To
reduce anyone to silence by physical manifestations of savagery or by a
terrorizing process is a relic of under civilization.
reduce anyone to silence by physical manifestations of savagery or by a
terrorizing process is a relic of under civilization.
Human, All Too Human- A Book for Free Spirits by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The repulsive aspect of psychological
dissection, with the knife and tweezers entailed by the process, can no
longer be spared humanity. Such is the imperative duty of any science
that investigates the origin and history of the so-called moral feelings
and which, in its progress, is called upon to posit and to solve
advanced social problems:--The older philosophy does not recognize the
newer at all and, through paltry evasions, has always gone astray in the
investigation of the origin and history of human estimates
(Werthschatzungen). With what results may now be very clearly perceived,
since it has been shown by many examples, how the errors of the greatest
philosophers have their origin in a false explanation of certain human
actions and feelings; how upon the foundation of an erroneous analysis
(for example, of the so called disinterested actions), a false ethic is
reared, to support which religion and like mythological monstrosities
are called in, until finally the shades of these troubled spirits
collapse in physics and in the comprehensive world point of view. But if
it be established that superficiality of psychological observation has
heretofore set the most dangerous snares for human judgment and
deduction, and will continue to do so, all the greater need is there of
that steady continuance of labor that never wearies putting stone upon
stone, little stone upon little stone; all the greater need is there of
a courage that is not ashamed of such humble labor and that will oppose
persistence, to all contempt. It is, finally, also true that countless
single observations concerning the human, all-too-human, have been
first made and uttered in circles accustomed, not to furnish matter for
scientific knowledge, but for intellectual pleasure-seeking; and the
original home atmosphere--a very seductive atmosphere--of the moral
maxim has almost inextricably interpenetrated the entire species, so
that the scientific man involuntarily manifests a sort of mistrust of
this species and of its seriousness. But it is sufficient to point to
the consequences: for already it is becoming evident that events of the
most portentous nature are developing in the domain of psychological
observation. What is the leading conclusion arrived at by one of the
subtlest and calmest of thinkers, the author of the work "Concerning the
Origin of the Moral Feelings", as a result of his thorough and incisive
analysis of human conduct? "The moral man," he says, "stands no nearer
the knowable (metaphysical) world than the physical man. "[19] This
dictum, grown hard and cutting beneath the hammer-blow of historical
knowledge, can some day, perhaps, in some future or other, serve as the
axe that will be laid to the root of the "metaphysical necessities" of
men--whether more to the blessing than to the banning of universal well
being who can say? --but in any event a dictum fraught with the most
momentous consequences, fruitful and fearful at once, and confronting
the world in the two faced way characteristic of all great facts.
[19] "Der moralische Mensch, sagt er, steht der intelligiblen
(metaphysischen) Welt nicht naher, als der physische Mensch. "
38
=To What Extent Useful. =--Therefore, whether psychological observation
is more an advantage than a disadvantage to mankind may always remain
undetermined: but there is no doubt that it is necessary, because
science can no longer dispense with it. Science, however, recognizes no
considerations of ultimate goals or ends any more than nature does; but
as the latter duly matures things of the highest fitness for certain
ends without any intention of doing it, so will true science, doing with
ideas what nature does with matter,[20] promote the purposes and the
welfare of humanity, (as occasion may afford, and in many ways) and
attain fitness [to ends]--but likewise without having intended it.
[20] als die Nachahmung der Natur in Begriffen, literally: "as the
counterfeit of nature in (regard to) ideas. "
He to whom the atmospheric conditions of such a prospect are too wintry,
has too little fire in him: let him look about him, and he will become
sensible of maladies requiring an icy air, and of people who are so
"kneaded together" out of ardor and intellect that they can scarcely
find anywhere an atmosphere too cold and cutting for them. Moreover: as
too serious individuals and nations stand in need of trivial
relaxations; as others, too volatile and excitable require onerous,
weighty ordeals to render them entirely healthy: should not we, the more
intellectual men of this age, which is swept more and more by
conflagrations, catch up every cooling and extinguishing appliance we
can find that we may always remain as self contained, steady and calm as
we are now, and thereby perhaps serve this age as its mirror and self
reflector, when the occasion arises?
39
=The Fable of Discretionary Freedom. =--The history of the feelings, on
the basis of which we make everyone responsible, hence, the so-called
moral feelings, is traceable in the following leading phases. At first
single actions are termed good or bad without any reference to their
motive, but solely because of the utilitarian or prejudicial
consequences they have for the community. In time, however, the origin
of these designations is forgotten [but] it is imagined that action in
itself, without reference to its consequences, contains the property
"good" or "bad": with the same error according to which language
designates the stone itself as hard[ness] the tree itself as
green[ness]--for the reason, therefore, that what is a consequence is
comprehended as a cause. Accordingly, the good[ness] or bad[ness] is
incorporated into the motive and [any] deed by itself is regarded as
morally ambiguous. A step further is taken, and the predication good or
bad is no longer made of the particular motives but of the entire nature
of a man, out of which motive grows as grow the plants out of the soil.
Thus man is successively made responsible for his [particular] acts,
then for his [course of] conduct, then for his motives and finally for
his nature. Now, at last, is it discovered that this nature, even,
cannot be responsible, inasmuch as it is only and wholly a necessary
consequence and is synthesised out of the elements and influence of past
and present things: therefore, that man is to be made responsible for
nothing, neither for his nature, nor his motives, nor his [course of]
conduct nor his [particular] acts. By this [process] is gained the
knowledge that the history of moral estimates is the history of error,
of the error of responsibility: as is whatever rests upon the error of
the freedom of the will. Schopenhauer concluded just the other way,
thus: since certain actions bring depression ("consciousness of guilt")
in their train, there must, then, exist responsibility, for there would
be no basis for this depression at hand if all man's affairs did not
follow their course of necessity--as they do, indeed, according to the
opinion of this philosopher, follow their course--but man himself,
subject to the same necessity, would be just the man that he is--which
Schopenhauer denies. From the fact of such depression Schopenhauer
believes himself able to prove a freedom which man in some way must have
had, not indeed in regard to his actions but in regard to his nature:
freedom, therefore, to be thus and so, not to act thus and so. Out of
the _esse_, the sphere of freedom and responsibility, follows, according
to his opinion, the _operari_, the spheres of invariable causation,
necessity and irresponsibility. This depression, indeed, is due
apparently to the _operari_--in so far as it be delusive--but in truth
to whatever _esse_ be the deed of a free will, the basic cause of the
existence of an individual: [in order to] let man become whatever he
wills to become, his [to] will (Wollen) must precede his
existence. --Here, apart from the absurdity of the statement just made,
there is drawn the wrong inference that the fact of the depression
explains its character, the rational admissibility of it: from such a
wrong inference does Schopenhauer first come to his fantastic consequent
of the so called discretionary freedom (intelligibeln Freiheit). (For
the origin of this fabulous entity Plato and Kant are equally
responsible). But depression after the act does not need to be rational:
indeed, it is certainly not so at all, for it rests upon the erroneous
assumption that the act need not necessarily have come to pass.
Therefore: only because man deems himself free, but not because
he is free, does he experience remorse and the stings of
conscience. --Moreover, this depression is something that can be grown
out of; in many men it is not present at all as a consequence of acts
which inspire it in many other men. It is a very varying thing and one
closely connected with the development of custom and civilization, and
perhaps manifest only during a relatively brief period of the world's
history. --No one is responsible for his acts, no one for his nature; to
judge is tantamount to being unjust. This applies as well when the
individual judges himself. The proposition is as clear as sunlight, and
yet here everyone prefers to go back to darkness and untruth: for fear
of the consequences.
40
=Above Animal. =--The beast in us must be wheedled: ethic is necessary,
that we may not be torn to pieces. Without the errors involved in the
assumptions of ethics, man would have remained an animal. Thus has he
taken himself as something higher and imposed rigid laws upon himself.
He feels hatred, consequently, for states approximating the animal:
whence the former contempt for the slave as a not-yet-man, as a thing,
is to be explained.
41
=Unalterable Character. =--That character is unalterable is not, in the
strict sense, true; rather is this favorite proposition valid only to
the extent that during the brief life period of a man the potent new
motives can not, usually, press down hard enough to obliterate the lines
imprinted by ages. Could we conceive of a man eighty thousand years old,
we should have in him an absolutely alterable character; so that the
maturities of successive, varying individuals would develop in him. The
shortness of human life leads to many erroneous assertions concerning
the qualities of man.
42
=Classification of Enjoyments and Ethic. =--The once accepted comparative
classification of enjoyments, according to which an inferior, higher,
highest egoism may crave one or another enjoyment, now decides as to
ethical status or unethical status. A lower enjoyment (for example,
sensual pleasure) preferred to a more highly esteemed one (for example,
health) rates as unethical, as does welfare preferred to freedom. The
comparative classification of enjoyments is not, however, alike or the
same at all periods; when anyone demands satisfaction of the law, he is,
from the point of view of an earlier civilization, moral, from that of
the present, non-moral. "Unethical" indicates, therefore, that a man is
not sufficiently sensible to the higher, finer impulses which the
present civilization has brought with it, or is not sensible to them at
all; it indicates backwardness, but only from the point of view of the
contemporary degree of distinction. --The comparative classification of
enjoyments itself is not determined according to absolute ethics; but
after each new ethical adjustment, it is then decided whether conduct be
ethical or the reverse.
43
=Inhuman Men as Survivals. =--Men who are now inhuman must serve us as
surviving specimens of earlier civilizations. The mountain height of
humanity here reveals its lower formations, which might otherwise remain
hidden from view. There are surviving specimens of humanity whose brains
through the vicissitudes of heredity, have escaped proper development.
They show us what we all were and thus appal us; but they are as little
responsible on this account as is a piece of granite for being granite.
In our own brains there must be courses and windings corresponding to
such characters, just as in the forms of some human organs there survive
traces of fishhood. But these courses and windings are no longer the bed
in which flows the stream of our feeling.
44
=Gratitude and Revenge. =--The reason the powerful man is grateful is
this. His benefactor has, through his benefaction, invaded the domain of
the powerful man and established himself on an equal footing: the
powerful man in turn invades the domain of the benefactor and gets
satisfaction through the act of gratitude. It is a mild form of revenge.
By not obtaining the satisfaction of gratitude the powerful would have
shown himself powerless and have ranked as such thenceforward. Hence
every society of the good, that is to say, of the powerful originally,
places gratitude among the first of duties. --Swift has added the dictum
that man is grateful in the same degree that he is revengeful.
45
=Two-fold Historical Origin of Good and Evil. =--The notion of good and
bad has a two-fold historical origin: namely, first, in the spirit of
ruling races and castes. Whoever has power to requite good with good and
evil with evil and actually brings requital, (that is, is grateful and
revengeful) acquires the name of being good; whoever is powerless and
cannot requite is called bad. A man belongs, as a good individual, to
the "good" of a community, who have a feeling in common, because all the
individuals are allied with one another through the requiting sentiment.
A man belongs, as a bad individual, to the "bad," to a mass of
subjugated, powerless men who have no feeling in common. The good are a
caste, the bad are a quantity, like dust. Good and bad is, for a
considerable period, tantamount to noble and servile, master and slave.
On the other hand an enemy is not looked upon as bad: he can requite.
The Trojan and the Greek are in Homer both good. Not he, who does no
harm, but he who is despised, is deemed bad. In the community of the
good individuals [the quality of] good[ness] is inherited; it is
impossible for a bad individual to grow from such a rich soil. If,
notwithstanding, one of the good individuals does something unworthy of
his goodness, recourse is had to exorcism; thus the guilt is ascribed to
a deity, the while it is declared that this deity bewitched the good man
into madness and blindness. --Second, in the spirit of the subjugated,
the powerless. Here every other man is, to the individual, hostile,
inconsiderate, greedy, inhuman, avaricious, be he noble or servile; bad
is the characteristic term for man, for every living being, indeed, that
is recognized at all, even for a god: human, divine, these notions are
tantamount to devilish, bad. Manifestations of goodness, sympathy,
helpfulness, are regarded with anxiety as trickiness, preludes to an
evil end, deception, subtlety, in short, as refined badness. With such a
predisposition in individuals, a feeling in common can scarcely arise at
all, at most only the rudest form of it: so that everywhere that this
conception of good and evil prevails, the destruction of the
individuals, their race and nation, is imminent. --Our existing morality
has developed upon the foundation laid by ruling races and castes.
