No More Learning

What then is the purpose of conscious-
ness generally, when it is in the main superfluous ? —
Now it seems to me, if you will hear my answer
and its perhaps extravagant supposition, that the
subtlety and strength of consciousness are always in
proportion to the capacity for communication of a man
(or an animal), the capacity for communication in
its turn being in proportion to the necessity for
communication: the latter not to be understood as if
precisely the individual himself who is master in
the art of communicating and making known his



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WE FEARLESS ONES 297
necessities would at the same time have to be
most dependent upon others for his necessities.
It seems to me, however, to be so in relation to
whole races and successions of generations: where
necessity and need have long compelled men to
communicate with their fellows and understand
one another rapidly and subtly, a surplus of the
power and art of communication is at last acquired,
as if it were a fortune which had gradually accumu-
lated, and now waited for an heir to squander it
prodigally (the so-called artists are these heirs, in
like manner the orators, preachers, and authors:
all of them men who come at the end of a long
succession, " late-born " always, in the best sense of
the word, and as has been said, squanderers by
their very nature). Granted that this observation
is correct, I may proceed further to the conjecture
that consciousness generally has only been developed
under the pressure of the necessity for communica-
tion,—that from the first it has been necessary and
useful only between man and man (especially
between those commanding and those obeying),
and has only developed in proportion to its utility.
Consciousness is properly only a connecting net-
work between man and man,—it is only as
such that it has had to develop; the recluse
and wild-beast species of men would not have
needed it. The very fact that our actions,
thoughts, feelings and motions come within the
range of our consciousness—at least a part of them
—is the result of a terrible, prolonged "must"
ruling man's destiny: as the most endangered
animal he needed help and protection; he needed


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312
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
an experience of man, entirely different from what
the north has had. The Lutheran Reformation
in all its length and breadth was the indignation
of the simple against something "complicated. "
To speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest mis-
understanding, in which much is to be forgiven,-
people did not understand the mode of expression
of a victorious Church, and only saw corruption ;
they misunderstood the noble scepticism, the luxury
of scepticism and toleration which every victorious,
self-confident power permits. . . . One overlooks
the fact readily enough at present that as regards
all cardinal questions concerning power Luther
was badly endowed; he was fatally short-sighted,
superficial and imprudent-and above all, as a
man sprung from the people, he lacked all the
hereditary qualities of a ruling caste, and all the
instincts for power; so that his work, his intention
to restore the work of the Romans, merely became
involuntarily and unconsciously the commencement
of a work of destruction. He unravelled, he tore
asunder with honest rage, where the old spider had
woven longest and most carefully. He gave the
sacred books into the hands of everyone,—they
thereby got at last into the hands of the philologists,
that is to say, the annihilators of every belief based
upon books. He demolished the conception of
“the Church” in that he repudiated the belief in
the inspiration of the Councils : for only under the
supposition that the inspiring spirit which had
founded the Church still lives in it, still builds it,
still goes on building its house, does the conception
of "the Church” retain its power. He gave back


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WE FEARLESS ONES 299
tion to communal and gregarious utility that it
is finely developed; and that consequently each
of us, in spite of the best intention of understanding
himself as individually as possible, and of" knowing
himself," will always just call into consciousness
the non-individual in him, namely, his "average-
ness ";—that our thought itself is continuously as it
were outvoted by the character of consciousness—
by the imperious "genius of the species" therein—
and is translated back into the perspective of the
herd. Fundamentally our actions are in an incom-
parable manner altogether personal, unique and
absolutely individual—there is no doubt about it;
but as soon as we translate them into conscious-
ness, they do not appear so any longer. . . . This is
the proper phenomenalism and perspectivism as I
understand it: the nature of animal consciousness
involves the notion that the world of which we can
become conscious is only a superficial and symbolic
world, a generalised and vulgarised world;—that
everything which becomes conscious becomes just
thereby shallow, meagre, relatively stupid, — a
generalisation, a symbol, a characteristic of the
herd; that with the evolving of consciousness there
is always combined a great, radical perversion,
falsification, superficialisation, and generalisation.
Finally, the growing consciousness is a danger,
and whoever lives among the most conscious
Europeans knows even that it is a disease. As
may be conjectured, it is not the antithesis of
subject and object with which I am here con-
cerned: I leave that distinction to the episte-
mologists who have remained entangled in the


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314
THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
especially in the north, or more good-natured, if
people would rather hear it designated by a moral
expression, undoubtedly took a clever step in
advance in the Lutheran Reformation ; and similarly
there grew out of it the mobility and disquietude
of the spirit, its thirst for independence, its belief
in the right to freedom, and its “naturalness. ” If
people wish to ascribe to the Reformation in the
last instance the merit of having prepared and
favoured that which we at present honour as
* modern science, " they must of course add that it
is also accessory to bringing about the degenera-
tin of the modern scholar with his lack of
reverence, of shame and of profundity; and that
it is also responsible for all naïve candour
and plain dealing in matters of knowledge, in
short for the plebeianism of the spirit which is
peculiar to the last two centuries, and from which
eren pessimism hitherto, has not in any way
Kielivered us. “Modern ideas" also belong to this
poasant insurrection of the north against the colder,
more ambiguous, more suspicious spirit of the south,
which has built itself its greatest monument in the
Christian Church. Let us not forget in the end
what a Church is, and especially, in contrast to every
*State": a Church is above all an authoritative
organisation which secures to the most spiritual
aihen the highest rank, and believes in the power of
swrituality so far as to forbid all grosser appliances
W authority. Through this alone the Church is
inter all circumstances a nobler institution than
State-


