Indian nor in the
Christian doctrine is this " Redemption " regarded
as attainable by means of virtue and moral improve-
ment, however high they may place the value of
the hypnotic efficiency of virtue : keep clear on
this point — indeed it simply corresponds with the
facts. The fact that they remained irue on this
point is perhaps to be regarded as the best speci-
men of realism in the three great religions, abso-
lutely soaked as they are with morality, with this
one exception. " For those who know, there is
no duty. " " Redemption is not attained by the
acquisition of virtues ; for redemption consists
in being one with Brahman, who is incapable of
acquiring any perfection ; and equally little does
it consist in the giving up of faults, for the
Brahman, unity with whom is what constitutes
redemption, is eternally pure" (these passages
are from the Commentaries of the Cankara, quoted
from the first real European expert of the Indian
philosophy, my friend Paul Deussen). We wish,
therefore, to pay honour to the idea of " redemp-



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 173

tion " in the great religions, but it is somewhat
hard to remain serious in view of the appreciation
meted out to the deep sleep by these exhausted
pessimists who are too tired even to dream — to
the deep sleep considered, that is, as already a
fusing into Brahman, as the attainment of tn^
unio mystica with God. " When he has com-
pletely gone to sleep," says on this point the
oldest and most venerable " script," " and come to
perfect rest, so that he sees no more any vision,
then, oh dear one, is he united with Being, he has
entered into his own self — encircled by the Self
with its absolute knowledge, he has no more any
consciousness of that which is without or of that
which is within. Day and night cross not these
bridges, nor age, nor death, nor suffering, nor
good deeds, nor evil deeds. " " In deep sleep,"
say similarly the believers in this deepest of the
three great religions, " does the soul lift itself from
out this body of ours, enters the supreme light and
stands out therein in its true shape : therein is it
the supreme spirit itself, which travels about, while
it jests and plays and enjoys itself, whether with
women, or chariots, or friends ; there do its thoughts
turn no more back to this appanage of a body, to
which the ' prana ' (the vital breath) is harnessed
like a beast of burden to the cart. " None the
less we will take care to realise (as we did when
discussing " redemption ") that in spite of all its
pomps of Oriental extravagance this simply ex-
presses the same criticism on life as did the clear,
cold, Greekly cold, but yet suffering Epicurus.
jThe hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peace



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THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

of deepest sleep, anaesthesia in short — that is what
passes with the sufferers and the absolutely de-
pressed for, forsooth, their suprenne good, their
value of values ; that is what must be treasured
by them as something positive, be felt by them as
the essence of the Positive (according to the same
logic of the feelings, nothingness is in all pessi-
mistic religions called God). j>

Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and
susceptibility to pain, which presupposes some-
what rare powers, especially courage, contempt of
opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than
another and certainly easier training which is
tried against states of depression. I mean
mechanical activity. It is indisputable that a
suffering existence can be thereby considerably
alleviated. This fact is called to-day by the
somewhat ignoble title of the " Blessing of work. "
The alleviation consists in the attention of the

jTh

sufferer being absol utely diverted from suffe ring, in
' the incessant monopoly of the consciousness by

action, so t hat~"conseq uently there is little Toom ^
iieftrfbr suffering — for narro w is it, this chamb er of^
"h uman conscTousness ! | Mechanical__actiYily_aod

its corollaries, such as~absolute regularityjpunctili-

ous iinreasoning obedience^jthe _chroiiic^routijie^
life, ^Ee^Tomplete occupation of time,_acertain
iTBerty to be ijmpersonal, nay, a jrainingjn " fm-"
pefsorialitYj^ jelfjiorgetfulness. " inc uria sui " — with
~whaLt thoroughness and expert subtlety have all



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 17S

these methods been exploited by the ascetic priest
in his war with pain !