46
=Sympathy Greater than Suffering. =--There are circumstances in which
sympathy is stronger than the suffering itself. We feel more pain, for
instance, when one of our friends becomes guilty of a reprehensible
action than if we had done the deed ourselves. We once, that is, had
more faith in the purity of his character than he had himself. Hence our
love for him, (apparently because of this very faith) is stronger than
is his own love for himself. If, indeed, his egoism really suffers more,
as a result, than our egoism, inasmuch as he must take the consequences
of his fault to a greater extent than ourselves, nevertheless, the
unegoistic--this word is not to be taken too strictly, but simply as a
modified form of expression--in us is more affected by his guilt than
the unegoistic in him.
47
=Hypochondria. =--There are people who, from sympathy and anxiety for
others become hypochondriacal. The resulting form of compassion is
nothing else than sickness. So, also, is there a Christian hypochondria,
from which those singular, religiously agitated people suffer who place
always before their eyes the suffering and death of Christ.
48
=Economy of Blessings. =--The advantageous and the pleasing, as the
healthiest growths and powers in the intercourse of men, are such
precious treasures that it is much to be wished the use made of these
balsamic means were as economical as possible: but this is impossible.
Economy in the use of blessings is the dream of the craziest of
Utopians.
49
=Well-Wishing. =--Among the small, but infinitely plentiful and therefore
very potent things to which science must pay more attention than to the
great, uncommon things, well-wishing[21] must be reckoned; I mean those
manifestations of friendly disposition in intercourse, that laughter of
the eye, every hand pressure, every courtesy from which, in general,
every human act gets its quality. Every teacher, every functionary adds
this element as a gratuity to whatever he does as a duty; it is the
perpetual well spring of humanity, like the waves of light in which
everything grows; thus, in the narrowest circles, within the family,
life blooms and flowers only through this kind feeling. The
cheerfulness, friendliness and kindness of a heart are unfailing
sources of unegoistic impulse and have made far more for civilization
than those other more noised manifestations of it that are styled
sympathy, benevolence and sacrifice. But it is customary to depreciate
these little tokens of kindly feeling, and, indeed, there is not much of
the unegoistic in them. The sum of these little doses is very great,
nevertheless; their combined strength is of the greatest of
strengths. --Thus, too, much more happiness is to be found in the world
than gloomy eyes discover: that is, if the calculation be just, and all
these pleasing moments in which every day, even the meanest human life,
is rich, be not forgotten.
[21] Wohl-wollen, kind feeling. It stands here for benevolence but not
benevolence in the restricted sense of the word now prevailing.
50
=The Desire to Inspire Compassion. =--La Rochefoucauld, in the most
notable part of his self portraiture (first printed 1658) reaches the
vital spot of truth when he warns all those endowed with reason to be on
their guard against compassion, when he advises that this sentiment be
left to men of the masses who stand in need of the promptings of the
emotions (since they are not guided by reason) to induce them to give
aid to the suffering and to be of service in misfortune: whereas
compassion, in his (and Plato's) view, deprives the heart of strength.
To be sure, sympathy should be manifested but men should take care not
to feel it; for the unfortunate are rendered so dull that the
manifestation of sympathy affords them the greatest happiness in the
world. --Perhaps a more effectual warning against this compassion can be
given if this need of the unfortunate be considered not simply as
stupidity and intellectual weakness, not as a sort of distraction of the
spirit entailed by misfortune itself (and thus, indeed, does La
Rochefoucauld seem to view it) but as something quite different and more
momentous. Let note be taken of children who cry and scream in order to
be compassionated and who, therefore, await the moment when their
condition will be observed; come into contact with the sick and the
oppressed in spirit and try to ascertain if the wailing and sighing, the
posturing and posing of misfortune do not have as end and aim the
causing of pain to the beholder: the sympathy which each beholder
manifests is a consolation to the weak and suffering only in as much as
they are made to perceive that at least they have the power,
notwithstanding all their weakness, to inflict pain. The unfortunate
experiences a species of joy in the sense of superiority which the
manifestation of sympathy entails; his imagination is exalted; he is
always strong enough, then, to cause the world pain. Thus is the thirst
for sympathy a thirst for self enjoyment and at the expense of one's
fellow creatures: it shows man in the whole ruthlessness of his own dear
self: not in his mere "dullness" as La Rochefoucauld thinks. --In social
conversation three fourths of all the questions are asked, and three
fourths of all the replies are made in order to inflict some little
pain; that is why so many people crave social intercourse: it gives them
a sense of their power. In these countless but very small doses in which
the quality of badness is administered it proves a potent stimulant of
life: to the same extent that well wishing--(Wohl-wollen) distributed
through the world in like manner, is one of the ever ready
restoratives. --But will many honorable people be found to admit that
there is any pleasure in administering pain? that entertainment--and
rare entertainment--is not seldom found in causing others, at least in
thought, some pain, and in raking them with the small shot of
wickedness? The majority are too ignoble and a few are too good to know
anything of this pudendum: the latter may, consequently, be prompt to
deny that Prosper Merimee is right when he says: "Know, also, that
nothing is more common than to do wrong for the pleasure of doing it. "
51
=How Appearance Becomes Reality. =--The actor cannot, at last, refrain,
even in moments of the deepest pain, from thinking of the effect
produced by his deportment and by his surroundings--for example, even at
the funeral of his own child: he will weep at his own sorrow and its
manifestations as though he were his own audience. The hypocrite who
always plays one and the same part, finally ceases to be a hypocrite; as
in the case of priests who, when young men, are always, either
consciously or unconsciously, hypocrites, and finally become naturally
and then really, without affectation, mere priests: or if the father
does not carry it to this extent, the son, who inherits his father's
calling and gets the advantage of the paternal progress, does. When
anyone, during a long period, and persistently, wishes to appear
something, it will at last prove difficult for him to be anything else.
The calling of almost every man, even of the artist, begins with
hypocrisy, with an imitation of deportment, with a copying of the
effective in manner. He who always wears the mask of a friendly man must
at last gain a power over friendliness of disposition, without which the
expression itself of friendliness is not to be gained--and finally
friendliness of disposition gains the ascendancy over him--he _is_
benevolent.
52
=The Point of Honor in Deception. =--In all great deceivers one
characteristic is prominent, to which they owe their power. In the very
act of deception, amid all the accompaniments, the agitation in the
voice, the expression, the bearing, in the crisis of the scene, there
comes over them a belief in themselves; this it is that acts so
effectively and irresistibly upon the beholders. Founders of religions
differ from such great deceivers in that they never come out of this
state of self deception, or else they have, very rarely, a few moments
of enlightenment in which they are overcome by doubt; generally,
however, they soothe themselves by ascribing such moments of
enlightenment to the evil adversary. Self deception must exist that both
classes of deceivers may attain far reaching results. For men believe in
the truth of all that is manifestly believed with due implicitness by
others.
53
=Presumed Degrees of Truth. =--One of the most usual errors of deduction
is: because someone truly and openly is against us, therefore he speaks
the truth. Hence the child has faith in the judgments of its elders, the
Christian in the assertions of the founder of the church. So, too, it
will not be admitted that all for which men sacrificed life and
happiness in former centuries was nothing but delusion: perhaps it is
alleged these things were degrees of truth. But what is really meant is
that, if a person sincerely believes a thing and has fought and died for
his faith, it would be too _unjust_ if only delusion had inspired him.
Such a state of affairs seems to contradict eternal justice. For that
reason the heart of a sensitive man pronounces against his head the
judgment: between moral conduct and intellectual insight there must
always exist an inherent connection. It is, unfortunately, otherwise:
for there is no eternal justice.
54
=Falsehood. =--Why do men, as a rule, speak the truth in the ordinary
affairs of life? Certainly not for the reason that a god has forbidden
lying. But because first: it is more convenient, as falsehood entails
invention, make-believe and recollection (wherefore Swift says that
whoever invents a lie seldom realises the heavy burden he takes up: he
must, namely, for every lie that he tells, insert twenty more).
Therefore, because in plain ordinary relations of life it is expedient
to say without circumlocution: I want this, I have done this, and the
like; therefore, because the way of freedom and certainty is surer than
that of ruse. --But if it happens that a child is brought up in sinister
domestic circumstances, it will then indulge in falsehood as matter of
course, and involuntarily say anything its own interests may prompt: an
inclination for truth, an aversion to falsehood, is quite foreign and
uncongenial to it, and hence it lies in all innocence.
55
=Ethic Discredited for Faith's Sake. =--No power can sustain itself when
it is represented by mere humbugs: the Catholic Church may possess ever
so many "worldly" sources of strength, but its true might is comprised
in those still numberless priestly natures who make their lives stern
and strenuous and whose looks and emaciated bodies are eloquent of night
vigils, fasts, ardent prayer, perhaps even of whip lashes: these things
make men tremble and cause them anxiety: what, if it be really
imperative to live thus? This is the dreadful question which their
aspect occasions. As they spread this doubt, they lay anew the prop of
their power: even the free thinkers dare not oppose such
disinterestedness with severe truth and cry: "Thou deceived one,
deceive not! "--Only the difference of standpoint separates them from
him: no difference in goodness or badness. But things we cannot
accomplish ourselves, we are apt to criticise unfairly. Thus we are told
of the cunning and perverted acts of the Jesuits, but we overlook the
self mastery that each Jesuit imposes upon himself and also the fact
that the easy life which the Jesuit manuals advocate is for the benefit,
not of the Jesuits but the laity. Indeed, it may be questioned whether
we enlightened ones would become equally competent workers as the result
of similar tactics and organization, and equally worthy of admiration as
the result of self mastery, indefatigable industry and devotion.
56
=Victory of Knowledge over Radical Evil. =--It proves a material gain to
him who would attain knowledge to have had during a considerable period
the idea that mankind is a radically bad and perverted thing: it is a
false idea, as is its opposite, but it long held sway and its roots have
reached down even to ourselves and our present world. In order to
understand _ourselves_ we must understand _it_; but in order to attain a
loftier height we must step above it. We then perceive that there is no
such thing as sin in the metaphysical sense: but also, in the same
sense, no such thing as virtue; that this whole domain of ethical
notions is one of constant variation; that there are higher and deeper
conceptions of good and evil, moral and immoral. Whoever desires no more
of things than knowledge of them attains speedily to peace of mind and
will at most err through lack of knowledge, but scarcely through
eagerness for knowledge (or through sin, as the world calls it). He will
not ask that eagerness for knowledge be interdicted and rooted out; but
his single, all powerful ambition to _know_ as thoroughly and as fully
as possible, will soothe him and moderate all that is strenuous in his
circumstances. Moreover, he is now rid of a number of disturbing
notions; he is no longer beguiled by such words as hell-pain,
sinfulness, unworthiness: he sees in them merely the flitting shadow
pictures of false views of life and of the world.
57
=Ethic as Man's Self-Analysis. =--A good author, whose heart is really in
his work, wishes that someone would arise and wholly refute him if only
thereby his subject be wholly clarified and made plain. The maid in love
wishes that she could attest the fidelity of her own passion through
the faithlessness of her beloved. The soldier wishes to sacrifice his
life on the field of his fatherland's victory: for in the victory of his
fatherland his highest end is attained. The mother gives her child what
she deprives herself of--sleep, the best nourishment and, in certain
circumstances, her health, her self. --But are all these acts unegoistic?