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WE FEARLESS ONES 301
rejoicing in the regained feeling of security? . . .
One philosopher imagined the world "known"
when he had traced it back to the "idea": alas,
was it not because the idea was so known, so
familiar to him? because he had so much less fear
of the "idea"—Oh, this moderation of the dis-
cerners! let us but look at their principles, and at
their solutions of the riddle of the world in this
connection! When they again find aught in things,
among things, or behind things, that is unfortunately
very well known to us, for example, our multiplica-
tion table, or our logic, or our willing and desiring,
how happy they immediately are! For "what is
known is understood": they are unanimous as to
that. Even the most circumspect among them think
that the known is at least more easily understoodthan
the strange; that for example, it is methodically
ordered to proceed outward from the "inner world,"
from " the facts of consciousness," because it is the
world which is better known to us! Error of errors!
The known is the accustomed, and the accustomed
is the most difficult of all to "understand," that
is to say, to perceive as a problem, to perceive
as strange, distant, " outside of us. " . . . The great
certainty of the natural sciences in comparison with
psychology and the criticism of the elements of
consciousness—unnatural sciences as one might
almost be entitled to call them—rests precisely on
the fact that they take what is strange as their
object: while it is almost like something contra-
dictory and absurd to wish to take generally what
is not strange as an object. . . .


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302 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
356.
In what Manner Europe will always become "more
Artistic. "—Providing a living still enforces even
in the present day (in our transition period when
so much ceases to enforce) a definite rdle on almost
all male Europeans, their so-called callings; some
have the liberty, an apparent liberty, to choose
this role themselves, but most have it chosen for
them. The result is strange enough. Almost all
Europeans confound themselves with their role
when they advance in age; they themselves are the
victims of their " good acting," they have forgotten
how much chance, whim and arbitrariness swayed
them when their "calling" was decided—and how
many other roles they could perhaps have played:
for it is now too late! Looked at more closely, we
see that their characters have actually evolved out
of their role, nature out of art. There were ages in
which people believed with unshaken confidence,
yea, with piety, in their predestination for this very
business, for that very mode of livelihood, and
would not at all acknowledge chance, or the
fortuitous rdle, or arbitrariness therein. Ranks,
guilds, and hereditary trade privileges succeeded,
with the help of this belief, in rearing those extra-
ordinary broad towers of society which distinguished
the Middle Ages, and of which at all events one
thing remains to their credit: capacity for duration
(and duration is a value of the first rank on earth ! ).
But there are ages entirely the reverse, the properly
democratic ages, in which people tend to become
more and more oblivious of this conviction, and a


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WE FEARLESS ONES 303
sort of impudent conviction and quite contrary mode
of viewing things comes to the front, the Athenian
conviction which is first observed in the epoch of
Pericles, the American conviction of the present
day, which wants also more and more to become
an European conviction, whereby the individual is
convinced that he can do almost anything, that he
can play almost any rdle, whereby everyone makes ex-
periments with himself, improvises, tries anew, tries
with delight, whereby all nature ceases and becomes
art. . . . The Greeks, having adopted this rdle-
creed—an artist creed, if you will—underwent step
by step, as is well known, a curious transformation,
not in every respect worthy of imitation: they
became actual stage-players; and as such they
enchanted, they conquered all the world, and at last
even the conqueror of the world, (for the Graeculus
histrio conquered Rome, and not Greek culture, as
the naive are accustomed to say . . . ). What I
fear, however, and what is at present obvious, if we
desire to perceive it, is that we modern men are
quite on the same road already; and whenever man
begins to discover in what respect he plays a role,
and to what extent he can be a stage-player, he
becomes a stage-player. . . . A new flora and fauna
of men thereupon springs up, which cannot grow in
more stable, more restricted eras—or is left "at the
bottom," under the ban and suspicion of infamy—,
thereupon the most interesting and insane periods
of history always make their appearance, in which
"stage-players," all kinds of stage-players, are the
real masters. Precisely thereby another species
of man is always more and more injured, and in


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304 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
the end made impossible: above all the great
"architects"; the building power is now being
paralysed; the courage that makes plans for the
distant future is disheartened; there begins to be
a lack of organising geniuses. Who is there who
would now venture to undertake works for the
completion of which millenniums would have to be
reckoned upon? The fundamental belief is dying
out, on the basis of which one could calculate,
promise and anticipate the future in one's plan, and
offer it as a sacrifice thereto, that in fact man has only
value and significance in so far as he is a stone in a
great building; for which purpose he has first of all
to be solid, he has to be a " stone. " . . . Above all,
not a—stage-player! In short—alas! this fact
will be hushed up for some considerable time to
come! —that which from henceforth will no longer
be built, and can no longer be built, is—a society
in the old sense of the term; to build this structure
everything is lacking, above all, the material.
None of us are any longer material for a society:
that is a truth which is seasonable at present!
It seems to me a matter of indifference that mean-
while the most short-sighted, perhaps the most
honest, and at any rate the noisiest species of men
of the present day, our friends the Socialists, believe,
hope, dream, and above all scream and scribble
almost the opposite; in fact one already reads their
watchword of the future: "free society," on all
tables and walls. Free society? Indeed! Indeed!
But you know, gentlemen, sure enough whereof one
builds it? Out of wooden iron! Out of the famous
wooden iron! And not even out of wooden . . .


