No More Learning

13.
Psychologists should bethink themselves before
putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the
cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living
thing seeks above all to discharge its strength-life
itself is Will to Power; self-preservation is only
One of the indirect and most frequent results thereof.
In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of
superfluous teleological principles ! —one of which is
the instinct of self - preservation (we owe it to
Spinoza's inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that
method ordains, which must be essentially economy
of principles.


## p. 21 (#43) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
21
89707
14
It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds
that natural philosophy is only a world-exposition
and world-arrangement (according to us, if I may
say so ! ) and not a world-explanation ; but in so
far as it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded
as more, and for a long time to come must be
regarded as more—namely, as an explanation. It
has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evi-
dence and palpableness of its own: this oper-
ates fascinatingly, persuasively, and convincingly
upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes---
in fact, it follows instinctively the canon of truth
of eternal popular sensualism. What is clear,
what is “explained”? Only that which can be
seen and felt-one must pursue every problem
thus far. Obversely, however, the charm of the
Platonic mode of thought, which was an aristo-
cratic mode, consisted precisely in resistance to
obvious sense-evidence-perhaps among men who
enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses
than our contemporaries, but who knew how to
find a higher triumph in remaining masters of
them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey con-
ceptional networks which they threw over the
motley whirl of the senses—the mob of the senses,
as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and
interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato,
there was an enjoyment different from that which
the physicists of to-day offer us—and likewise the
Darwinists and antiteleologists among the physio-
logical workers, with their principle of the "smallest


## p. 22 (#44) ##############################################

22
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
possible effort," and the greatest possible blunder.
“Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp,
there is also nothing more for men to do”—that
is certainly an imperative different from the Platonic
one, but it may notwithstanding be the right im-
perative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists
and bridge-builders of the future, who have nothing
but rough work to perform.
15.
To study physiology with a clear conscience, one
must insist on the fact that the sense-organs are
not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic
philosophy; as such they certainly could not be
causes ! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regu-
lative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle.
What? And others say even that the external
world is the work of our organs ? But then our
body, as a part of this external world, would be the
work of our organs! But then our organs them-
selves would be the work of our organs! It seems
to me that this is a complete reductio ad absurdum,
if the conception causa sui is something fundament-
ally absurd. Consequently, the external world is
not the work of our organs-- ?
16.
There are still harmless self-observers who be-
lieve that there are “immediate certainties”; for
instance, “I think,” or as the superstition of
Schopenhauer puts it, “I will"; as though cognition
here got hold of its object purely and simply as
“the thing in itself,” without any falsification taking


## p. 23 (#45) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
23
C
(6
:
place either on the part of the subject or the object.
I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that
“immediate certainty," as well as "absolute know-
ledge" and the "thing in itself," involve a contra-
dictio in adjecto; we really ought to free ourselves
from the misleading significance of words! The
people on their part may think that cognition is
knowing all about things, but the philosopher must
say to himself: “When I analyse the process that
is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a
whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative
proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impos-
sible: for instance, that it is I who think, that there
must necessarily be something that thinks, that
thinking is an activity and operation on the part of
a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is
an “ego," and finally, that it is already determined
what is to be designated by thinking—that I
know what thinking is. For if I had not already
decided within myself what it is, by what standard
could I determine whether that which is just
happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'?
In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I
compare my state at the present moment with other
states of myself which I know, in order to deter-
mine what it is; on account of this retrospective
connection with further knowledge,' it has at any
rate no immediate certainty for me. ”—In place of
the “immediate certainty” in which the people
may believe in the special case, the philosopher thus
finds a series of metaphysical questions presented
to him, veritable conscience questions of the in-
tellect, to wit: “From whence did I get the notion
6


## p. 24 (#46) ##############################################

24
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
>
of 'thinking'? Why do I believe in cause and
effect? What gives me the right to speak of an
'ego,' and even of an 'ego' as cause, and finally
of an 'ego. as. . . cause of thought? He who
ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at
once by an appeal to a sort of intuitive perception,
like the person who says, “I think, and know that
this, at least, is true, actual, and certain "-will
encounter a smile and two notes of interrogation in
a philosopher nowadays. “Sir,” the philosopher
will perhaps give him to understand, “it is improb-
able that you are not mistaken, but why should it
be the truth? ”
"
"
17.
With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I
shall never tire of emphasising a small, terse fact,
which is unwillingly recognised by these credulous
minds-namely, that a thought comes when "it"
wishes, and not when “I” wish; so that it is a
perversion of the facts of the case to say that the
subject “I” is the condition of the predicate
“think. ” One thinks; but that this “one is
pre-
cisely the famous old "ego," is, to put it mildly,
only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not
an “immediate certainty. ” After all, one has even
gone too far with this one thinks"-even the
"one" contains an interpretation of the process, and
does not belong to the process itself. One infers
here according to the usual grammatical formula-
“To think is an activity; every activity requires
an agency that is active; consequently” . It
was pretty much on the same lines that the older
7
!
.