Are these moral deeds miracles because they are, in Schopenhauer's
phrase "impossible and yet accomplished"? Is it not evident that in all
four cases man loves one part of himself, (a thought, a longing, an
experience) more than he loves another part of himself? that he thus
analyses his being and sacrifices one part of it to another part? Is
this essentially different from the behavior of the obstinate man who
says "I would rather be shot than go a step out of my way for this
fellow"? --Preference for something (wish, impulse, longing) is present
in all four instances: to yield to it, with all its consequences, is not
"unegoistic. "--In the domain of the ethical man conducts himself not as
individuum but as dividuum.
58
=What Can be Promised. =--Actions can be promised, but not feelings, for
these are involuntary. Whoever promises somebody to love him always, or
to hate him always, or to be ever true to him, promises something that
it is out of his power to bestow. But he really can promise such courses
of conduct as are the ordinary accompaniments of love, of hate, of
fidelity, but which may also have their source in motives quite
different: for various ways and motives lead to the same conduct. The
promise to love someone always, means, consequently: as long as I love
you, I will manifest the deportment of love; but if I cease to love you
my deportment, although from some other motive, will be just the same,
so that to the people about us it will seem as if my love remained
unchanged. --Hence it is the continuance of the deportment of love that
is promised in every instance in which eternal love (provided no element
of self deception be involved) is sworn.
59
=Intellect and Ethic. =--One must have a good memory to be able to keep
the promises one makes. One must have a strong imagination in order to
feel sympathy. So closely is ethics connected with intellectual
capacity.
60
=Desire for Vengeance and Vengeance Itself. =--To meditate revenge and
attain it is tantamount to an attack of fever, that passes away: but to
meditate revenge without possessing the strength or courage to attain it
is tantamount to suffering from a chronic malady, or poisoning of body
and soul. Ethics, which takes only the motive into account, rates both
cases alike: people generally estimate the first case as the worst
(because of the consequences which the deed of vengeance may entail).
Both views are short sighted.
61
=Ability to Wait. =--Ability to wait is so hard to acquire that great
poets have not disdained to make inability to wait the central motive of
their poems. So Shakespeare in Othello, Sophocles in Ajax, whose suicide
would not have seemed to him so imperative had he only been able to cool
his ardor for a day, as the oracle foreboded: apparently he would then
have repulsed somewhat the fearful whispers of distracted thought and
have said to himself: Who has not already, in my situation, mistaken a
sheep for a hero? is it so extraordinary a thing? On the contrary it is
something universally human: Ajax should thus have soothed himself.
Passion will not wait: the tragic element in the lives of great men does
not generally consist in their conflict with time and the inferiority
of their fellowmen but in their inability to put off their work a year
or two: they cannot wait. --In all duels, the friends who advise have but
to ascertain if the principals can wait: if this be not possible, a duel
is rational inasmuch as each of the combatants may say: "either I
continue to live and the other dies instantly, or vice versa. " To wait
in such circumstances would be equivalent to the frightful martyrdom of
enduring dishonor in the presence of him responsible for the dishonor:
and this can easily cost more anguish than life is worth.
62
=Glutting Revenge. =--Coarse men, who feel a sense of injury, are in the
habit of rating the extent of their injury as high as possible and of
stating the occasion of it in greatly exaggerated language, in order to
be able to feast themselves on the sentiments of hatred and revenge thus
aroused.
63
=Value of Disparagement. =--Not a few, perhaps the majority of men, find
it necessary, in order to retain their self esteem and a certain
uprightness in conduct, to mentally disparage and belittle all the
people they know. But as the inferior natures are in the majority and as
a great deal depends upon whether they retain or lose this uprightness,
so--
64
=The Man in a Rage. =--We should be on our guard against the man who is
enraged against us, as against one who has attempted our life, for the
fact that we still live consists solely in the inability to kill: were
looks sufficient, it would have been all up with us long since.
To
reduce anyone to silence by physical manifestations of savagery or by a
terrorizing process is a relic of under civilization. So, too, that cold
look which great personages cast upon their servitors is a remnant of
the caste distinction between man and man; a specimen of rude antiquity:
women, the conservers of the old, have maintained this survival, too,
more perfectly than men.
65
=Whither Honesty May Lead. =--Someone once had the bad habit of
expressing himself upon occasion, and with perfect honesty, on the
subject of the motives of his conduct, which were as good or as bad as
the motives of all men. He aroused first disfavor, then suspicion,
became gradually of ill repute and was pronounced a person of whom
society should beware, until at last the law took note of such a
perverted being for reasons which usually have no weight with it or to
which it closes its eyes. Lack of taciturnity concerning what is
universally held secret, and an irresponsible predisposition to see what
no one wants to see--oneself--brought him to prison and to early death.
66
=Punishable, not Punished. =--Our crime against criminals consists in the
fact that we treat them as rascals.
67
=Sancta simplicitas of Virtue. =--Every virtue has its privilege: for
example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the
funeral pyre of one condemned.
68
=Morality and Consequence. =--Not alone the beholders of an act generally
estimate the ethical or unethical element in it by the result: no, the
one who performed the act does the same. For the motives and the
intentions are seldom sufficiently apparent, and amid them the memory
itself seems to become clouded by the results of the act, so that a man
often ascribes the wrong motives to his acts or regards the remote
motives as the direct ones. Success often imparts to an action all the
brilliance and honor of good intention, while failure throws the shadow
of conscience over the most estimable deeds. Hence arises the familiar
maxim of the politician: "Give me only success: with it I can win all
the noble souls over to my side--and make myself noble even in my own
eyes. "--In like manner will success prove an excellent substitute for a
better argument. To this very day many well educated men think the
triumph of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior
truth of the former--although in this case it was simply the coarser and
more powerful that triumphed over the more delicate and intellectual. As
regards superiority of truth, it is evident that because of it the
reviving sciences have connected themselves, point for point, with the
philosophy of Epicurus, while Christianity has, point for point,
recoiled from it.
69
=Love and Justice. =--Why is love so highly prized at the expense of
justice and why are such beautiful things spoken of the former as if it
were a far higher entity than the latter? Is the former not palpably a
far more stupid thing than the latter? --Certainly, and on that very
account so much the more agreeable to everybody: it is blind and has a
rich horn of plenty out of which it distributes its gifts to everyone,
even when they are unmerited, even when no thanks are returned. It is
impartial like the rain, which according to the bible and experience,
wets not alone the unjust but, in certain circumstances, the just as
well, and to their skins at that.
70
=Execution. =--How comes it that every execution causes us more pain than
a murder? It is the coolness of the executioner, the painful
preparation, the perception that here a man is being used as an
instrument for the intimidation of others. For the guilt is not punished
even if there be any: this is ascribable to the teachers, the parents,
the environment, in ourselves, not in the murderer--I mean the
predisposing circumstances.
71
=Hope. =--Pandora brought the box containing evils and opened it. It was
the gift of the gods to men, a gift of most enticing appearance
externally and called the "box of happiness. " Thereupon all the evils,
(living, moving things) flew out: from that time to the present they fly
about and do ill to men by day and night. One evil only did not fly out
of the box: Pandora shut the lid at the behest of Zeus and it remained
inside. Now man has this box of happiness perpetually in the house and
congratulates himself upon the treasure inside of it; it is at his
service: he grasps it whenever he is so disposed, for he knows not that
the box which Pandora brought was a box of evils. Hence he looks upon
the one evil still remaining as the greatest source of happiness--it is
hope. --Zeus intended that man, notwithstanding the evils oppressing him,
should continue to live and not rid himself of life, but keep on making
himself miserable. For this purpose he bestowed hope upon man: it is, in
truth, the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal of man.
72
=Degree of Moral Susceptibility Unknown. =--The fact that one has or has
not had certain profoundly moving impressions and insights into
things--for example, an unjustly executed, slain or martyred father, a
faithless wife, a shattering, serious accident,--is the factor upon
which the excitation of our passions to white heat principally depends,
as well as the course of our whole lives. No one knows to what lengths
circumstances (sympathy, emotion) may lead him. He does not know the
full extent of his own susceptibility. Wretched environment makes him
wretched. It is as a rule not the quality of our experience but its
quantity upon which depends the development of our superiority or
inferiority, from the point of view of good and evil.
73
=The Martyr Against His Will. =--In a certain movement there was a man
who was too cowardly and vacillating ever to contradict his comrades. He
was made use of in each emergency, every sacrifice was demanded of him
because he feared the disfavor of his comrades more than he feared
death: he was a petty, abject spirit. They perceived this and upon the
foundation of the qualities just mentioned they elevated him to the
altitude of a hero, and finally even of a martyr. Although the cowardly
creature always inwardly said No, he always said Yes with his lips, even
upon the scaffold, where he died for the tenets of his party: for beside
him stood one of his old associates who so domineered him with look and
word that he actually went to his death with the utmost fortitude and
has ever since been celebrated as a martyr and exalted character.
74
=General Standard. =--One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed
to vanity, ordinary actions to habit and mean actions to fear.
75
=Misunderstanding of Virtue. =--Whoever has obtained his experience of
vice in connection with pleasure as in the case of one with a youth of
wild oats behind him, comes to the conclusion that virtue must be
connected with self denial. Whoever, on the other hand, has been very
much plagued by his passions and vices, longs to find in virtue the rest
and peace of the soul. That is why it is possible for two virtuous
people to misunderstand one another wholly.
76
=The Ascetic. =--The ascetic makes out of virtue a slavery.
77
=Honor Transferred from Persons to Things. =--Actions prompted by love or
by the spirit of self sacrifice for others are universally honored
wherever they are manifest. Hence is magnified the value set upon
whatever things may be loved or whatever things conduce to self
sacrifice: although in themselves they may be worth nothing much. A
valiant army is evidence of the value of the thing it fights for.
78
=Ambition a Substitute for Moral Feeling. =--Moral feeling should never
become extinct in natures that are destitute of ambition. The ambitious
can get along without moral feeling just as well as with it. --Hence the
sons of retired, ambitionless families, generally become by a series of
rapid gradations, when they lose moral feeling, the most absolute
lunkheads.
79
=Vanity Enriches. =--How poor the human mind would be without vanity! As
it is, it resembles a well stacked and ever renewed ware-emporium that
attracts buyers of every class: they can find almost everything, have
almost everything, provided they bring with them the right kind of
money--admiration.
80
=Senility and Death. =--Apart from the demands made by religion, it may
well be asked why it is more honorable in an aged man, who feels the
decline of his powers, to await slow extinction than to fix a term to
his existence himself? Suicide in such a case is a quite natural and due
proceeding that ought to command respect as a triumph of reason: and did
in fact command respect during the times of the masters of Greek
philosophy and the bravest Roman patriots, who usually died by their own
hand. Eagerness, on the other hand, to keep alive from day to day with
the anxious counsel of physicians, without capacity to attain any nearer
to one's ideal of life, is far less worthy of respect. --Religions are
very rich in refuges from the mandate of suicide: hence they ingratiate
themselves with those who cling to life.
81
=Delusions Regarding Victim and Regarding Evil Doer. =--When the rich man
takes a possession away from the poor man (for example, a prince who
deprives a plebeian of his beloved) there arises in the mind of the poor
man a delusion: he thinks the rich man must be wholly perverted to take
from him the little that he has. But the rich man appreciates the value
of a single possession much less because he is accustomed to many
possessions, so that he cannot put himself in the place of the poor man
and does not act by any means as ill as the latter supposes. Both have a
totally false idea of each other. The iniquities of the mighty which
bulk most largely in history are not nearly so monstrous as they seem.
The hereditary consciousness of being a superior being with superior
environment renders one very callous and lulls the conscience to rest.
We all feel, when the difference between ourselves and some other being
is exceedingly great, that no element of injustice can be involved, and
we kill a fly with no qualms of conscience whatever. So, too, it is no
indication of wickedness in Xerxes (whom even the Greeks represent as
exceptionally noble) that he deprived a father of his son and had him
drawn and quartered because the latter had manifested a troublesome,
ominous distrust of an entire expedition: the individual was in this
case brushed aside as a pestiferous insect. He was too low and mean to
justify continued sentiments of compunction in the ruler of the world.