## p. 305 (#407) ############################################

WE FEARLESS ONES
319
masters of the embodied and incarnated art of
eternally playing the game of hide and seek, which
one calls mimicry among the animals :-until at last
this ability, stored up from generation to genera-
tion, has become domineering, irrational and
intractable, till as instinct it begins to command
the other instincts, and begets the actor, the
"artist" (the buffoon, the pantaloon, the Jack-
Pudding, the fool, and the clown in the first place,
also the classical type of servant, Gil Blas: for in
such types one has the precursors of the artist,
and often enough even of the "genius"). Also
under higher social conditions there grows under
similar pressure a similar species of men. Only the
histrionic instinct is there for the most part held
strictly in check by another instinct, for example,
among "diplomatists”;—for the rest, I should think
that it would always be open to a good diplomat-
ist to become a good actor on the stage, provided
his dignity “allowed” it. As regards the Jews,
however, the adaptable people par excellence, we
should, in conformity to this line of thought,
expect to see among them a world-historical
institution from the very beginning, for the rearing
of actors, a genuine breeding-place for actors; and
in fact the question is very pertinent just now :
what good actor at present is not-a Jew? The
Jew also, as a born literary man, as the actual
ruler of the European press, exercises this power
on the basis of his histrionic capacity: for the
literary man is essentially an actor,- he plays
the part of “expert,” of “specialist. ” — Frey
women. If we consider the whole history i


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306 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
to think that a person of the Latin race would
not readily have stumbled on this reversal of the
apparent ? —for it is a reversal. Let us call to mind
secondly, the immense note of interrogation which
Kant wrote after the notion of causality. Not that
he at all doubted its legitimacy, like Hume: on
the contrary, he began cautiously to define the
domain within which this notion has significance
generally (we have not even yet got finished with
the marking out of these limits). Let us take
thirdly, the astonishing hit of Hegel, who stuck at
no logical usage or fastidiousness when he ventured
to teach that the conceptions of kinds develop out
of one another: with which theory the thinkers in
Europe were prepared for the last great scientific
movement, for Darwinism—for without Hegel there
would have been no Darwin. Is there anything
German in this Hegelian innovation which first
introduced the decisive conception of evolution
into science? Yes, without doubt we feel that
there is something of ourselves "discovered " and
divined in all three cases; we are thankful for it,
and at the same time surprised; each of these
three principles is a thoughtful piece of German
self-confession, self-understanding, and self-know-
ledge. We feel with Leibnitz that "our inner
world is far richer, ampler, and more concealed ";
as Germans we are doubtful, like Kant, about the
ultimate validity of scientific knowledge of nature,
and in general about whatever can be known
causaliter: the knowable as such now appears to us
of less worth. We Germans should still have been
Hegelians, even though there had never been a


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WE FEARLESS ONES 307
Hegel, inasmuch as we (in contradistinction to all
Latin peoples) instinctively attribute to becoming,
to evolution, a profounder significance and higher
value than to that which " is "—we hardly believe
at all in the validity of the concept "being. "
This is all the more the case because we are not
inclined to concede to our human logic that it is
logic in itself, that it is the only kind of logic (we
should rather like, on the contrary, to convince
ourselves that it is only a special case, and perhaps
one of the strangest and most stupid). A fourth
question would be whether also Schopenhauer with
his Pessimism, that is to say the problem of
the worth of existence, had to be a German. I
think not. The event after which this problem
was to be expected with certainty, so that an
astronomer of the soul could have calculated the
day and the hour for it—namely, the decay of the
belief in the Christian God, the victory of scientific
atheism,—is a universal European event, in which
all races are to have their share of service and
honour. On the contrary, it has to be ascribed
precisely to the Germans—those with whom
Schopenhauer was contemporary,—that they de-
layed this victory of atheism longest, and en-
dangered it most. Hegel especially was its retarder
par excellence, in virtue of the grandiose attempt
which he made to persuade us of the divinity of
existence, with the help at the very last of our
sixth sense," the historical sense. " As philosopher,
Schopenhauer was the first avowed and inflexible
atheist we Germans have had: his hostility to
Hegel had here its background. The non-divinity


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308 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
of existence was regarded by him as something
understood, palpable, indisputable; he always lost
his philosophical composure and got into a passion
when he saw anyone hesitate and beat about the
bush here. It is at this point that his thorough
uprightness of character comes in: unconditional,
honest atheism is precisely the preliminary condition
for his raising the problem, as a final and hardwon
victory of the European conscience, as the most
prolific act of two thousand years' discipline to
truth, which in the end no longer tolerates the
lie of the belief in a God. . . . One sees what has
really gained the victory over the Christian God—,
Christian morality itself, the conception of veracity,
taken ever more strictly, the confessional subtlety
of the Christian conscience, translated and sub-
limated to the scientific conscience, to intellectual
purity at any price. To look upon nature as if it
were a proof of the goodness and care of a God;
to interpret history in honour of a divine reason,
as a constant testimony to a moral order in the
world and a moral final purpose; to explain
personal experiences as pious men have long
enough explained them, as if everything were a
dispensation or intimation of Providence, some-
thing planned and sent on behalf of the salvation
of the soul: all that is now past, it has conscience
against it, it is regarded by all the more acute
consciences as disreputable and dishonourable,
as mendaciousness, femininism, weakness, and
cowardice,—by virtue of this severity, if by any-
thing, we are good Europeans, the heirs of Europe's
longest and bravest self-conquest. When we thus


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WE FEARLESS ONES 309
reject the Christian interpretation, and condemn
its "significance" as a forgery, we are immediately
confronted in a striking manner with the Schopen-
hauerian question: Has existence then a significance
at all? —the question which will require a couple of
centuries even to be completely heard in all its
profundity. Schopenhauer's own answer to this
question was—if I may be forgiven for saying so—
a premature, juvenile reply, a mere compromise,
a stoppage and sticking in the very same Christian-
ascetic, moral perspectives, the belief in which had
got notice to quit along with the belief in God. . . .
But he raised the question—as a good European,
as we have said, and not as a German. —Or did the
Germans prove at least by the way in which they
seized on the Schopenhauerian question, their
inner connection and relationship to him, their
preparation for his problem, and their need of it?
That there has been thinking and printing even
in Germany since Schopenhauer's time on the
problem raised by him,—it was late enough! —
does not at all suffice to enable us to decide in
favour of this closer relationship; one could, on
the contrary, lay great stress on the peculiar awk-
wardness of this post-Schopenhauerian Pessimism
—Germans evidently do not behave themselves
there as in their element. I do not at all allude
here to Eduard von Hartmann; on the contrary,
my old suspicion is not vanished even at present
that he is too clever for us; I mean to say that as
arrant rogue from the very first, he did not perhaps
make merry solely over German Pessimism—and
that in the end he might probably "bequeathe"