When he has to tackle sufferers of the lower
orders, slaves, or prisoners (or women, who for the
most part are a compound of labour-slave and
prisoner), all he has to do is to juggle a little
with the names, and to rechristen, so as to make
them see henceforth a benefit, a comparative
happiness, in objects which they hated — the slave's
discontent with his lot was at any rate not invented
by the priests. An even more popular means of
fighting depression is the ordaining of a little joy,
which is easily accessible and can be made into a
rule; this medication is frequently used in con-
junction with the former ones. The most frequent]
form in vjiich joy is prescribed as a cure is the
joy in producing joy (such as doing good, giving
presents, alleviating, helping, exhorting, comforting,
praising, treating with distinction) ; together with
the prescription of " love your neighbo ur. " | The
ascetic priest prescribes, though in the most
cautious doses, what is practically a stimulation
of the strongest and most life-assertive impulse —
the Will for Power. The happiness involved in
the " smallest superiority " which is the con-
comitant of all benefiting, helping, extolling,
making one's self useful, is the most ample consola-
tion, of which, if they are well-advised, physio-
logical distortions avail themselves : in other
cases they hurt each other, and naturally in obedi-
ence to the same radical instinct. An investiga-
tion of the origin of Christianity in the Roman
world shows that co-operative unions for poverty,



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176 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

sickness, and burial sprang up in the lowest stratum
of contemporary society, amid which the chief
antidote against depression, the little joy experi-
enced in mutual benefits, was deliberately fostered.
Perchance this was then a novelty, a real dis-
covery ? This conjuring up of the will for co-opera-
tion, for family organisation, for communal life,
for " Ccenacula" necessarily brought the Will
for Power, which had been already infinitesimally
stimulated, to a new and much fuller manifesta-
tion. The herd organisation is a genuine advance
and triumph in the fight with depression. With
the growth of the community there matures even
to individuals a new interest, which often enough
takes him out of the more personal element in his
discontent, his aversion to himself, the ," despectus
sui" of Geulincx. f^U sick and diseased people
strive instinctively after a herd-organisation, out
of a desire to shake off their sense of oppressive
discomfort and weakness ; the ascetic priest
divines this instinct and promotes it ; wherever a
herd exists it is the instinct of weakness which
has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the
priests /which has organised it, for, mark this: by
an equally natural necessity the strong strive as
much for isolation as the weak for union : when
the former bind themselves it is only with a view
to an aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction
of their Will for Power, much against the wishes
of their individual consciences ; the latter, on the
contrary, range themselves together with positive
delight in such a muster — their instincts are as
much gratified thereby as the instincts of the



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 77

"born master" (that is, the solitary beast-of-prey
species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the
quick by organisatio n. | There is always lurking
beneath every oligarchy — such is the universal
lesson of history — the desire for tyranny. Every
oligarchy is continually quivering with the tension
of the effort required by each individual to keep
mastering this desire. (Such, e. g. , was the Greek ;
Plato shows it in a hundred places, Plato, who
knew his contemporaries — and himself^

19.

I The methods employed by the ascetic priest,
which we have already learnt to know — stifling
of all vitality, mechanical energy, the little joy,
and especially the method of " love your neigh-
bour" herd-organisation, the awaking of the
communal consciousness of power, to such a pitch
that the individual's disgust with himself becomes
eclipsed by his delight in the thriving of the
community — these are, according to modern
standards, the " innocent " methods employed in
the fight with depressi on ;^ let us turn now to
the more interesting topic of the '' guilty "
methods. The guilty methods spell one thing :
to produce emotional excess — which is used as the
most efficacious anaesthetic against their depress-
ing state of protracted pain ; this is why priestly
ingenuity has proved quite inexhaustible in
thinking out this one question : " By what means
can you produce an emotional excess ? " This
sounds harsh : it is manifest that it would sound
M



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178 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

nicer and would grate on one's ears less, if I
were to say, forsooth : " The ascetic priest made
use at all times of the enthusiasm contained in
all strong emotions. " But what is the good of
still soothing the delicate ears of our modern
effeminates ? What is the good on our side of
budging one single inch before their verbal
Pecksniffianism. For us psychologists to do that
would be at once practical Pecksniffianism, apart
from the fact of its nauseating us. The good
taste (others might say, the righteousness) of a
psychologist nowadays consists, if at all, in com-
bating the shamefully moralised language with
which all modern judgments on men and things
are smeared. For, do not deceive yourself: what
constitutes the chief characteristic of modern souls
and of modern books is not the lying, but the
innocence which is part and parcel of their intel-
lectual dishonesty. The inevitable running up
against this "innocence" everywhere constitutes
the most distasteful feature of the somewhat
dangerous business which a modern psychologist
has to undertake: it is a part of our great
danger — it is a road which perhaps leads us
straight to the great nausea — I know quite well
the purpose which all modern books will and can
serve (granted that they last, which I am not
afraid of, and granted equally that there is to
be at some future day a generation with a more
rigid, more severe, and healthier taste) — the
function which all modernity generally will serve
with posterity: that of an emetic, — and this by
reason of its moral sugariness and falsity, its