## p. 25 (#47) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
25
"
atomism sought, besides the operating "power,” the
material particle wherein it resides and out of
which it operates—the atom. More rigorous minds,
however, learnt at last to get along without this
"earth-residuum," and perhaps some day we shall
accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point
of view, to get along without the little "one" (to
which the worthy old "ego” has refined itself).
18.
6
It is certainly not the least charm of a theory
that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it
attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the
hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will”
owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one
is always appearing who feels himself strong enough
to refute it.
19.
Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will
as though it were the best-known thing in the
world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us to un-
derstand that the will alone is really known to us,
absolutely and completely known, without deduction
or addition. But it again and again seems to me
that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what
philosophers are in the habit of doing—he seems to
have adopted a popular prejudice and exaggerated
it. Willing—seems to me to be above all something
- complicated, something that is a unity only in name
-and it is precisely in a name that popular preju-
dice lurks, which has got the mastery over the
inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages.
그
​-


## p. 26 (#48) ##############################################

26
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
)
So let us for once be more cautious, let us be “un-
philosophical”: let us say that in all willing there,
is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sen-
sation of the condition
"away from which we go,
the sensation of the condition " towards which we
go," the sensation of this “ from” and “towards”
itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscu-
lar sensation, which, even without our putting
in motion “arms and legs," commences its action
by force of habit, directly we “will ” anything.
,
""
Therefore, just as sensations and indeed many
kinds of sensations) are to be recognised as
ingredients of the will, so, in the second place,
thinking is also to be recognised; in every act of
the will there is a ruling thought;—and let us
not imagine it possible to sever this thought from
the "willing," as if the will would then remain over!
In the third place, the will is not only a complex of
sensation and thinking, but it is above all an emotion,
and in fact the emotion of the command. That
which is termed “ freedom of the will” is essentially
the emotion of supremacy in respect to him who
must obey: "I am free, 'he' must obey”-this con-
sciousness is inherent in every will; and equally
so the straining of the attention, the straight look
which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the un-
conditional judgment that “this and nothing else is
necessary now," the inward certainty that obedience
will be rendered -and whatever else pertains to the
position of the commander A man who wills
commands something within himself which renders
obedience, or which he believes renders obedience.
But now let us notice what is the strangest thing


## p. 27 (#49) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
27
about the will,—this affair so extremely complex,
for which the people have only one name. Inas-
much as in the given circumstances we are at the
same time the commanding and the obeying parties,
and as the obeying party we know the sensations
of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and
motion, which usually commence immediately after
the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we
are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to
deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic
term “I”: a whole series of erroneous conclusions,
and consequently of false judgments about the will
itself, has become attached to the act of willing-to
such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that
willing suffices for action. Since in the majority of
cases there has only been exercise of will when the
effect of the command—consequently obedience,
and therefore action-was to be expected, the appear-
ance has translated itself into the sentiment, as if
there were there a necessity of effect; in a word,
he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty
that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes
the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will
itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensa-
tion of power which accompanies, all success.
"Freedom of Will”—that is the expression for the
complex state of delight of the person exercising
volition, who commands and at the same time
identifies himself with the executor of the order-
who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles,
but thinks within himself that it was really his own
will that overcame them. In this
way
the
person
exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of
4


## p. 28 (#50) ##############################################

28
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
"
his successful executive instruments, the useful
“underwills” or under-souls-indeed, our body is
but a social structure composed of many souls—to
his feelings of delight as commander. L'effet c'est
moi : what happens here is what happens in every
well-constructed and happy commonwealth, namely,
that the governing class identifies itself with the
successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is
absolutely a question of commanding and obeying,
on the basis, as already said, of a social structure
composed of many “souls"; on which account a
philosopher should claim the right to include
willing-as-such within the sphere of morals-re-
garded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy
under which the phenomenon of "life. ” manifests
itself.
20.
That the separate philosophical ideas are not
anything optional or autonomously evolving, but
grow up in connection and relationship with each
other ; that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they
seem to appear in the history of thought, they
nevertheless belong just as much
to t system as
the collective members of the fauna of a Continent
-is betrayed in the end by the circumstance: how
unfailingly the most diverse philosophers always fill
in again a definite fundamental scheme of possible
philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always
revolve once more in the same orbit; however
independent of each other they may feel themselves
with their critical or systematic wills, something
within them leads them, something impels them in