Indeed no cruel man is ever as cruel, in the main, as his victim thinks.
The idea of pain is never the same as the sensation. The rule is
precisely analogous in the case of the unjust judge, and of the
journalist who by means of devious rhetorical methods, leads public
opinion astray. Cause and effect are in all these instances entwined
with totally different series of feeling and thoughts, whereas it is
unconsciously assumed that principal and victim feel and think exactly
alike, and because of this assumption the guilt of the one is based upon
the pain of the other.
82
=The Soul's Skin. =--As the bones, flesh, entrails and blood vessels are
enclosed by a skin that renders the aspect of men endurable, so the
impulses and passions of the soul are enclosed by vanity: it is the skin
of the soul.
83
=Sleep of Virtue. =--If virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous
when it awakes.
84
=Subtlety of Shame. =--Men are not ashamed of obscene thoughts, but they
are ashamed when they suspect that obscene thoughts are attributed to
them.
85
=Naughtiness Is Rare. =--Most people are too much absorbed in themselves
to be bad.
86
=The Mite in the Balance. =--We are praised or blamed, as the one or the
other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of
discernment.
87
=Luke 18:14 Improved. =--He that humbleth himself wisheth to be exalted.
88
=Prevention of Suicide. =--There is a justice according to which we may
deprive a man of life, but none that permits us to deprive him of death:
this is merely cruelty.
89
=Vanity. =--We set store by the good opinion of men, first because it is
of use to us and next because we wish to give them pleasure (children
their parents, pupils their teacher, and well disposed persons all
others generally). Only when the good opinion of men is important to
somebody, apart from personal advantage or the desire to give pleasure,
do we speak of vanity. In this last case, a man wants to give himself
pleasure, but at the expense of his fellow creatures, inasmuch as he
inspires them with a false opinion of himself or else inspires "good
opinion" in such a way that it is a source of pain to others (by
arousing envy). The individual generally seeks, through the opinion of
others, to attest and fortify the opinion he has of himself; but the
potent influence of authority--an influence as old as man himself--leads
many, also, to strengthen their own opinion of themselves by means of
authority, that is, to borrow from others the expedient of relying more
upon the judgment of their fellow men than upon their own. --Interest in
oneself, the wish to please oneself attains, with the vain man, such
proportions that he first misleads others into a false, unduly exalted
estimate of himself and then relies upon the authority of others for his
self estimate; he thus creates the delusion that he pins his faith
to. --It must, however, be admitted that the vain man does not desire to
please others so much as himself and he will often go so far, on this
account, as to overlook his own interests: for he often inspires his
fellow creatures with malicious envy and renders them ill disposed in
order that he may thus increase his own delight in himself.
90
=Limits of the Love of Mankind. =--Every man who has declared that some
other man is an ass or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other man
conclusively shows that the assertion was erroneous.
91
=Weeping Morality. =--How much delight morality occasions! Think of the
ocean of pleasing tears that has flowed from the narration of noble,
great-hearted deeds! --This charm of life would disappear if the belief
in complete irresponsibility gained the upper hand.
92
=Origin of Justice. =--Justice (reasonableness) has its origin among
approximate equals in power, as Thucydides (in the dreadful conferences
of the Athenian and Melian envoys) has rightly conceived. Thus, where
there exists no demonstrable supremacy and a struggle leads but to
mutual, useless damage, the reflection arises that an understanding
would best be arrived at and some compromise entered into. The
reciprocal nature is hence the first nature of justice. Each party makes
the other content inasmuch as each receives what it prizes more highly
than the other. Each surrenders to the other what the other wants and
receives in return its own desire. Justice is therefore reprisal and
exchange upon the basis of an approximate equality of power. Thus
revenge pertains originally to the domain of justice as it is a sort of
reciprocity. Equally so, gratitude. --Justice reverts naturally to the
standpoint of self preservation, therefore to the egoism of this
consideration: "why should I injure myself to no purpose and perhaps
never attain my end? "--So much for the origin of justice. Only because
men, through mental habits, have forgotten the original motive of so
called just and rational acts, and also because for thousands of years
children have been brought to admire and imitate such acts, have they
gradually assumed the appearance of being unegotistical. Upon this
appearance is founded the high estimate of them, which, moreover, like
all estimates, is continually developing, for whatever is highly
esteemed is striven for, imitated, made the object of self sacrifice,
while the merit of the pain and emulation thus expended is, by each
individual, ascribed to the thing esteemed. --How slightly moral would
the world appear without forgetfulness! A poet could say that God had
posted forgetfulness as a sentinel at the portal of the temple of human
merit!
93
=Concerning the Law of the Weaker. =--Whenever any party, for instance, a
besieged city, yields to a stronger party, under stipulated conditions,
the counter stipulation is that there be a reduction to insignificance,
a burning and destruction of the city and thus a great damage inflicted
upon the stronger party. Thus arises a sort of equalization principle
upon the basis of which a law can be established. The enemy has an
advantage to gain by its maintenance. --To this extent there is also a
law between slaves and masters, limited only by the extent to which the
slave may be useful to his master. The law goes originally only so far
as the one party may appear to the other potent, invincible, stable, and
the like. To such an extent, then, the weaker has rights, but very
limited ones. Hence the famous dictum that each has as much law on his
side as his power extends (or more accurately, as his power is believed
to extend).
94
=The Three Phases of Morality Hitherto. =--It is the first evidence that
the animal has become human when his conduct ceases to be based upon the
immediately expedient, but upon the permanently useful; when he has,
therefore, grown utilitarian, capable of purpose. Thus is manifested the
first rule of reason. A still higher stage is attained when he regulates
his conduct upon the basis of honor, by means of which he gains mastery
of himself and surrenders his desires to principles; this lifts him far
above the phase in which he was actuated only by considerations of
personal advantage as he understood it. He respects and wishes to be
respected. This means that he comprehends utility as a thing dependent
upon what his opinion of others is and their opinion of him. Finally he
regulates his conduct (the highest phase of morality hitherto attained)
by his own standard of men and things. He himself decides, for himself
and for others, what is honorable and what is useful. He has become a
law giver to opinion, upon the basis of his ever higher developing
conception of the utilitarian and the honorable. Knowledge makes him
capable of placing the highest utility, (that is, the universal,
enduring utility) before merely personal utility,--of placing ennobling
recognition of the enduring and universal before the merely temporary:
he lives and acts as a collective individuality.
95
=Ethic of the Developed Individual. =--Hitherto the altruistic has been
looked upon as the distinctive characteristic of moral conduct, and it
is manifest that it was the consideration of universal utility that
prompted praise and recognition of altruistic conduct. Must not a
radical departure from this point of view be imminent, now that it is
being ever more clearly perceived that in the most personal
considerations the most general welfare is attained: so that conduct
inspired by the most personal considerations of advantage is just the
sort which has its origin in the present conception of morality (as a
universal utilitarianism)? To contemplate oneself as a complete
personality and bear the welfare of that personality in mind in all that
one does--this is productive of better results than any sympathetic
susceptibility and conduct in behalf of others. Indeed we all suffer
from such disparagement of our own personalities, which are at present
made to deteriorate from neglect. Capacity is, in fact, divorced from
our personality in most cases, and sacrificed to the state, to science,
to the needy, as if it were the bad which deserved to be made a
sacrifice. Now, we are willing to labor for our fellowmen but only to
the extent that we find our own highest advantage in so doing, no more,
no less. The whole matter depends upon what may be understood as one's
advantage: the crude, undeveloped, rough individualities will be the
very ones to estimate it most inadequately.
96
=Usage and Ethic. =--To be moral, virtuous, praiseworthy means to yield
obedience to ancient law and hereditary usage. Whether this obedience be
rendered readily or with difficulty is long immaterial. Enough that it
be rendered. "Good" finally comes to mean him who acts in the
traditional manner, as a result of heredity or natural disposition, that
is to say does what is customary with scarcely an effort, whatever that
may be (for example revenges injuries when revenge, as with the ancient
Greeks, was part of good morals). He is called good because he is good
"to some purpose," and as benevolence, sympathy, considerateness,
moderation and the like come, in the general course of conduct, to be
finally recognized as "good to some purpose" (as utilitarian) the
benevolent man, the helpful man, is duly styled "good". (At first other
and more important kinds of utilitarian qualities stand in the
foreground. ) Bad is "not habitual" (unusual), to do things not in
accordance with usage, to oppose the traditional, however rational or
the reverse the traditional may be. To do injury to one's social group
or community (and to one's neighbor as thus understood) is looked upon,
through all the variations of moral laws, in different ages, as the
peculiarly "immoral" act, so that to-day we associate the word "bad"
with deliberate injury to one's neighbor or community. "Egoistic" and
"non-egoistic" do not constitute the fundamental opposites that have
brought mankind to make a distinction between moral and immoral, good
and bad; but adherence to traditional custom, and emancipation from it.
How the traditional had its origin is quite immaterial; in any event it
had no reference to good and bad or any categorical imperative but to
the all important end of maintaining and sustaining the community, the
race, the confederation, the nation. Every superstitious custom that
originated in a misinterpreted event or casualty entailed some
tradition, to adhere to which is moral. To break loose from it is
dangerous, more prejudicial to the community than to the individual
(because divinity visits the consequences of impiety and sacrilege upon
the community rather than upon the individual). Now every tradition
grows ever more venerable--the more remote is its origin, the more
confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from
generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and
inspires awe. Thus it is that the precept of piety is a far loftier
morality than that inculcated by altruistic conduct.
97
=Delight in the Moral. =--A potent species of joy (and thereby the source
of morality) is custom. The customary is done more easily, better,
therefore preferably. A pleasure is felt in it and experience thus shows
that since this practice has held its own it must be good. A manner or
moral that lives and lets live is thus demonstrated advantageous,
necessary, in contradistinction to all new and not yet adopted
practices. The custom is therefore the blending of the agreeable and the
useful. Moreover it does not require deliberation. As soon as man can
exercise compulsion, he exercises it to enforce and establish his
customs, for they are to him attested lifewisdom. So, too, a community
of individuals constrains each one of their number to adopt the same
moral or custom. The error herein is this: Because a certain custom has
been agreeable to the feelings or at least because it proves a means of
maintenance, this custom must be imperative, for it is regarded as the
only thing that can possibly be consistent with well being. The well
being of life seems to spring from it alone. This conception of the
customary as a condition of existence is carried into the slightest
detail of morality. Inasmuch as insight into true causation is quite
restricted in all inferior peoples, a superstitious anxiety is felt that
everything be done in due routine. Even when a custom is exceedingly
burdensome it is preserved because of its supposed vital utility. It is
not known that the same degree of satisfaction can be experienced
through some other custom and even higher degrees of satisfaction, too.
But it is fully appreciated that all customs do become more agreeable
with the lapse of time, no matter how difficult they may have been found
in the beginning, and that even the severest way of life may be rendered
a matter of habit and therefore a pleasure.
98
=Pleasure and Social Instinct. =--Through his relations with other men,
man derives a new species of delight in those pleasurable emotions which
his own personality affords him; whereby the domain of pleasurable
emotions is made infinitely more comprehensive. No doubt he has
inherited many of these feelings from the brutes, which palpably feel
delight when they sport with one another, as mothers with their young.
So, too, the sexual relations must be taken into account: they make
every young woman interesting to every young man from the standpoint of
pleasure, and conversely. The feeling of pleasure originating in human
relationships makes men in general better. The delight in common, the
pleasures enjoyed together heighten one another. The individual feels a
sense of security. He becomes better natured. Distrust and malice
dissolve. For the man feels the sense of benefit and observes the same
feeling in others. Mutual manifestations of pleasure inspire mutual
sympathy, the sentiment of homogeneity. The same effect is felt also at
mutual sufferings, in a common danger, in stormy weather. Upon such a
foundation are built the earliest alliances: the object of which is the
mutual protection and safety from threatening misfortunes, and the
welfare of each individual. And thus the social instinct develops from
pleasure.