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 79

ingrained feminism, which it is pleased to call
" Idealism," and at any rate believes to be
idealism. Our cultured men of to-day, our
" good " men, do not lie — that is true ; but it does
not redound to their honour ! The real lie, the
genuine, determined, " honest " lie (on whose
value you can listen to Plato) would prove too
tough and strong an article for them by a long
way ; it would be asking them to do what people
have been forbidden to ask them to do, to open
their eyes to their own selves, and to learn to
distinguish between " true " and " false " in their
own selves. The dishonest lie alone suits them :
everything which feels a good man is perfectly
incapable of any other attitude to anything than
that of a dishonourable liar, an absolute liar, but
none the less an innocent liar, a blue-eyed liar,
a virtuous liar. These " good men," they are
all now tainted with morality through and
through, and as far as honour is concerned they
are disgraced and corrupted for all eternity.
Which of them could stand a further truth '■ about
man"? or, put more tangibly, which of them
could put up with a true biography? One or
two instances : Lord Byron composed a most
personal autobiography, but Thomas Moore was
" too good " for it ; he burnt his friend's papers.
Dr. Gwinner, Schopenhauer's executor, is said
to have done the same ; for Schopenhauer as well
wrote much about himself, and perhaps also
«(g"amj^ himself (ei? eavrov). The virtuous Ameri-
can Thayer, Beethoven's biographer, suddenly
stopped his work : he had come to a certain



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l8o THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

point in that honourable and simple life, and
could stand it no longer. Moral : What sensible
man nowadays writes one honest word about
himself? He must already belong to the Order
of Holy Foolhardiness. We are promised an
autobiography of Richard Wagner ; who doubts
but that it would be a clever autobiography?
Think, forsooth, of the grotesque horror which
the Catholic priest Janssen aroused in Germany
with his inconceivably square and harmless
pictures of the German Reformation ; what
wouldn't people do if some real psychologist
were to tell us about a genuine Luther, tell us,
not with the moralist simplicity of a country
priest or the sweet and cautious modesty of a
Protestant historian, but say with the fearlessness
of a Taine, that springs from force of character
and not from a prudent toleration of force. (The
Germans, by the bye, have already produced the
classic specimen of this toleration — they may
well be allowed to reckon him as one of their
own, in Leopold Ranke, that bom classical
advocate of every causa fortior, that cleverest
of all the clever opportunists. )

20.

But you will soon understand me. — Putting it
shortly, t here is reason enough, is t here n ot, for
JUS___ps. yd^o^sts nowadays never getting^~a^^

from a, certain . . . miatrust of out own selves^^

Probably even we ourselves are still " too good "
for our ^ work • probably, whatever contempt we



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? (l8 1

feel for this popular craze^ for morality, we
7wsRlves_jfe_perhaps none the iess-its victims^
v rsy\~3. nd slay ggj_. prQbaMy_Jt_jnfects_even us.
Of what was that diplomat warning us, when
he said to his colleagues : " Let us especially mis-
trust our first impulses, gentlemen ! tkey are
almost always gvod" t So should nowadays every
psychologist talk to his colleagues. And thus
we get back to our problem, which in point of
fact does require from us a certain severity, a
certain mistrust especially against " first impulses. "
The ascetic ideal in the__servj££. — qf—p-mfected
^emotio nal excess T- — hewho remembers the previous
essay will already partially anticipate the essential
meaning compressed into these above ten words.
The thorough unswitching of t hgJruman_§Qul,_thg
plungi ng of it into terror, frost, ardour, rapture,
so as to free"Tt^"as through ~som^JightnIi^]JEock7
from all the smallness and pettiness of unhappi-
ness, depression, and discomfort : what waysHead"
to ^w_goal? AnJ which ol these ways"does~s6
inost safely ? . . . At b ottom all great emotio ns
^^MgJhisjiQHgcjpro vided that they find a sudde n
o utlet — emotions such as rage, fear, lust, revenge,
hope, triumph, despair, cruelty ^ and, in sooth, the
ascetic priest has had no scruples in taking into
his service the whole pack of hounds that rage
in the human kennel, unleashing now these and
now those, with the same constant object of
waking man out of his protracted melancholy,
of chasing away, at any rate for a time, his dull
pain, his shrinking misery, but always under the
sanction of a religious^ interpretation and justifica-