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3IO THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
to them the truth as to how far a person could
bamboozle the Germans themselves in the age of
bubble companies. But further, are we perhaps
to reckon to the honour of Germans, the old
humming-top, Bahnsen, who all his life spun about
with the greatest pleasure around his realistically
dialectic misery and "personal ill-luck,"—was that
German? (In passing I recommend his writings
for the purpose for which I myself have used them,
as anti-pessimistic fare, especially on account of his
elegantia psychologies which, it seems to me, could
alleviate even the most constipated body and soul).
Or would it be proper to count such dilettanti and
old maids as the mawkish apostle of virginity,
Mainlander, among the genuine Germans? After
all he was probably a Jew (all Jews become
mawkish when they moralise). Neither Bahnsen,
nor Mainlander, nor even Eduard von Hartmann,
give us a reliable grasp of the question whether the
pessimism of Schopenhauer (his frightened glance
into an undeified world, which has become stupid,
blind, deranged and problematic, his honourable
fright) was not only an exceptional case among
Germans, but a German event: while everything
else which stands in the foreground, like our
valiant politics and our joyful' Jingoism (which
decidedly enough regards everything with refer-
ence to a principle sufficiently unphilosophical:
"Deutschland, Deutschland, fiber Alles," * conse-
quently sub specie speciei, namely, the German
species), testifies very plainly to the contrary. No!
* "Germany, Germany, above all": the first line of the
German national song. —TR,


## p. 311 (#413) ############################################

WE FEARLESS ONES 311
The Germans of to-day are not pessimists! And
Schopenhauer was a pessimist, I repeat it once
more, as a good European, and not as a German.
358.
The Peasant Revolt of the Spirit. —We Europeans
find ourselves in view of an immense world of ruins,
where some things still tower aloft, while other
objects stand mouldering and dismal, where most
things however already lie on the ground, pic-
turesque enough—where were there ever finer
ruins? —overgrown with weeds, large and small.
It is the Church which is this city of decay: we
see the religious organisation of Christianity
shaken to its deepest foundations. The belief in
God is overthrown, the belief in the Christian
ascetic ideal is now fighting its last fight. Such a
long and solidly built work as Christianity—it was
the last construction of the Romans! —could not
of course be demolished all at once; every sort
of earthquake had to shake it, every sort of spirit
which perforates, digs, gnaws and moulders had
to assist in the work of destruction. But that
which is strangest is that those who have exerted
themselves most to retain and preserve Christianity,
have been precisely those who did most to destroy
it,—the Germans. It seems that the Germans do
not understand the essence of a Church. Are they
not spiritual enough, or not distrustful enough to
do so? In any case the structure of the Church
rests on a southern freedom and liberality of spirit,
and similarly on a southern suspicion of nature,
man, and spirit,—it rests on a knowledge of man,


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312 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
an experience of man, entirely different from what
the north has had. The Lutheran Reformation
in all its length and breadth was the indignation
of the simple against something "complicated. "
To speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest mis-
understanding, in which much is to be forgiven,—
people did not understand the mode of expression
of a victorious Church, and only saw corruption;
they misunderstood the noble scepticism, the luxury
of scepticism and toleration which every victorious,
self-confident power permits. . . . One overlooks
the fact readily enough at present that as regards
all cardinal questions concerning power Luther
was badly endowed; he was fatally short-sighted,
superficial and imprudent—and above all, as a
man sprung from the people, he lacked all the
hereditary qualities of a ruling caste, and all the
instincts for power; so that his work, his intention
to restore the work of the Romans, merely became
involuntarily and unconsciously the commencement
of a work of destruction. He unravelled, he tore
asunder with honest rage, where the old spider had
woven longest and most carefully. He gave the
sacred books into the hands of everyone,—they
thereby got at last into the hands of the philologists,
that is to say, the annihilators of every belief based
upon books. He demolished the conception of
"the Church" in that he repudiated the belief in
the inspiration of the Councils: for only under the
supposition that the inspiring spirit which had
founded the Church still lives in it, still builds it,
still goes on building its house, does the conception
of "the Church" retain its power. He gave back


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WE FEARLESS ONES 313
to the priest sexual intercourse: but three-fourths
of the reverence of which the people (and above
all the women of the people) are capable, rests on
the belief that an exceptional man in this respect
will also be an exceptional man in other respects.
It is precisely here that the popular belief in some-
thing superhuman in man, in a miracle, in the
saving God in man, has its most subtle and insidi-
ous advocate. After Luther had given a wife to
the priest, he had to take from him auricular confes-
sion ; that was psychologically right: but thereby he
practically did away with the Christian priest him-
self, whose profoundest utility has ever consisted
in his being a sacred ear, a silent well, and a grave
for secrets. "Every man his own priest"—behind
such formulae and their bucolic slyness, there was
concealed in Luther the profoundest hatred of
"higher men" and the rule of "higher men," as
the Church had conceived them. Luther disowned
an ideal which he did not know how to attain,
while he seemed to combat and detest the degenera-
tion thereof. As a matter of fact, he, the impossible
monk, repudiated the rule of the homines religiosi;
he consequently brought about precisely the same
thing within the ecclesiastical social order that
he combated so impatiently in the civic order,—
namely a "peasant insurrection. "—As to all that
grew out of his Reformation afterwards, good and
bad, which can at present be almost counted up,—
who would be naYve enough to praise or blame
Luther simply on account of these results? He
is innocent of all; he knew not what he did.
The art of making the European spirit shallower,
'