99
=The Guiltless Nature of So-Called Bad Acts. =--All "bad" acts are
inspired by the impulse to self preservation or, more accurately, by
the desire for pleasure and for the avoidance of pain in the individual.
dissection, with the knife and tweezers entailed by the process, can no
longer be spared humanity. Such is the imperative duty of any science
that investigates the origin and history of the so-called moral feelings
and which, in its progress, is called upon to posit and to solve
advanced social problems:--The older philosophy does not recognize the
newer at all and, through paltry evasions, has always gone astray in the
investigation of the origin and history of human estimates
(Werthschatzungen). With what results may now be very clearly perceived,
since it has been shown by many examples, how the errors of the greatest
philosophers have their origin in a false explanation of certain human
actions and feelings; how upon the foundation of an erroneous analysis
(for example, of the so called disinterested actions), a false ethic is
reared, to support which religion and like mythological monstrosities
are called in, until finally the shades of these troubled spirits
collapse in physics and in the comprehensive world point of view. But if
it be established that superficiality of psychological observation has
heretofore set the most dangerous snares for human judgment and
deduction, and will continue to do so, all the greater need is there of
that steady continuance of labor that never wearies putting stone upon
stone, little stone upon little stone; all the greater need is there of
a courage that is not ashamed of such humble labor and that will oppose
persistence, to all contempt. It is, finally, also true that countless
single observations concerning the human, all-too-human, have been
first made and uttered in circles accustomed, not to furnish matter for
scientific knowledge, but for intellectual pleasure-seeking; and the
original home atmosphere--a very seductive atmosphere--of the moral
maxim has almost inextricably interpenetrated the entire species, so
that the scientific man involuntarily manifests a sort of mistrust of
this species and of its seriousness. But it is sufficient to point to
the consequences: for already it is becoming evident that events of the
most portentous nature are developing in the domain of psychological
observation. What is the leading conclusion arrived at by one of the
subtlest and calmest of thinkers, the author of the work "Concerning the
Origin of the Moral Feelings", as a result of his thorough and incisive
analysis of human conduct? "The moral man," he says, "stands no nearer
the knowable (metaphysical) world than the physical man. "[19] This
dictum, grown hard and cutting beneath the hammer-blow of historical
knowledge, can some day, perhaps, in some future or other, serve as the
axe that will be laid to the root of the "metaphysical necessities" of
men--whether more to the blessing than to the banning of universal well
being who can say? --but in any event a dictum fraught with the most
momentous consequences, fruitful and fearful at once, and confronting
the world in the two faced way characteristic of all great facts.
[19] "Der moralische Mensch, sagt er, steht der intelligiblen
(metaphysischen) Welt nicht naher, als der physische Mensch. "
38
=To What Extent Useful. =--Therefore, whether psychological observation
is more an advantage than a disadvantage to mankind may always remain
undetermined: but there is no doubt that it is necessary, because
science can no longer dispense with it. Science, however, recognizes no
considerations of ultimate goals or ends any more than nature does; but
as the latter duly matures things of the highest fitness for certain
ends without any intention of doing it, so will true science, doing with
ideas what nature does with matter,[20] promote the purposes and the
welfare of humanity, (as occasion may afford, and in many ways) and
attain fitness [to ends]--but likewise without having intended it.
[20] als die Nachahmung der Natur in Begriffen, literally: "as the
counterfeit of nature in (regard to) ideas. "
He to whom the atmospheric conditions of such a prospect are too wintry,
has too little fire in him: let him look about him, and he will become
sensible of maladies requiring an icy air, and of people who are so
"kneaded together" out of ardor and intellect that they can scarcely
find anywhere an atmosphere too cold and cutting for them. Moreover: as
too serious individuals and nations stand in need of trivial
relaxations; as others, too volatile and excitable require onerous,
weighty ordeals to render them entirely healthy: should not we, the more
intellectual men of this age, which is swept more and more by
conflagrations, catch up every cooling and extinguishing appliance we
can find that we may always remain as self contained, steady and calm as
we are now, and thereby perhaps serve this age as its mirror and self
reflector, when the occasion arises?
39
=The Fable of Discretionary Freedom. =--The history of the feelings, on
the basis of which we make everyone responsible, hence, the so-called
moral feelings, is traceable in the following leading phases. At first
single actions are termed good or bad without any reference to their
motive, but solely because of the utilitarian or prejudicial
consequences they have for the community. In time, however, the origin
of these designations is forgotten [but] it is imagined that action in
itself, without reference to its consequences, contains the property
"good" or "bad": with the same error according to which language
designates the stone itself as hard[ness] the tree itself as
green[ness]--for the reason, therefore, that what is a consequence is
comprehended as a cause. Accordingly, the good[ness] or bad[ness] is
incorporated into the motive and [any] deed by itself is regarded as
morally ambiguous. A step further is taken, and the predication good or
bad is no longer made of the particular motives but of the entire nature
of a man, out of which motive grows as grow the plants out of the soil.
Thus man is successively made responsible for his [particular] acts,
then for his [course of] conduct, then for his motives and finally for
his nature. Now, at last, is it discovered that this nature, even,
cannot be responsible, inasmuch as it is only and wholly a necessary
consequence and is synthesised out of the elements and influence of past
and present things: therefore, that man is to be made responsible for
nothing, neither for his nature, nor his motives, nor his [course of]
conduct nor his [particular] acts. By this [process] is gained the
knowledge that the history of moral estimates is the history of error,
of the error of responsibility: as is whatever rests upon the error of
the freedom of the will. Schopenhauer concluded just the other way,
thus: since certain actions bring depression ("consciousness of guilt")
in their train, there must, then, exist responsibility, for there would
be no basis for this depression at hand if all man's affairs did not
follow their course of necessity--as they do, indeed, according to the
opinion of this philosopher, follow their course--but man himself,
subject to the same necessity, would be just the man that he is--which
Schopenhauer denies. From the fact of such depression Schopenhauer
believes himself able to prove a freedom which man in some way must have
had, not indeed in regard to his actions but in regard to his nature:
freedom, therefore, to be thus and so, not to act thus and so. Out of
the _esse_, the sphere of freedom and responsibility, follows, according
to his opinion, the _operari_, the spheres of invariable causation,
necessity and irresponsibility. This depression, indeed, is due
apparently to the _operari_--in so far as it be delusive--but in truth
to whatever _esse_ be the deed of a free will, the basic cause of the
existence of an individual: [in order to] let man become whatever he
wills to become, his [to] will (Wollen) must precede his
existence. --Here, apart from the absurdity of the statement just made,
there is drawn the wrong inference that the fact of the depression
explains its character, the rational admissibility of it: from such a
wrong inference does Schopenhauer first come to his fantastic consequent
of the so called discretionary freedom (intelligibeln Freiheit). (For
the origin of this fabulous entity Plato and Kant are equally
responsible). But depression after the act does not need to be rational:
indeed, it is certainly not so at all, for it rests upon the erroneous
assumption that the act need not necessarily have come to pass.
Therefore: only because man deems himself free, but not because
he is free, does he experience remorse and the stings of
conscience. --Moreover, this depression is something that can be grown
out of; in many men it is not present at all as a consequence of acts
which inspire it in many other men. It is a very varying thing and one
closely connected with the development of custom and civilization, and
perhaps manifest only during a relatively brief period of the world's
history. --No one is responsible for his acts, no one for his nature; to
judge is tantamount to being unjust. This applies as well when the
individual judges himself. The proposition is as clear as sunlight, and
yet here everyone prefers to go back to darkness and untruth: for fear
of the consequences.
40
=Above Animal. =--The beast in us must be wheedled: ethic is necessary,
that we may not be torn to pieces. Without the errors involved in the
assumptions of ethics, man would have remained an animal. Thus has he
taken himself as something higher and imposed rigid laws upon himself.
He feels hatred, consequently, for states approximating the animal:
whence the former contempt for the slave as a not-yet-man, as a thing,
is to be explained.
41
=Unalterable Character. =--That character is unalterable is not, in the
strict sense, true; rather is this favorite proposition valid only to
the extent that during the brief life period of a man the potent new
motives can not, usually, press down hard enough to obliterate the lines
imprinted by ages. Could we conceive of a man eighty thousand years old,
we should have in him an absolutely alterable character; so that the
maturities of successive, varying individuals would develop in him. The
shortness of human life leads to many erroneous assertions concerning
the qualities of man.
42
=Classification of Enjoyments and Ethic. =--The once accepted comparative
classification of enjoyments, according to which an inferior, higher,
highest egoism may crave one or another enjoyment, now decides as to
ethical status or unethical status. A lower enjoyment (for example,
sensual pleasure) preferred to a more highly esteemed one (for example,
health) rates as unethical, as does welfare preferred to freedom. The
comparative classification of enjoyments is not, however, alike or the
same at all periods; when anyone demands satisfaction of the law, he is,
from the point of view of an earlier civilization, moral, from that of
the present, non-moral. "Unethical" indicates, therefore, that a man is
not sufficiently sensible to the higher, finer impulses which the
present civilization has brought with it, or is not sensible to them at
all; it indicates backwardness, but only from the point of view of the
contemporary degree of distinction. --The comparative classification of
enjoyments itself is not determined according to absolute ethics; but
after each new ethical adjustment, it is then decided whether conduct be
ethical or the reverse.
43
=Inhuman Men as Survivals. =--Men who are now inhuman must serve us as
surviving specimens of earlier civilizations. The mountain height of
humanity here reveals its lower formations, which might otherwise remain
hidden from view. There are surviving specimens of humanity whose brains
through the vicissitudes of heredity, have escaped proper development.
They show us what we all were and thus appal us; but they are as little
responsible on this account as is a piece of granite for being granite.
In our own brains there must be courses and windings corresponding to
such characters, just as in the forms of some human organs there survive
traces of fishhood. But these courses and windings are no longer the bed
in which flows the stream of our feeling.
44
=Gratitude and Revenge. =--The reason the powerful man is grateful is
this. His benefactor has, through his benefaction, invaded the domain of
the powerful man and established himself on an equal footing: the
powerful man in turn invades the domain of the benefactor and gets
satisfaction through the act of gratitude. It is a mild form of revenge.
By not obtaining the satisfaction of gratitude the powerful would have
shown himself powerless and have ranked as such thenceforward. Hence
every society of the good, that is to say, of the powerful originally,
places gratitude among the first of duties. --Swift has added the dictum
that man is grateful in the same degree that he is revengeful.
45
=Two-fold Historical Origin of Good and Evil. =--The notion of good and
bad has a two-fold historical origin: namely, first, in the spirit of
ruling races and castes. Whoever has power to requite good with good and
evil with evil and actually brings requital, (that is, is grateful and
revengeful) acquires the name of being good; whoever is powerless and
cannot requite is called bad. A man belongs, as a good individual, to
the "good" of a community, who have a feeling in common, because all the
individuals are allied with one another through the requiting sentiment.
A man belongs, as a bad individual, to the "bad," to a mass of
subjugated, powerless men who have no feeling in common. The good are a
caste, the bad are a quantity, like dust. Good and bad is, for a
considerable period, tantamount to noble and servile, master and slave.
On the other hand an enemy is not looked upon as bad: he can requite.
The Trojan and the Greek are in Homer both good. Not he, who does no
harm, but he who is despised, is deemed bad. In the community of the
good individuals [the quality of] good[ness] is inherited; it is
impossible for a bad individual to grow from such a rich soil. If,
notwithstanding, one of the good individuals does something unworthy of
his goodness, recourse is had to exorcism; thus the guilt is ascribed to
a deity, the while it is declared that this deity bewitched the good man
into madness and blindness. --Second, in the spirit of the subjugated,
the powerless. Here every other man is, to the individual, hostile,
inconsiderate, greedy, inhuman, avaricious, be he noble or servile; bad
is the characteristic term for man, for every living being, indeed, that
is recognized at all, even for a god: human, divine, these notions are
tantamount to devilish, bad. Manifestations of goodness, sympathy,
helpfulness, are regarded with anxiety as trickiness, preludes to an
evil end, deception, subtlety, in short, as refined badness. With such a
predisposition in individuals, a feeling in common can scarcely arise at
all, at most only the rudest form of it: so that everywhere that this
conception of good and evil prevails, the destruction of the
individuals, their race and nation, is imminent. --Our existing morality
has developed upon the foundation laid by ruling races and castes.