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1 82 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

tion. This emotional excess has subsequently to
be paid /or~ this is self-evident — it makes "The
tlt^more in^:^^^ana~'EEeretore tEis~Tan3~~oT remedy
for pain is~ according to moderrT stanHarcls^a
" guilty ^nong . "

The dictates of fairness, however, require that
we should all the more emphasise the fact that
this remedy is applied with a good conscience,
that the ascetic priest has prescribed it in the
most implicit belief in its utility and indispens-
ability; — often enough almost collapsing in the
presence of the pain which he created ;— that we
should similarly emphasise the fact that the
violent physiological revenges of such excesses,
even perhaps the mental disturbances, are not
absolutely inconsistent with the general tenor of
this kind of remedy ; this remedy, which, as we
have shown previously, is not for the purpose of
healing diseases, but of fighting the unhappiness
of that depression, the alleviation and deadening
of which was its object. The object was conse-
quently achieved. /The keynote by which the
ascetic priest was enabled to get every kind of
agonising and ecstatic music to play on the
fibres of the human soul — was, as every one knows,
the exploitation of the feeling of "guilt. "] I
have already indicated in the pf'evious essay the
origin of this feeling — as a piece of animal
psychology and nothing else : we were thus con-
fronted with the feeling of " guilt," in its crude
state, as it were. It was first in the hands of
the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of
guilt, that it took shape — oh, what a shape !



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? 1 83

r ^Sin " — for that is the name of the new priestly
versi on of the anim al " bad-conscience " (the in-
verted cruelty) — has up to the present been the
Efreate st event in the history of the diseased soul :
in " sin " we find the most perilous and fatal master-
piece of religious interpretation,^ \ Imagine_^ man,
s uffering from himself, some way or other but at any
r ate phy siologically, perhaps like an animal shut
up in a cage, norcleaFas to the why and the
wheretore ! Tmagme him iri~TTis"desire for reasons
—reasons briiig'' relief — in his desire again for
re medies , n^xqtics at last, consulting one, who
knows even the occult — ^an3^~see71o~an3~^beH51(f,Tie
gets a hmt trom his wizard, the ascetic priest, hi^
first hint on the " cause " of his trouble : he iriiisl
search tor it in himself. , in his guiltiness, in a piece
"oTthe past, he must understand his very suffering
as a state ojT^unishmentT^Y^ hzs, heard, he has
understood, has the unfortunate : he is now in the
plight of a hen round which a line has been drawn.
He never gets out of the circle of lines. The sick
man has been turned into " the sinner " — and now
for a few thousand years we never get away from
the sight of this new invalid, of " a sinner " — shall
we ever get away from it ? — wherever we just look,
everywhere the hypnotic gaze of the sinner always
moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt,
the only cause of suffering) ; everywhere the evil
conscience, this ^^ greuliche thier" * to use Luther's
language ; everywhere rumination over the past, a
distorted view of action, the gaze of the "green-eyed

* " Horrible beast. "



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184 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

monster" turned on all action; everywhere thewilful
misunderstanding of suffering, its transvaluation
into feelings of guilt, fear of retribution ; every-
where the scourge, the hairy shirt, the starving body,
contrition ; everywhere the sinner breaking himself
on the ghastly wheel of a restless and morbidly
eager conscience ; leverywhere mute pain, extreme
fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the spasms of
an unknown happiness, the shriek for "r edemp tion," J
In point of fact, thanks to this system of procedure,
the old depression, dullnesSj andjati^ue were abso-
l. uSiv:. £Qnq5e£e3ZI ife itsel f became verfj ntsrestius
again, awake, eternally awake, sleepless, glowing,
~Bi5rnraway, exhausted and yet not tired — ^^suSiwas"
the figure cut by man, "the siriner,"'wKo was initi-
ated into these mysteries. This grand old wizard
of an ascetic priest fighting with depression — he
had clearly triumphed, Ms kingdom had come :
men no longer grumbled at pain, men panted after
pain : '^_^oy£_ ^ciin ! M ore pain ! " So for
centuries on end shrieked the demand of his
acolytes and initiates. Every emotional excess
which hurt ; eve rything which_ broke,~b vertfirew/
crushe d. trans porTgdj^avished ; the mystery of
tortu re-cham bers, the i nggaiutyloILheirjtgglf — ^all
this was now discovered, divined, exploited, all
this was at the service of the wizard, all this served
to promote the triumph of his ideal, the ascetic ideal.
" My kingdom is not of this world" quoth he, both
at the beginning and at the end : had he still the
right to talk like that? — Goethe has maintained
that there are only thirty-six tragic situations : we
would infer from that, did we not know otherwise



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 85

that Goethe was no ascetic priest. He — knows
more.