## p. 314 (#416) ############################################

314 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
especially in the north, or more good-natured, if
people would rather hear it designated by a moral
expression, undoubtedly took a clever step in
advance in the Lutheran Reformation ; and similarly
there grew out of it the mobility and disquietude
of the spirit, its thirst for independence, its belief
in the right to freedom, and its "naturalness. " If
people wish to ascribe to the Reformation in the
last instance the merit of having prepared and
favoured that which we at present honour as
"modern science," they must of course add that it
is also accessory to bringing about the degenera-
tion of the modern scholar with his lack of
reverence, of shame and of profundity; and that
it is also responsible for all natve candour
and plain-dealing in matters of knowledge, in
short for the plebeianism of the spirit which is
peculiar to the last two centuries, and from which
even pessimism hitherto, has not in any way
delivered us. "Modern ideas" also belong to this
peasant insurrection of the north against the colder,
more ambiguous, more suspicious spirit of the south,
which has built itself its greatest monument in the
Christian Church. Let us not forget in the end
what a Church is, and especially, in contrast to every
"State": a Church is above all an authoritative
organisation which secures to the most spiritual
men the highest rank, and believes in the power of
spirituality so far as to forbid all grosser appliances
of authority. Through this alone the Church is
under all circumstances a nobler institution than
the State. —


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359-
Vengeance on Intellect and other Backgrounds of
Morality. —Morality—where do you think it has
its most dangerous and rancorous advocates? —
There, for example, is an ill-constituted man, who
does not possess enough of intellect to be able to
take pleasure in it, and just enough of culture to
be aware of the fact; bored, satiated, and a self-
despiser; besides being cheated unfortunately by
some hereditary property out of the last consolation,
the "blessing of labour," the self-forgetfulness in
the "day's work "; one who is thoroughly ashamed
of his existence—perhaps also harbouring some
vices,—and who on the other hand (by means of
books to which he has no right, or more intellectual
society than he can digest), cannot help vitiating
himself more and more, and making himself vain
and irritable: such a thoroughly poisoned man—
for intellect becomes poison, culture becomes
poison, possession becomes poison, solitude becomes
poison, to such ill-constituted beings—gets at last
into a habitual state of vengeance and inclination
to vengeance. . . . What do you think he finds
necessary, absolutely necessary in order to give
himself the appearance in his own eyes of superi-
ority over more intellectual men, so as to give
himself the delight of perfect revenge, at least in
imagination? It is always morality that he
requires, one may wager on it; always the big moral
words, always the high-sounding words: justice,
wisdom, holiness, virtue; always the stoicism of
gestures (how well stoicism hides what one does not


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316 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
possess! ); always the mantle of wise silence, of
affability, of gentleness, and whatever else the
idealist-mantle is called in which the incurable
self-despisers and also the incurably conceited walk
about.
Let me not be misunderstood: out of such
born enemies of the spirit there arises now and then
that rare specimen of humanity who is honoured
by the people under the name of saint or sage: it
is out of such men that there arise those prodigies
of morality that make a noise, that make history,—
St Augustine was one of these men. Fear of the
intellect, vengeance on the intellect—Oh! how often
have these powerfully impelling vices become the
root of virtues! Yea, virtue itself! —And asking
the question among ourselves, even the philosopher's
pretension to wisdom, which has occasionally been
made here and there on the earth, the maddest
and most immodest of all pretensions,—has it not
always been, in India as well as in Greece, above all
a means of concealment? Sometimes, perhaps, from
the point of view of education which hallows so
many lies, it has been a tender regard for growing
and evolving persons, for disciples who have often to
be guarded against themselves by means of the belief
in a person (by means of an error). In most cases,
however, it is a means of concealment for a philo-
sopher, behind which he seeks protection, owing to
exhaustion, age, chilliness, or hardening; as a feeling
of the approaching end, as the sagacity of the instinct
which animals have before their death,—they go
apart, remain at rest, choose solitude, creep into
caves, become wise. . . . What? Wisdom a means of
concealment of the philosopher from—intellect ? -—


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360.
Two Kinds of Causes which are Confounded. —
It seems to mc one of my most essential steps and
advances that I have learned to distinguish the
cause of the action generally from the cause of
action in a particular manner, say, in this direction,
with this aim. The first kind of cause is a quantum
of stored-up force, which waits to be used in some
manner, for some purpose; the second kind of
cause, on the contrary, is something quite unim-
portant in comparison with the first, an insignifi-
cant hazard for the most part, in conformity with
which the quantum of force in question " discharges"
itself in some unique and definite manner: the
lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of gunpowder.
Among those insignificant hazards and lucifer-
matches I count all the so-called "aims," and
similarly the still more so-called "occupations" of
people: they are relatively optional, arbitrary, and
almost indifferent in relation to the immense
quantum of force which presses on, as we have
said, to be used up in any way whatever. One
generally looks at the matter in a different manner:
one is accustomed to see the impelling force pre-
cisely in the aim (object, calling, &c), according to
a primeval error,—but it is only the directing force;
the steersman and the steam have thereby been
confounded. And yet it is not even always the
steersman, the directing force. . . . Is the "aim,"
the "purpose," not often enough only an ex-
tenuating pretext, an additional self-blinding of
conceit, which does not wish it to be said that the


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318 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
ship follows the stream into which it has accidentally
run? That it " wishes" to go that way, because it
must go that way? That it has a direction, sure
enough, but—not a steersman? We still require
a criticism of the conception of " purpose. "
361.
The Problem of the Actor. —The problem of the
actor has disquieted me the longest; I was uncer-
tain (and am sometimes so still) whether one could
not get at the dangerous conception of " artist "—
a conception hitherto treated with unpardonable
leniency—from this point of view. Falsity with a
good conscience; delight in dissimulation breaking
forth as power, pushing aside, overflowing, and
sometimes extinguishing the so-called "character";
the inner longing to play a role, to assume a mask,
to put on an appearance; a surplus of capacity for
adaptations of every kind, which can no longer
gratify themselves in the service of the nearest
and narrowest utility: all that perhaps does not
pertain solely to the actor in himself? . . . Such an
instinct would develop most readily in families of
the lower class of the people, who have had to pass
their lives in absolute dependence, under shifting
pressure and constraint, who (to accommodate
themselves to their conditions, to adapt themselves
always to new circumstances) had again and again
to pass themselves off and represent themselves as
different persons, — thus having gradually quali-
fied themselves to adjust the mantle to every wind,
thereby almost becoming the mantle itself, as