## p. 29 (#51) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
29
a
definite order the one after the other-to wit, the
innate methodology and relationship of their ideas.
Their thinking is in fact far less a discovery than a
re-recognising, a remembering, a return and a home-
coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of
the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew :
philosophising is so far a kind of atavism of the
highest order. The wonderful family resemblance
of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophising
is easily enough explained. In fact, where there
is affinity of language, owing to the common
philosophy of grammar-I mean owing to the
unconscious domination and guidance of similar
grammatical functions—it cannot but be that every-
thing is prepared at the outset for a similar de-
velopment and succession of philosophical systems;
just as the way seems barred against certain other
possibilities of world-interpretation. It is highly
probable that philosophers within the domain of
the Ural-Altaic languages (where the conception of
the subject is least developed) look otherwise “into
the world," and will be found on paths of thought
different from those of the Indo-Germans and
Mussulmans, the spell of certain grammatical
functions is ultimately also the spell of physiological
valuations and racial conditions. --So much by way
of rejecting Locke's superficiality with regard to
the origin of ideas.
1
21.
The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that
has yet been conceived, it is a sort of logical viola-
tion and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride


## p. 30 (#52) ##############################################

30
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly
and frightfully with this very folly. The desire for
"freedom of will” in the superlative, metaphysical
sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the
,
minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the
entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions
oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors,
chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing
less than to be precisely this causa sui, and, with
more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up
into existence by the hair, out of the slough of
nothingness. If any one should find out in this
manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated con-
ception of “free will” and put it out of his head
altogether, I beg of him to carry his “enlighten-
ment" a step further, and also put out of his head
the contrary of this monstrous conception of "free
will”: I mean “non-free will,” which is tantamount
to a misuse of cause and effect. One should not
wrongly materialise “cause
cause” and “effect," as the
natural philosophers do (and whoever like them
naturalise in thinking at present), according to the
prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the
cause press and push until it "effects” its end; one
should
and “effect" only as pure con-
ceptions, that is to say, as conventional fictions for
the purpose of designation and mutual under-
standing, -not for explanation. In "being-in-
itself” there is nothing of “causal-connection," of
"necessity," or of "psychological non-freedom;
there the effect does not follow the cause, there
“law” does not obtain. It is we_alone who have
devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity,
»
use
“cause


## p. 31 (#53) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
31
"
constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and pur-
pose; and when we interpret and intermix this
symbol-world, as“ being in itself," with things, we
act once more as we have always acted-mytho-
logically. The “non-free will” is mythology; in
real life it is only a question of strong and weak
wills. —It is almost_always a symptom of what
is lacking in himself, when a thinker,. . . in every
* " causal-connection” and “psychological neces-
sity,” manifests something of compulsion, indigence,
obsequiousness, oppression, and non-freedom; it is
suspicious to have such feelings—the person betrays
himself. And in general, if I have observed
correctly, the “non-freedom of the will” is regarded
as a problem from two entirely opposite stand-
points, but always in a profoundly personal manner:
some will not give up their "responsibility,” their
belief in themselves, the personal right to their
merits, at any price (the vain races belong to this
class); others
on the contrary, do not wish to be
answerable for anything, or blamed for anything,
and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to get
out of the business, no matter how. The latter,
when they write books, are in the habit at present
of taking the side of criminals; a sort of socialistic.
sympathy is their favourite disguise. And as a
matter of fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed
embellishes itself surprisingly when it can pose as
“la religion de la souffrance humaine"; that is its
"good taste. "
22.
Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who
cannot desist from the mischief of putting his


## p. 32 (#54) ##############################################

32
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
finger on bad modes of interpretation, but “Nature's
conformity to law," of which you physicists talk so
proudly, as though-why, it exists only owing to
your interpretation and bad “philology. " It is no
matter of fact, no “text,” but rather just a naïvely
humanitarian adjustment and perversion of mean-
ing, with which you make abundant concessions
to the democratic instincts of the modern soul !
"Everywhere equality before the law-Nature is
not different in that respect, nor better than we:”
a fine instance of secret motive, in which the vulgar
antagonism to everything privileged and autocratic
- likewise a second and more refined atheismis
once more disguised. "Ni dieu, ni maître”—that,
also, is what you want; and therefore “Cheers for
natural law ! ”—is it not so? But, as has been said,
that is interpretation, not text; and somebody
might come along, who, with opposite intentions
and modes of interpretation, could read out of the
same “Nature," and with regard to the same pheno-
mena, just the tyrannically inconsiderate and relent-
less enforcement of the claims of power-an inter-
preter who should so place the unexceptionalness
and unconditionalness of all "Will to Power" before
your eyes, that almost every word, and the word
“ tyranny" itself, would eventually seem unsuitable,
or like a weakening and softening metaphor-as
being too human; and who should, nevertheless,
end by asserting the same about this world as you
do, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "calcu-
"
lable" course, not, however, because laws obtain in
it, but because they are absolutely lacking, and
every power effects its ultimate consequences every