46
=Sympathy Greater than Suffering. =--There are circumstances in which
sympathy is stronger than the suffering itself. We feel more pain, for
instance, when one of our friends becomes guilty of a reprehensible
action than if we had done the deed ourselves. We once, that is, had
more faith in the purity of his character than he had himself. Hence our
love for him, (apparently because of this very faith) is stronger than
is his own love for himself. If, indeed, his egoism really suffers more,
as a result, than our egoism, inasmuch as he must take the consequences
of his fault to a greater extent than ourselves, nevertheless, the
unegoistic--this word is not to be taken too strictly, but simply as a
modified form of expression--in us is more affected by his guilt than
the unegoistic in him.
47
=Hypochondria. =--There are people who, from sympathy and anxiety for
others become hypochondriacal. The resulting form of compassion is
nothing else than sickness. So, also, is there a Christian hypochondria,
from which those singular, religiously agitated people suffer who place
always before their eyes the suffering and death of Christ.
48
=Economy of Blessings. =--The advantageous and the pleasing, as the
healthiest growths and powers in the intercourse of men, are such
precious treasures that it is much to be wished the use made of these
balsamic means were as economical as possible: but this is impossible.
Economy in the use of blessings is the dream of the craziest of
Utopians.
49
=Well-Wishing. =--Among the small, but infinitely plentiful and therefore
very potent things to which science must pay more attention than to the
great, uncommon things, well-wishing[21] must be reckoned; I mean those
manifestations of friendly disposition in intercourse, that laughter of
the eye, every hand pressure, every courtesy from which, in general,
every human act gets its quality. Every teacher, every functionary adds
this element as a gratuity to whatever he does as a duty; it is the
perpetual well spring of humanity, like the waves of light in which
everything grows; thus, in the narrowest circles, within the family,
life blooms and flowers only through this kind feeling. The
cheerfulness, friendliness and kindness of a heart are unfailing
sources of unegoistic impulse and have made far more for civilization
than those other more noised manifestations of it that are styled
sympathy, benevolence and sacrifice. But it is customary to depreciate
these little tokens of kindly feeling, and, indeed, there is not much of
the unegoistic in them. The sum of these little doses is very great,
nevertheless; their combined strength is of the greatest of
strengths. --Thus, too, much more happiness is to be found in the world
than gloomy eyes discover: that is, if the calculation be just, and all
these pleasing moments in which every day, even the meanest human life,
is rich, be not forgotten.
[21] Wohl-wollen, kind feeling. It stands here for benevolence but not
benevolence in the restricted sense of the word now prevailing.
50
=The Desire to Inspire Compassion. =--La Rochefoucauld, in the most
notable part of his self portraiture (first printed 1658) reaches the
vital spot of truth when he warns all those endowed with reason to be on
their guard against compassion, when he advises that this sentiment be
left to men of the masses who stand in need of the promptings of the
emotions (since they are not guided by reason) to induce them to give
aid to the suffering and to be of service in misfortune: whereas
compassion, in his (and Plato's) view, deprives the heart of strength.
To be sure, sympathy should be manifested but men should take care not
to feel it; for the unfortunate are rendered so dull that the
manifestation of sympathy affords them the greatest happiness in the
world. --Perhaps a more effectual warning against this compassion can be
given if this need of the unfortunate be considered not simply as
stupidity and intellectual weakness, not as a sort of distraction of the
spirit entailed by misfortune itself (and thus, indeed, does La
Rochefoucauld seem to view it) but as something quite different and more
momentous. Let note be taken of children who cry and scream in order to
be compassionated and who, therefore, await the moment when their
condition will be observed; come into contact with the sick and the
oppressed in spirit and try to ascertain if the wailing and sighing, the
posturing and posing of misfortune do not have as end and aim the
causing of pain to the beholder: the sympathy which each beholder
manifests is a consolation to the weak and suffering only in as much as
they are made to perceive that at least they have the power,
notwithstanding all their weakness, to inflict pain. The unfortunate
experiences a species of joy in the sense of superiority which the
manifestation of sympathy entails; his imagination is exalted; he is
always strong enough, then, to cause the world pain. Thus is the thirst
for sympathy a thirst for self enjoyment and at the expense of one's
fellow creatures: it shows man in the whole ruthlessness of his own dear
self: not in his mere "dullness" as La Rochefoucauld thinks. --In social
conversation three fourths of all the questions are asked, and three
fourths of all the replies are made in order to inflict some little
pain; that is why so many people crave social intercourse: it gives them
a sense of their power. In these countless but very small doses in which
the quality of badness is administered it proves a potent stimulant of
life: to the same extent that well wishing--(Wohl-wollen) distributed
through the world in like manner, is one of the ever ready
restoratives. --But will many honorable people be found to admit that
there is any pleasure in administering pain? that entertainment--and
rare entertainment--is not seldom found in causing others, at least in
thought, some pain, and in raking them with the small shot of
wickedness? The majority are too ignoble and a few are too good to know
anything of this pudendum: the latter may, consequently, be prompt to
deny that Prosper Merimee is right when he says: "Know, also, that
nothing is more common than to do wrong for the pleasure of doing it. "
51
=How Appearance Becomes Reality. =--The actor cannot, at last, refrain,
even in moments of the deepest pain, from thinking of the effect
produced by his deportment and by his surroundings--for example, even at
the funeral of his own child: he will weep at his own sorrow and its
manifestations as though he were his own audience. The hypocrite who
always plays one and the same part, finally ceases to be a hypocrite; as
in the case of priests who, when young men, are always, either
consciously or unconsciously, hypocrites, and finally become naturally
and then really, without affectation, mere priests: or if the father
does not carry it to this extent, the son, who inherits his father's
calling and gets the advantage of the paternal progress, does. When
anyone, during a long period, and persistently, wishes to appear
something, it will at last prove difficult for him to be anything else.
The calling of almost every man, even of the artist, begins with
hypocrisy, with an imitation of deportment, with a copying of the
effective in manner. He who always wears the mask of a friendly man must
at last gain a power over friendliness of disposition, without which the
expression itself of friendliness is not to be gained--and finally
friendliness of disposition gains the ascendancy over him--he _is_
benevolent.
52
=The Point of Honor in Deception. =--In all great deceivers one
characteristic is prominent, to which they owe their power. In the very
act of deception, amid all the accompaniments, the agitation in the
voice, the expression, the bearing, in the crisis of the scene, there
comes over them a belief in themselves; this it is that acts so
effectively and irresistibly upon the beholders. Founders of religions
differ from such great deceivers in that they never come out of this
state of self deception, or else they have, very rarely, a few moments
of enlightenment in which they are overcome by doubt; generally,
however, they soothe themselves by ascribing such moments of
enlightenment to the evil adversary. Self deception must exist that both
classes of deceivers may attain far reaching results. For men believe in
the truth of all that is manifestly believed with due implicitness by
others.
53
=Presumed Degrees of Truth. =--One of the most usual errors of deduction
is: because someone truly and openly is against us, therefore he speaks
the truth. Hence the child has faith in the judgments of its elders, the
Christian in the assertions of the founder of the church. So, too, it
will not be admitted that all for which men sacrificed life and
happiness in former centuries was nothing but delusion: perhaps it is
alleged these things were degrees of truth. But what is really meant is
that, if a person sincerely believes a thing and has fought and died for
his faith, it would be too _unjust_ if only delusion had inspired him.
Such a state of affairs seems to contradict eternal justice. For that
reason the heart of a sensitive man pronounces against his head the
judgment: between moral conduct and intellectual insight there must
always exist an inherent connection. It is, unfortunately, otherwise:
for there is no eternal justice.
54
=Falsehood. =--Why do men, as a rule, speak the truth in the ordinary
affairs of life? Certainly not for the reason that a god has forbidden
lying. But because first: it is more convenient, as falsehood entails
invention, make-believe and recollection (wherefore Swift says that
whoever invents a lie seldom realises the heavy burden he takes up: he
must, namely, for every lie that he tells, insert twenty more).
Therefore, because in plain ordinary relations of life it is expedient
to say without circumlocution: I want this, I have done this, and the
like; therefore, because the way of freedom and certainty is surer than
that of ruse. --But if it happens that a child is brought up in sinister
domestic circumstances, it will then indulge in falsehood as matter of
course, and involuntarily say anything its own interests may prompt: an
inclination for truth, an aversion to falsehood, is quite foreign and
uncongenial to it, and hence it lies in all innocence.
55
=Ethic Discredited for Faith's Sake. =--No power can sustain itself when
it is represented by mere humbugs: the Catholic Church may possess ever
so many "worldly" sources of strength, but its true might is comprised
in those still numberless priestly natures who make their lives stern
and strenuous and whose looks and emaciated bodies are eloquent of night
vigils, fasts, ardent prayer, perhaps even of whip lashes: these things
make men tremble and cause them anxiety: what, if it be really
imperative to live thus? This is the dreadful question which their
aspect occasions. As they spread this doubt, they lay anew the prop of
their power: even the free thinkers dare not oppose such
disinterestedness with severe truth and cry: "Thou deceived one,
deceive not! "--Only the difference of standpoint separates them from
him: no difference in goodness or badness. But things we cannot
accomplish ourselves, we are apt to criticise unfairly. Thus we are told
of the cunning and perverted acts of the Jesuits, but we overlook the
self mastery that each Jesuit imposes upon himself and also the fact
that the easy life which the Jesuit manuals advocate is for the benefit,
not of the Jesuits but the laity. Indeed, it may be questioned whether
we enlightened ones would become equally competent workers as the result
of similar tactics and organization, and equally worthy of admiration as
the result of self mastery, indefatigable industry and devotion.
56
=Victory of Knowledge over Radical Evil. =--It proves a material gain to
him who would attain knowledge to have had during a considerable period
the idea that mankind is a radically bad and perverted thing: it is a
false idea, as is its opposite, but it long held sway and its roots have
reached down even to ourselves and our present world. In order to
understand _ourselves_ we must understand _it_; but in order to attain a
loftier height we must step above it. We then perceive that there is no
such thing as sin in the metaphysical sense: but also, in the same
sense, no such thing as virtue; that this whole domain of ethical
notions is one of constant variation; that there are higher and deeper
conceptions of good and evil, moral and immoral. Whoever desires no more
of things than knowledge of them attains speedily to peace of mind and
will at most err through lack of knowledge, but scarcely through
eagerness for knowledge (or through sin, as the world calls it). He will
not ask that eagerness for knowledge be interdicted and rooted out; but
his single, all powerful ambition to _know_ as thoroughly and as fully
as possible, will soothe him and moderate all that is strenuous in his
circumstances. Moreover, he is now rid of a number of disturbing
notions; he is no longer beguiled by such words as hell-pain,
sinfulness, unworthiness: he sees in them merely the flitting shadow
pictures of false views of life and of the world.
57
=Ethic as Man's Self-Analysis. =--A good author, whose heart is really in
his work, wishes that someone would arise and wholly refute him if only
thereby his subject be wholly clarified and made plain. The maid in love
wishes that she could attest the fidelity of her own passion through
the faithlessness of her beloved. The soldier wishes to sacrifice his
life on the field of his fatherland's victory: for in the victory of his
fatherland his highest end is attained. The mother gives her child what
she deprives herself of--sleep, the best nourishment and, in certain
circumstances, her health, her self. --But are all these acts unegoistic?
Are these moral deeds miracles because they are, in Schopenhauer's
phrase "impossible and yet accomplished"? Is it not evident that in all
four cases man loves one part of himself, (a thought, a longing, an
experience) more than he loves another part of himself? that he thus
analyses his being and sacrifices one part of it to another part? Is
this essentially different from the behavior of the obstinate man who
says "I would rather be shot than go a step out of my way for this
fellow"? --Preference for something (wish, impulse, longing) is present
in all four instances: to yield to it, with all its consequences, is not
"unegoistic. "--In the domain of the ethical man conducts himself not as
individuum but as dividuum.