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WE FEARLESS ONES 319
masters of the embodied and incarnated art of
eternally playing the game of hide and seek, which
one calls Mimicry among the animals :—until at last
this ability, stored up from generation to genera-
tion, has become domineering, irrational and
intractable, till as instinct it begins to command
the other instincts, and begets the actor, the
"artist" (the buffoon, the pantaloon, the Jack-
Pudding, the fool, and the clown in the first place,
also the classical type of servant, Gil Bias: for in
such types one has the precursors of the artist,
and often enough even of the "genius"). Also
under higher social conditions there grows under
similar pressure a similar species of men. Only the
histrionic instinct is there for the most part held
strictly in check by another instinct, for example,
among "diplomatists";—for the rest, I should think
that it would always be open to a good diplomat-
ist to become a good actor on the stage, provided
his dignity "allowed" it. As regards the Jews,
however, the adaptable people par excellence, we
should, in conformity to this line of thought,
expect to see among them a world-historical
institution from the very beginning, for the rearing
of actors, a genuine breeding-place for actors; and
in fact the question is very pertinent just now:
what good actor at present is not—a Jew? The
Jew also, as a born literary man, as the actual
ruler of the European press, exercises this power
on the basis of his histrionic capacity: for the
literary man is essentially an actor, — he plays
the part of "expert," of "specialist. " — Finally
women. If we consider the whole history of


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320 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
women, are they not obliged first of all, and above
all to be actresses? If we listen to doctors who have
hypnotised women, or, finally, if we love them—
and let ourselves be " hypnotised " by them,—what
is always divulged thereby? That they "give
themselves airs," even when they—"give them-
selves. " . . . Woman is so artistic . . .
362.
My Belief in the Virilising of Europe. —We owe
it to Napoleon (and not at all to the French
Revolution, which had in view the "fraternity" of
the nations, and the florid interchange of good
graces among people generally) that several warlike
centuries, which have not had their like in past
history, may now follow one another—in short, that
we have entered upon the classical age of war, war
at the same time scientific and popular, on the
grandest scale (as regards means, talents and
discipline), to which all coming millenniums will
look back with envy and awe as a work of perfec-
tion :—for the national movement out of which
this martial glory springs, is only the counter-choc
against Napoleon, and would not have existed
without him. To him, consequently, one will one
day be able to attribute the fact that man in Europe
has again got the upper hand of the merchant and
the Philistine; perhaps even of "woman" also,
who has become pampered owing to Christianity
and the extravagant spirit of the eighteenth
century, and still more owing to "modern ideas. "
Napoleon, who saw in modern ideas, and accord-
ingly in civilisation, something like a personal


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WE FEARLESS ONES 321
enemy, has by this hostility proved himself one of
the greatest continuators of the Renaissance: he
has brought to the surface a whole block of the
ancient character, the decisive block perhaps, the
block of granite. And who knows but that this
block of ancient character will in the end get the
upper hand of the national movement, and will
have to make itself in a positive sense the heir and
continuator of Napoleon :—who, as one knows,
wanted one Europe, which was to be mistress of
the world. —
363-
How each Sex has its Prejudice about Love. —
Notwithstanding all the concessions which I am
inclined to make to the monogamic prejudice, I
will never admit that we should speak of equal
rights in the love of man and woman: there are
no such equal rights. The reason is that man and
woman understand something different by the
term love,—and it belongs to the conditions of love
in both sexes that the one sex does not presuppose
the same feeling, the same conception of " love," in
the other sex. What woman understands by love
is clear enough: complete surrender (not merely
devotion) of soul and body, without any motive,
without any reservation, rather with shame and
terror at the thought of a devotion restricted by
clauses or associated with conditions. In this
absence of conditions her love is precisely a faith:
woman has no other. —Man, when he loves a
woman, wants precisely this love from her; he
is consequently, as regards himself, furthest re-
moved from the prerequisites of feminine love;
21


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322 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
granted, however, that there should also be men
to whom on their side the demand for complete
devotion is not unfamiliar,—well, they are really—
not men. A man who loves like a woman becomes
thereby a slave; a woman, however, who loves like
a woman becomes thereby a more perfect woman.
. . . The passion of woman in its unconditional
renunciation of its own rights presupposes in fact
that there does not exist on the other side an equal
pathos, an equal desire for renunciation: for if both
renounced themselves out of love, there would
result—well, I don't know what, perhaps a horror
vacui? Woman wants to be taken and accepted
as a possession, she wishes to be merged in the
conceptions of "possession" and "possessed ";
consequently she wants one who takes, who does
not offer and give himself away, but who reversely
is rather to be made richer in "himself"—by the
increase of power, happiness and faith which the
woman herself gives to him. Woman gives herself,
man takes her. — I do not think one will get
over this natural contrast by any social contract,
or with the very best will to do justice, however
desirable it may be to avoid bringing the severe,
frightful, enigmatical, and unmoral elements of this
antagonism constantly before our eyes. For love,
regarded as complete, great, and full, is nature, and
as nature, is to all eternity something " unmoral. "
—Fidelity is accordingly included in woman's love,
it follows from the definition thereof; with man
fidelity may readily result in consequence of his
love, perhaps as gratitude or idiosyncrasy of taste,
and so-called elective affinity, but it does not