21.

So far as all this kind of priestly medicine-
mongering, the " guilty " kind, is concerned, every
word of criticism is superfluous. As for the sug-
gestion that emotional excess of the type, which
in these cases the ascetic priest is fain to order to
his sick patients (under the most sacred euphemism,
as is obvious, and equally impregnated with the
sanctity of his purpose)' has ever really been of
use to any sick man, who, forsooth, would feel in-
clined to maintain a proposition of that character ?
At any rate, some understanding should, be come
to as to the expression " be of use. " Ilf you only
wish to express that such a system of treatment
has reformed man, I do not gainsay it : I merely
add that " reformed " conveys to my mind as
much as "tamed," "weakened," "discouraged," "re-
fined," " daintified," " emasculated " (and thus it
means almost as much as injured^ But when you
have to deal principally with sick, depressed, and
oppressed creatures, such a system, even granted
that it makes the ill " better," under any circum-
stances also makes them more ill : ask the mad-
doctors the invariable result of a methodical appli-
cation of penance-torture, contrition, and salvation
ecstasies. Similarly ask history, fin every body
politic where the ascetic priest has established
this treatment of the sick, disease has on every
occasion spread with sinister speed throughout



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1 86 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

its length and breadthj What was always the
"result"? A shattered nervous system, in addition
to the existing malady, and this in the greatest
as in the smallest, in the individuals as in masses.
We find, in consequence of the penance and re-
demption-training, awful epileptic epidemics, the
greatest known to history, such as the St. Vitus and
St. John dances of the Middle Ages ; we find, as
another phase of its after-effect, frightful mutila-
tions and chronic depressions, by means of which
the temperament of a nation or a city (Geneva,
Bale) is turned once for all into its opposite ; —
this training, again, is responsible for the witch-
hysteria, a phenomenon analogous to somnambul-
ism (eight great epidemic outbursts of this only
between i 564 and 1605) ; — we find similarly in its
train those delirious death-cravings of large masses,
whose awful "shriek," "evvivala morte! " was heard
over the whole of Europe, now interrupted by volup-
tuous variations and anon by a rage for destruc-
tion, just as the same emotional sequence with the
same intermittencies and sudden changes is now
universally observed in every case where the ascetic
doctrine of sin scores once more a great success
(religious neurosis appears as a manifestation of the
devil,thereis no doubt of it. What is it? QucBritur).
I Speaking generally, the ascetic ideal and its sublime-
moral cult, this most ingenious, reckless, and peril-
ous systematisation of all methods of emotional
excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable
fashion on the whole history of man, and unfortun-
ately not only on historyj^ I was scarcely able to
put forward any other element which attacked the



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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 1 87

and race efficiency of Europeans with more
destructive power than did this ideal ; it can be
dubbed, without exaggeration, the real fatality in the
history of the health of the European man. At the
most you can merely draw a comparison with the
specifically German influence : I mean the alcohol
poisoning of Europe, which up to the present has
kept pace exactly with the political and racial pre-
dominance of the Germans (where they inoculated
their blood, there too did they inoculate their vice).
Third in the series comes syphilis — magno sed
proximo intervallo.

22.

The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained
the mastery, corrupted the health of the soul, he
has consequently also corrupted taste in artibus
et litteris — he corrupts it still. " Consequently ? "
I hope I shall be granted this " consequently " ;
at any rate, I am not going to prove it first. One
solitary indication, it concerns the arch-book of
Christian literature, their real model, their " book-
in-itself. " In the very midst of the Grseco-Roman
splendour, which was also a splendour of books,
face to face with an ancient world of writings
which had not yet fallen into decay and ruin, at a
time when certain books were still to be read, to
possess which we would give nowadays half our
literature in exchange, at that time the simplicity
and vanity of Christian agitators (they are gener-
ally called Fathers of the Church) dared to declare :
"We too have our classical literature, we do not
need that of the Greeks" — and meanwhile they



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1 88 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.