58
=What Can be Promised. =--Actions can be promised, but not feelings, for
these are involuntary. Whoever promises somebody to love him always, or
to hate him always, or to be ever true to him, promises something that
it is out of his power to bestow. But he really can promise such courses
of conduct as are the ordinary accompaniments of love, of hate, of
fidelity, but which may also have their source in motives quite
different: for various ways and motives lead to the same conduct. The
promise to love someone always, means, consequently: as long as I love
you, I will manifest the deportment of love; but if I cease to love you
my deportment, although from some other motive, will be just the same,
so that to the people about us it will seem as if my love remained
unchanged. --Hence it is the continuance of the deportment of love that
is promised in every instance in which eternal love (provided no element
of self deception be involved) is sworn.
59
=Intellect and Ethic. =--One must have a good memory to be able to keep
the promises one makes. One must have a strong imagination in order to
feel sympathy. So closely is ethics connected with intellectual
capacity.
60
=Desire for Vengeance and Vengeance Itself. =--To meditate revenge and
attain it is tantamount to an attack of fever, that passes away: but to
meditate revenge without possessing the strength or courage to attain it
is tantamount to suffering from a chronic malady, or poisoning of body
and soul. Ethics, which takes only the motive into account, rates both
cases alike: people generally estimate the first case as the worst
(because of the consequences which the deed of vengeance may entail).
Both views are short sighted.
61
=Ability to Wait. =--Ability to wait is so hard to acquire that great
poets have not disdained to make inability to wait the central motive of
their poems. So Shakespeare in Othello, Sophocles in Ajax, whose suicide
would not have seemed to him so imperative had he only been able to cool
his ardor for a day, as the oracle foreboded: apparently he would then
have repulsed somewhat the fearful whispers of distracted thought and
have said to himself: Who has not already, in my situation, mistaken a
sheep for a hero? is it so extraordinary a thing? On the contrary it is
something universally human: Ajax should thus have soothed himself.
Passion will not wait: the tragic element in the lives of great men does
not generally consist in their conflict with time and the inferiority
of their fellowmen but in their inability to put off their work a year
or two: they cannot wait. --In all duels, the friends who advise have but
to ascertain if the principals can wait: if this be not possible, a duel
is rational inasmuch as each of the combatants may say: "either I
continue to live and the other dies instantly, or vice versa. " To wait
in such circumstances would be equivalent to the frightful martyrdom of
enduring dishonor in the presence of him responsible for the dishonor:
and this can easily cost more anguish than life is worth.
62
=Glutting Revenge. =--Coarse men, who feel a sense of injury, are in the
habit of rating the extent of their injury as high as possible and of
stating the occasion of it in greatly exaggerated language, in order to
be able to feast themselves on the sentiments of hatred and revenge thus
aroused.
63
=Value of Disparagement. =--Not a few, perhaps the majority of men, find
it necessary, in order to retain their self esteem and a certain
uprightness in conduct, to mentally disparage and belittle all the
people they know. But as the inferior natures are in the majority and as
a great deal depends upon whether they retain or lose this uprightness,
so--
64
=The Man in a Rage. =--We should be on our guard against the man who is
enraged against us, as against one who has attempted our life, for the
fact that we still live consists solely in the inability to kill: were
looks sufficient, it would have been all up with us long since.
To
reduce anyone to silence by physical manifestations of savagery or by a
terrorizing process is a relic of under civilization. So, too, that cold
look which great personages cast upon their servitors is a remnant of
the caste distinction between man and man; a specimen of rude antiquity:
women, the conservers of the old, have maintained this survival, too,
more perfectly than men.
65
=Whither Honesty May Lead. =--Someone once had the bad habit of
expressing himself upon occasion, and with perfect honesty, on the
subject of the motives of his conduct, which were as good or as bad as
the motives of all men. He aroused first disfavor, then suspicion,
became gradually of ill repute and was pronounced a person of whom
society should beware, until at last the law took note of such a
perverted being for reasons which usually have no weight with it or to
which it closes its eyes. Lack of taciturnity concerning what is
universally held secret, and an irresponsible predisposition to see what
no one wants to see--oneself--brought him to prison and to early death.
66
=Punishable, not Punished. =--Our crime against criminals consists in the
fact that we treat them as rascals.
67
=Sancta simplicitas of Virtue. =--Every virtue has its privilege: for
example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the
funeral pyre of one condemned.
68
=Morality and Consequence. =--Not alone the beholders of an act generally
estimate the ethical or unethical element in it by the result: no, the
one who performed the act does the same. For the motives and the
intentions are seldom sufficiently apparent, and amid them the memory
itself seems to become clouded by the results of the act, so that a man
often ascribes the wrong motives to his acts or regards the remote
motives as the direct ones. Success often imparts to an action all the
brilliance and honor of good intention, while failure throws the shadow
of conscience over the most estimable deeds. Hence arises the familiar
maxim of the politician: "Give me only success: with it I can win all
the noble souls over to my side--and make myself noble even in my own
eyes. "--In like manner will success prove an excellent substitute for a
better argument. To this very day many well educated men think the
triumph of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior
truth of the former--although in this case it was simply the coarser and
more powerful that triumphed over the more delicate and intellectual. As
regards superiority of truth, it is evident that because of it the
reviving sciences have connected themselves, point for point, with the
philosophy of Epicurus, while Christianity has, point for point,
recoiled from it.
69
=Love and Justice. =--Why is love so highly prized at the expense of
justice and why are such beautiful things spoken of the former as if it
were a far higher entity than the latter? Is the former not palpably a
far more stupid thing than the latter? --Certainly, and on that very
account so much the more agreeable to everybody: it is blind and has a
rich horn of plenty out of which it distributes its gifts to everyone,
even when they are unmerited, even when no thanks are returned. It is
impartial like the rain, which according to the bible and experience,
wets not alone the unjust but, in certain circumstances, the just as
well, and to their skins at that.
70
=Execution. =--How comes it that every execution causes us more pain than
a murder? It is the coolness of the executioner, the painful
preparation, the perception that here a man is being used as an
instrument for the intimidation of others. For the guilt is not punished
even if there be any: this is ascribable to the teachers, the parents,
the environment, in ourselves, not in the murderer--I mean the
predisposing circumstances.
71
=Hope. =--Pandora brought the box containing evils and opened it. It was
the gift of the gods to men, a gift of most enticing appearance
externally and called the "box of happiness. " Thereupon all the evils,
(living, moving things) flew out: from that time to the present they fly
about and do ill to men by day and night. One evil only did not fly out
of the box: Pandora shut the lid at the behest of Zeus and it remained
inside. Now man has this box of happiness perpetually in the house and
congratulates himself upon the treasure inside of it; it is at his
service: he grasps it whenever he is so disposed, for he knows not that
the box which Pandora brought was a box of evils. Hence he looks upon
the one evil still remaining as the greatest source of happiness--it is
hope. --Zeus intended that man, notwithstanding the evils oppressing him,
should continue to live and not rid himself of life, but keep on making
himself miserable. For this purpose he bestowed hope upon man: it is, in
truth, the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal of man.
72
=Degree of Moral Susceptibility Unknown. =--The fact that one has or has
not had certain profoundly moving impressions and insights into
things--for example, an unjustly executed, slain or martyred father, a
faithless wife, a shattering, serious accident,--is the factor upon
which the excitation of our passions to white heat principally depends,
as well as the course of our whole lives. No one knows to what lengths
circumstances (sympathy, emotion) may lead him. He does not know the
full extent of his own susceptibility. Wretched environment makes him
wretched. It is as a rule not the quality of our experience but its
quantity upon which depends the development of our superiority or
inferiority, from the point of view of good and evil.
73
=The Martyr Against His Will. =--In a certain movement there was a man
who was too cowardly and vacillating ever to contradict his comrades. He
was made use of in each emergency, every sacrifice was demanded of him
because he feared the disfavor of his comrades more than he feared
death: he was a petty, abject spirit. They perceived this and upon the
foundation of the qualities just mentioned they elevated him to the
altitude of a hero, and finally even of a martyr. Although the cowardly
creature always inwardly said No, he always said Yes with his lips, even
upon the scaffold, where he died for the tenets of his party: for beside
him stood one of his old associates who so domineered him with look and
word that he actually went to his death with the utmost fortitude and
has ever since been celebrated as a martyr and exalted character.
74
=General Standard. =--One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed
to vanity, ordinary actions to habit and mean actions to fear.
75
=Misunderstanding of Virtue. =--Whoever has obtained his experience of
vice in connection with pleasure as in the case of one with a youth of
wild oats behind him, comes to the conclusion that virtue must be
connected with self denial. Whoever, on the other hand, has been very
much plagued by his passions and vices, longs to find in virtue the rest
and peace of the soul. That is why it is possible for two virtuous
people to misunderstand one another wholly.
76
=The Ascetic. =--The ascetic makes out of virtue a slavery.
77
=Honor Transferred from Persons to Things. =--Actions prompted by love or
by the spirit of self sacrifice for others are universally honored
wherever they are manifest. Hence is magnified the value set upon
whatever things may be loved or whatever things conduce to self
sacrifice: although in themselves they may be worth nothing much. A
valiant army is evidence of the value of the thing it fights for.
78
=Ambition a Substitute for Moral Feeling. =--Moral feeling should never
become extinct in natures that are destitute of ambition. The ambitious
can get along without moral feeling just as well as with it. --Hence the
sons of retired, ambitionless families, generally become by a series of
rapid gradations, when they lose moral feeling, the most absolute
lunkheads.
79
=Vanity Enriches. =--How poor the human mind would be without vanity! As
it is, it resembles a well stacked and ever renewed ware-emporium that
attracts buyers of every class: they can find almost everything, have
almost everything, provided they bring with them the right kind of
money--admiration.
80
=Senility and Death. =--Apart from the demands made by religion, it may
well be asked why it is more honorable in an aged man, who feels the
decline of his powers, to await slow extinction than to fix a term to
his existence himself? Suicide in such a case is a quite natural and due
proceeding that ought to command respect as a triumph of reason: and did
in fact command respect during the times of the masters of Greek
philosophy and the bravest Roman patriots, who usually died by their own
hand. Eagerness, on the other hand, to keep alive from day to day with
the anxious counsel of physicians, without capacity to attain any nearer
to one's ideal of life, is far less worthy of respect. --Religions are
very rich in refuges from the mandate of suicide: hence they ingratiate
themselves with those who cling to life.
81
=Delusions Regarding Victim and Regarding Evil Doer. =--When the rich man
takes a possession away from the poor man (for example, a prince who
deprives a plebeian of his beloved) there arises in the mind of the poor
man a delusion: he thinks the rich man must be wholly perverted to take
from him the little that he has. But the rich man appreciates the value
of a single possession much less because he is accustomed to many
possessions, so that he cannot put himself in the place of the poor man
and does not act by any means as ill as the latter supposes. Both have a
totally false idea of each other. The iniquities of the mighty which
bulk most largely in history are not nearly so monstrous as they seem.
The hereditary consciousness of being a superior being with superior
environment renders one very callous and lulls the conscience to rest.
We all feel, when the difference between ourselves and some other being
is exceedingly great, that no element of injustice can be involved, and
we kill a fly with no qualms of conscience whatever. So, too, it is no
indication of wickedness in Xerxes (whom even the Greeks represent as
exceptionally noble) that he deprived a father of his son and had him
drawn and quartered because the latter had manifested a troublesome,
ominous distrust of an entire expedition: the individual was in this
case brushed aside as a pestiferous insect. He was too low and mean to
justify continued sentiments of compunction in the ruler of the world.
Indeed no cruel man is ever as cruel, in the main, as his victim thinks.