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WE FEARLESS ONES 323
belong to the essence of his love—and indeed so
little, that one might almost be entitled to speak
of a natural opposition between love and fidelity
in man, whose love is just a desire to possess, and
not a renunciation and giving away; the desire to
possess, however, comes to an end every time with
the possession. . . . As a matter of fact it is the
more subtle and jealous thirst for possession in the
man (who is rarely and tardily convinced of having
this " possession "), which makes his love continue;
in that case it is even possible that the love may
increase after the surrender,—he does not readily
own that a woman has nothing more to " surrender"
to him. —
364-
The Anchorite Speaks. —The art of associating
with men rests essentially on one's skilfulness
(which presupposes long exercise) in accepting a
repast, in taking a repast in the cuisine of which
one has no confidence. Provided one comes to the
table with the hunger of a wolf everything is easy
(" the worst society gives thee experience" — as
Mephistopheles says); but one has not got this
wolf s-hunger when one needs it! Alas! how diffi-
cult are our fellow-men to digest! First principle:
to stake one's courage as in a misfortune, to seize
boldly, to admire oneself at the same time, to take
one's repugnance between one's teeth, to cram down
one's disgust. Second principle: to "improve" one's
fellow-man, by praise for example, so that he may
begin to sweat out his self-complacency; or to seize
a tuft of his good or "interesting" qualities, and
pull at it till one gets his whole virtue out, and can


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324 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
put him under the folds of it. Third principle:
self-hypnotism. To fix one's eye on the object
of one's intercourse, as on a glass knob, until, ceas-
ing to feel pleasure or pain thereat, one falls asleep
unobserved, becomes rigid, and acquires a fixed
pose: a household recipe used in married life and
in friendship, well tested and prized as indispens-
able, but not yet scientifically formulated. Its
proper name is—patience. —
365-
The Anchorite Speaks once more. —We also have
intercourse with "men," we also modestly put on
the clothes in which people know us (as such),
respect us and seek us; and we thereby mingle in
society, that is to say, among the disguised who
do not wish to be so called; we also do like all
prudent masqueraders, and courteously dismiss all
curiosity which has not reference merely to our
"clothes. " There are however other modes and
artifices for "going about" among men and associ-
ating with them: for example, as a ghost,—which
is very advisable when one wants to scare them,
and get rid of them easily. An example: a person
grasps at us, and is unable to seize us. That
frightens him. Or we enter by a closed door. Or
when the lights are extinguished. Or after we are
dead. The latter is the artifice of posthumous men
par excellence. (" What? " said such a one once im-
patiently, "do you think we should delight in en-
during this strangeness, coldness, death-stillness
about us, all this subterranean, hidden, dim, undis-
covered solitude, which is called life with us, and


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WE FEARLESS ONES 325
might just as well be called death, if we were not
conscious of what will arise out of us,—and that
only after our death shall we attain to our life and
become living, ah! very living! we posthumous
men ! "—)
366.
At the Sight of a Learned Book. —We do not
belong to those who only get their thoughts from
books, or at the prompting of books,—it is our
custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping,
climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by
preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths
become thoughtful. Our first question concerning
the value of a book, a man, or a piece of music is:
Can it walk? or still better: Can it dance? . . .
We seldom read; we do not read the worse for that
—oh, how quickly do we divine how a person has
arrived at his thoughts :—whether sitting before an
ink-bottle with compressed belly and head bent
over the paper: oh, how quickly we are then done
with his book! The constipated bowels betray
themselves, one may wager on it, just as the atmo-
sphere of the room, the ceiling of the room, the
smallness of the room, betray themselves. —These
were my feelings as I was closing a straightforward,
learned book, thankful, very thankful, but also
relieved. . . . In the book of a learned man there is
almost always something oppressive and oppressed:
the "specialist" comes to light somewhere, his
ardour, his seriousness, his wrath, his over-estimation
of the nook in which he sits and spins, his hump—
every specialist has his hump. A learned book
also always mirrors a distorted soul: every trade


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326 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
distorts. Look at our friends again with whom
we have spent our youth, after they have taken
possession of their science: alas! how the reverse
has always taken place! Alas! how they them-
selves are now for ever occupied and possessed by
their science! Grown into their nook, crumpled into
unrecognisability, constrained, deprived of their
equilibrium, emaciated and angular everywhere,
perfectly round only in one place,—we are moved
and silent when we find them so. Every handi-
craft, granting even that it has a golden floor,* has
also a leaden ceiling above it, which presses and
presses on the soul, till it is pressed into a strange
and distorted shape. There is nothing to alter
here. We need not think that it is at all possible
to obviate this disfigurement by any educational
artifice whatever. Every kind of perfection is pur-
chased at a high price on earth, where everything
is perhaps purchased too dear; one is an expert
in one's department at the price of being also a
victim of one's department. But you want to have
it otherwise—" more reasonable," above all more
convenient—is it not so, my dear contemporaries?
Very well! But then you will also immediately
get something different: that is to say, instead
of the craftsman and expert, the literary man, the
versatile, " many-sided " litterateur, who to be sure
lacks the hump—not taking account of the hump
or bow which he makes before you as the shopman
of the intellect and the " porter" of culture—, the
litterateur, who is really nothing, but " represents"
* An allusion to the German Proverb, "Handwerk hat
einen goldenen Boden. "—Tr.