The idea of pain is never the same as the sensation. The rule is
precisely analogous in the case of the unjust judge, and of the
journalist who by means of devious rhetorical methods, leads public
opinion astray. Cause and effect are in all these instances entwined
with totally different series of feeling and thoughts, whereas it is
unconsciously assumed that principal and victim feel and think exactly
alike, and because of this assumption the guilt of the one is based upon
the pain of the other.
82
=The Soul's Skin. =--As the bones, flesh, entrails and blood vessels are
enclosed by a skin that renders the aspect of men endurable, so the
impulses and passions of the soul are enclosed by vanity: it is the skin
of the soul.
83
=Sleep of Virtue. =--If virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous
when it awakes.
84
=Subtlety of Shame. =--Men are not ashamed of obscene thoughts, but they
are ashamed when they suspect that obscene thoughts are attributed to
them.
85
=Naughtiness Is Rare. =--Most people are too much absorbed in themselves
to be bad.
86
=The Mite in the Balance. =--We are praised or blamed, as the one or the
other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of
discernment.
87
=Luke 18:14 Improved. =--He that humbleth himself wisheth to be exalted.
88
=Prevention of Suicide. =--There is a justice according to which we may
deprive a man of life, but none that permits us to deprive him of death:
this is merely cruelty.
89
=Vanity. =--We set store by the good opinion of men, first because it is
of use to us and next because we wish to give them pleasure (children
their parents, pupils their teacher, and well disposed persons all
others generally). Only when the good opinion of men is important to
somebody, apart from personal advantage or the desire to give pleasure,
do we speak of vanity. In this last case, a man wants to give himself
pleasure, but at the expense of his fellow creatures, inasmuch as he
inspires them with a false opinion of himself or else inspires "good
opinion" in such a way that it is a source of pain to others (by
arousing envy). The individual generally seeks, through the opinion of
others, to attest and fortify the opinion he has of himself; but the
potent influence of authority--an influence as old as man himself--leads
many, also, to strengthen their own opinion of themselves by means of
authority, that is, to borrow from others the expedient of relying more
upon the judgment of their fellow men than upon their own. --Interest in
oneself, the wish to please oneself attains, with the vain man, such
proportions that he first misleads others into a false, unduly exalted
estimate of himself and then relies upon the authority of others for his
self estimate; he thus creates the delusion that he pins his faith
to. --It must, however, be admitted that the vain man does not desire to
please others so much as himself and he will often go so far, on this
account, as to overlook his own interests: for he often inspires his
fellow creatures with malicious envy and renders them ill disposed in
order that he may thus increase his own delight in himself.
90
=Limits of the Love of Mankind. =--Every man who has declared that some
other man is an ass or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other man
conclusively shows that the assertion was erroneous.
91
=Weeping Morality. =--How much delight morality occasions! Think of the
ocean of pleasing tears that has flowed from the narration of noble,
great-hearted deeds! --This charm of life would disappear if the belief
in complete irresponsibility gained the upper hand.
92
=Origin of Justice. =--Justice (reasonableness) has its origin among
approximate equals in power, as Thucydides (in the dreadful conferences
of the Athenian and Melian envoys) has rightly conceived. Thus, where
there exists no demonstrable supremacy and a struggle leads but to
mutual, useless damage, the reflection arises that an understanding
would best be arrived at and some compromise entered into. The
reciprocal nature is hence the first nature of justice. Each party makes
the other content inasmuch as each receives what it prizes more highly
than the other. Each surrenders to the other what the other wants and
receives in return its own desire. Justice is therefore reprisal and
exchange upon the basis of an approximate equality of power. Thus
revenge pertains originally to the domain of justice as it is a sort of
reciprocity. Equally so, gratitude. --Justice reverts naturally to the
standpoint of self preservation, therefore to the egoism of this
consideration: "why should I injure myself to no purpose and perhaps
never attain my end? "--So much for the origin of justice. Only because
men, through mental habits, have forgotten the original motive of so
called just and rational acts, and also because for thousands of years
children have been brought to admire and imitate such acts, have they
gradually assumed the appearance of being unegotistical. Upon this
appearance is founded the high estimate of them, which, moreover, like
all estimates, is continually developing, for whatever is highly
esteemed is striven for, imitated, made the object of self sacrifice,
while the merit of the pain and emulation thus expended is, by each
individual, ascribed to the thing esteemed. --How slightly moral would
the world appear without forgetfulness! A poet could say that God had
posted forgetfulness as a sentinel at the portal of the temple of human
merit!
93
=Concerning the Law of the Weaker. =--Whenever any party, for instance, a
besieged city, yields to a stronger party, under stipulated conditions,
the counter stipulation is that there be a reduction to insignificance,
a burning and destruction of the city and thus a great damage inflicted
upon the stronger party. Thus arises a sort of equalization principle
upon the basis of which a law can be established. The enemy has an
advantage to gain by its maintenance. --To this extent there is also a
law between slaves and masters, limited only by the extent to which the
slave may be useful to his master. The law goes originally only so far
as the one party may appear to the other potent, invincible, stable, and
the like. To such an extent, then, the weaker has rights, but very
limited ones. Hence the famous dictum that each has as much law on his
side as his power extends (or more accurately, as his power is believed
to extend).
94
=The Three Phases of Morality Hitherto. =--It is the first evidence that
the animal has become human when his conduct ceases to be based upon the
immediately expedient, but upon the permanently useful; when he has,
therefore, grown utilitarian, capable of purpose. Thus is manifested the
first rule of reason. A still higher stage is attained when he regulates
his conduct upon the basis of honor, by means of which he gains mastery
of himself and surrenders his desires to principles; this lifts him far
above the phase in which he was actuated only by considerations of
personal advantage as he understood it. He respects and wishes to be
respected. This means that he comprehends utility as a thing dependent
upon what his opinion of others is and their opinion of him. Finally he
regulates his conduct (the highest phase of morality hitherto attained)
by his own standard of men and things. He himself decides, for himself
and for others, what is honorable and what is useful. He has become a
law giver to opinion, upon the basis of his ever higher developing
conception of the utilitarian and the honorable. Knowledge makes him
capable of placing the highest utility, (that is, the universal,
enduring utility) before merely personal utility,--of placing ennobling
recognition of the enduring and universal before the merely temporary:
he lives and acts as a collective individuality.
95
=Ethic of the Developed Individual. =--Hitherto the altruistic has been
looked upon as the distinctive characteristic of moral conduct, and it
is manifest that it was the consideration of universal utility that
prompted praise and recognition of altruistic conduct. Must not a
radical departure from this point of view be imminent, now that it is
being ever more clearly perceived that in the most personal
considerations the most general welfare is attained: so that conduct
inspired by the most personal considerations of advantage is just the
sort which has its origin in the present conception of morality (as a
universal utilitarianism)? To contemplate oneself as a complete
personality and bear the welfare of that personality in mind in all that
one does--this is productive of better results than any sympathetic
susceptibility and conduct in behalf of others. Indeed we all suffer
from such disparagement of our own personalities, which are at present
made to deteriorate from neglect. Capacity is, in fact, divorced from
our personality in most cases, and sacrificed to the state, to science,
to the needy, as if it were the bad which deserved to be made a
sacrifice. Now, we are willing to labor for our fellowmen but only to
the extent that we find our own highest advantage in so doing, no more,
no less. The whole matter depends upon what may be understood as one's
advantage: the crude, undeveloped, rough individualities will be the
very ones to estimate it most inadequately.
96
=Usage and Ethic. =--To be moral, virtuous, praiseworthy means to yield
obedience to ancient law and hereditary usage. Whether this obedience be
rendered readily or with difficulty is long immaterial. Enough that it
be rendered. "Good" finally comes to mean him who acts in the
traditional manner, as a result of heredity or natural disposition, that
is to say does what is customary with scarcely an effort, whatever that
may be (for example revenges injuries when revenge, as with the ancient
Greeks, was part of good morals). He is called good because he is good
"to some purpose," and as benevolence, sympathy, considerateness,
moderation and the like come, in the general course of conduct, to be
finally recognized as "good to some purpose" (as utilitarian) the
benevolent man, the helpful man, is duly styled "good". (At first other
and more important kinds of utilitarian qualities stand in the
foreground. ) Bad is "not habitual" (unusual), to do things not in
accordance with usage, to oppose the traditional, however rational or
the reverse the traditional may be. To do injury to one's social group
or community (and to one's neighbor as thus understood) is looked upon,
through all the variations of moral laws, in different ages, as the
peculiarly "immoral" act, so that to-day we associate the word "bad"
with deliberate injury to one's neighbor or community. "Egoistic" and
"non-egoistic" do not constitute the fundamental opposites that have
brought mankind to make a distinction between moral and immoral, good
and bad; but adherence to traditional custom, and emancipation from it.
How the traditional had its origin is quite immaterial; in any event it
had no reference to good and bad or any categorical imperative but to
the all important end of maintaining and sustaining the community, the
race, the confederation, the nation. Every superstitious custom that
originated in a misinterpreted event or casualty entailed some
tradition, to adhere to which is moral. To break loose from it is
dangerous, more prejudicial to the community than to the individual
(because divinity visits the consequences of impiety and sacrilege upon
the community rather than upon the individual). Now every tradition
grows ever more venerable--the more remote is its origin, the more
confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from
generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and
inspires awe. Thus it is that the precept of piety is a far loftier
morality than that inculcated by altruistic conduct.
97
=Delight in the Moral. =--A potent species of joy (and thereby the source
of morality) is custom. The customary is done more easily, better,
therefore preferably. A pleasure is felt in it and experience thus shows
that since this practice has held its own it must be good. A manner or
moral that lives and lets live is thus demonstrated advantageous,
necessary, in contradistinction to all new and not yet adopted
practices. The custom is therefore the blending of the agreeable and the
useful. Moreover it does not require deliberation. As soon as man can
exercise compulsion, he exercises it to enforce and establish his
customs, for they are to him attested lifewisdom. So, too, a community
of individuals constrains each one of their number to adopt the same
moral or custom. The error herein is this: Because a certain custom has
been agreeable to the feelings or at least because it proves a means of
maintenance, this custom must be imperative, for it is regarded as the
only thing that can possibly be consistent with well being. The well
being of life seems to spring from it alone. This conception of the
customary as a condition of existence is carried into the slightest
detail of morality. Inasmuch as insight into true causation is quite
restricted in all inferior peoples, a superstitious anxiety is felt that
everything be done in due routine. Even when a custom is exceedingly
burdensome it is preserved because of its supposed vital utility. It is
not known that the same degree of satisfaction can be experienced
through some other custom and even higher degrees of satisfaction, too.
But it is fully appreciated that all customs do become more agreeable
with the lapse of time, no matter how difficult they may have been found
in the beginning, and that even the severest way of life may be rendered
a matter of habit and therefore a pleasure.
98
=Pleasure and Social Instinct. =--Through his relations with other men,
man derives a new species of delight in those pleasurable emotions which
his own personality affords him; whereby the domain of pleasurable
emotions is made infinitely more comprehensive. No doubt he has
inherited many of these feelings from the brutes, which palpably feel
delight when they sport with one another, as mothers with their young.
So, too, the sexual relations must be taken into account: they make
every young woman interesting to every young man from the standpoint of
pleasure, and conversely. The feeling of pleasure originating in human
relationships makes men in general better. The delight in common, the
pleasures enjoyed together heighten one another. The individual feels a
sense of security. He becomes better natured. Distrust and malice
dissolve. For the man feels the sense of benefit and observes the same
feeling in others. Mutual manifestations of pleasure inspire mutual
sympathy, the sentiment of homogeneity. The same effect is felt also at
mutual sufferings, in a common danger, in stormy weather. Upon such a
foundation are built the earliest alliances: the object of which is the
mutual protection and safety from threatening misfortunes, and the
welfare of each individual. And thus the social instinct develops from
pleasure.
99
=The Guiltless Nature of So-Called Bad Acts. =--All "bad" acts are
inspired by the impulse to self preservation or, more accurately, by
the desire for pleasure and for the avoidance of pain in the individual.