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WE FEARLESS ONES 327
almost everything: he plays and "represents" the
expert, he also takes it upon himself in all modesty
to see that he is paid, honoured and celebrated in
this position. —No, my learned friends! I bless
you even on account of your humps! And also
because like me you despise the litterateurs and
parasites of culture! And because you do not
know how to make merchandise of your intellect!
And have so many opinions which cannot be ex-
pressed in money value! And because you do not
represent anything which you are not! Because
your sole desire is to become masters of your craft;
because you reverence every kind of mastership and
ability, and repudiate with the most relentless
scorn everything of a make-believe, half-genuine,
dressed-up, virtuoso, demagogic, histrionic nature
in litteris et artibus—all that which does not con-
vince you by its absolute genuineness of discipline
and preparatory training, or cannot stand your
test! (Even genius does not help a person to get
over such a defect, however well it may be able
to deceive with regard to it: one understands this
if one has once looked closely at our most gifted
painters and musicians,—who almost without ex-
ception, can artificially and supplementarily appro-
priate to themselves (by means of artful inventions
of style, make-shifts, and even principles), the
appearance of that genuineness, that solidity of
training and culture; to be sure, without thereby
deceiving themselves, without thereby imposing
perpetual silence on their bad consciences. For
you know well enough that all great modern artists
suffer from bad consciences? . . . )


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328 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
367.
How one has to Distinguish first of all in
Works of Art. —Everything that is thought, versi-
fied, painted and composed, yea, even built and
moulded, belongs either to monologic art, or to
art before witnesses. Under the latter there is also
to be included the apparently monologic art which
involves the belief in God, the whole lyric of prayer;
because for a pious man there is no solitude,—we,
the godless, have been the first to devise this inven-
tion. I know of no profounder distinction in all the
perspective of the artist than this: Whether he
looks at his growing work of art (at "himself—")
with the eye of the witness; or whether he "has
forgotten the world," as is the essential thing in all
monologic art,—it rests on forgetting, it is the music
of forgetting.
368.
The Cynic Speaks. —My objections to Wagner's
music are physiological objections. Why should I
therefore begin by disguising them under aesthetic
formulae? My "point" is that I can no longer
breathe freely when this music begins to operate
on me; my foot immediately becomes indignant
at it and rebels: for what it needs is time, dance
and march; it demands first of all from music the
ecstasies which are in good walking, striding, leap-
ing and dancing. But do not my stomach, my
heart, my blood and my bowels also protest?
Do I not become hoarse unawares under its
influence? And then I ask myself what it is
really that my body wants from music generally.


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I believe it wants to have relief: so that all animal
functions should be accelerated by means of light,
bold, unfettered, self-assured rhythms; so that
brazen, leaden life should be gilded by means of
golden, good, tender harmonies. My melancholy
would fain rest its head in the hiding-places and
abysses of perfection: for this reason I need music.
What do I care for the drama! What do I care
for the spasms of its moral ecstasies, in which the
"people" have their satisfaction! What do I
care for the whole pantomimic hocus-pocus of the
actor! . . . It will now be divined that I am
essentially anti-theatrical at heart,—but Wagner on
the contrary, was essentially a man of the stage and
an actor, the most enthusiastic mummer-worshipper
that has ever existed, even among musicians! . . .
And let it be said in passing that if Wagner's
theory was that " drama is the object, and music is
only the means to it,"—his practice on the contrary
from beginning to end has been to the effect that
"attitude is the object, drama and even music can
never be anything else but means to that" Music
as a means of elucidating, strengthening and inten-
sifying dramatic poses and the actor's appeal to the
senses, and Wagnerian drama only an opportunity
for a number of dramatic attitudes! Wagner
possessed, along with all other instincts, the dicta-
torial instinct of a great actor in all and everything,
and as has been said, also as a musician. —I once
made this clear with some trouble to a thorough-
going Wagnerian, and I had reasons for adding:—
"Do be a little more honest with yourself: we are
not now in the theatre. In the theatre we are only


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330 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
honest in the mass; as individuals we lie, we belie
even ourselves. We leave ourselves at home when
we go to the theatre; we there renounce the right
to our own tongue and choice, to our taste, and
even to our courage as we possess it and practise
it within our own four walls in relation to God and
man. No one takes his finest taste in art into the
theatre with him, not even the artist who works
for the theatre: there one is people, public,
herd, woman, Pharisee, voting animal, democrat,
neighbour, and fellow-creature; there even the
most personal conscience succumbs to the levelling
charm of the 'great multitude'; there stupidity
operates as wantonness and contagion; there the
neighbour rules, there one becomes a neighbour. . . . "
(I have forgotten to mention what my enlightened
Wagnerian answered to my physiological objec-
tions: "So the fact is that you are really not
healthy enough for our music ? "—)
369-
Juxtapositions in us. —Must we not acknowledge
to ourselves, we artists, that there is a strange
discrepancy in us; that on the one hand our taste,
and on the other hand our creative power, keep
apart in an extraordinary manner, continue apart,
and have a separate growth ;—I mean to say that
they have entirely different gradations and tempi
of age, youth, maturity, mellowness and rotten-
ness? So that, for example, a musician could all
his life create things which contradict all that
his ear and heart, spoilt as they are for listening,
prize, relish and prefer:—he would not even re-


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WE FEARLESS ONES 331
quire to be aware of the contradiction! As an
almost painfully regular experience shows, a
person's taste can easily outgrow the taste of
his power, even without the latter being thereby
paralysed or checked in its productivity. The
reverse, however, can also to some extent take
place,—and it is to this especially that I should
like to direct the attention of artists. A constant
producer, a man who is a "mother" in the grand
sense of the term, one who no longer knows or
hears of anything except pregnancies and child-
beds of his spirit, who has no time at all to reflect
and make comparisons with regard to himself and
his work, who is also no longer inclined to exercise
his taste, but simply forgets it, letting it take its
chance of standing, lying or falling,—perhaps such
a man at last produces works on which he is then
not at all fit to pass a judgment: so that he
speaks and thinks foolishly about them and about
himself. This seems to me almost the normal
condition with fruitful artists,—nobody knows a
child worse than its parents—and the rule applies
even (to take an immense example) to the entire
Greek world of poetry and art, which was never
"conscious " of what it had done. . . .
370.
What is Romanticism ?