## p. 33 (#55) ##############################################

PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS.
33
moment. Granted that this also is only interpreta-
tion—and you will be eager enough to make this
objection ? -well, so much the better.
23.
All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral
prejudices and timidities, it has not dared to launch
out into the depths. In so far as it is allowable to
recognise in that which has hitherto been written,
evidence of that which has hitherto been kept
silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the
notion of psychology as the Morphology and
Development-doctrine of the Will to Power, as I
conceive of it. The power of moral prejudices has
penetrated deeply into the most intellectual world,
the world apparently most indifferent and unpre-
judiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious,
obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner. A
proper physio-psychology has to contend with un-
conscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator,
it has “the heart” against it: even a doctrine of the
reciprocal conditionalness of the “good” and the
" bad” impulses, causes (as refined immorality)
distress and aversion in a still strong and manly
conscience still more so, a doctrine of the deriva-
tion of all good impulses from bad ones. If, how-
ever, a person should regard even the emotions of
hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness as
life-conditioning emotions, as factors which must
be present, fundamentally and essentially, in the
general economy of life (which must, therefore, be
further developed if life is to be further developed),
he will suffer from such a view of things as from
С


## p. 34 (#56) ##############################################

34
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
sea-sickness. And yet this hypothesis is far from
being the strangest and most painful in this immense
and almost new domain of dangerous knowledge;
and there are in fact a hundred good reasons why
every one should keep away from it who can do so!
On the other hand, if one has once drifted hither
with one's bark, well! very good! now let us set
our teeth firmly! let us open our eyes and keep
our hand fast on the helm! We sail away right
over morality, we crush out, we destroy perhaps
the remains of our own morality by daring to make
our voyage thither—but what do we matter! Never
yet did a profounder world of insight reveal itself to
daring travellers and adventurers, and the psycho-
logist who thus “makes a sacrifice "—it is not the
sacrifizio dell'intelletto, on the contrary ! -will at
least be entitled to demand in return that psycho-
logy shall once more be recognised as the queen of
the sciences, for whose service and equipment the
other sciences exist. For psychology is once more
the path to the fundamental problems.
9)


## p. 35 (#57) ##############################################

SECOND CHAPTER
THE FREE SPIRIT
24.
OSANCTA simplicitas ! In what strange simplifica-
tion and falsification man lives! One can never
cease wondering when once one has got eyes for
beholding this marvel! How we have made every-
thing around us clear and free and easy and simple!
how we have been able to give our senses a pass-
port to everything superficial, our thoughts a god-
like desire for wanton pranks and wrong inferences !
-how from the beginning, we have contrived to
retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost
inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence,
heartiness, and gaiety--in order to enjoy life! And
only on this solidified, granite-like foundation of
ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the
will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more
powerful will, the will to ignorance, to the uncertain,
to the untrue! Not as its opposite, but-as its
refinement! It is to be hoped, indeed, that lan-
guage, here as elsewhere, will not get over its awk-
wardness, and that it will continue to talk of
opposites where there are only degrees and many
refinements of gradation ; it is equally to be hoped
that the incarnated Tartuffery of morals, which now
belongs to our unconquerable "flesh and blood,” will
-


## p. 36 (#58) ##############################################

36
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
turn the words round in the mouths of us discerning
ones. Here and there we understand it, and laugh
at the way in which precisely the best knowledge
seeks most to retain us in this simplified, thoroughly
artificial, suitably imagined and suitably falsified
world : at the way in which, whether it will or not,
it loves error, because, as living itself, it loves life!
25.
After such a cheerful commencement, a serious
word would fain be heard ; it appeals to the most
serious minds. Take care, ye philosophers and
friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom!
Of suffering " for the truth's sake"! even in your
own defence! It spoils all the innocence and fine
neutrality of your conscience; it makes you head.
strong against objections and red rags ; it stupefies,
animalises, and brutalises, when in the struggle with
danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse
consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your
last card as protectors of truth upon earth-as
though "the Truth” were such an innocent and in-
competent creature as to require protectors ! and
you of all people, ye knights of the sorrowful
countenance, Messrs Loafers and Cobweb-spinners
of the spirit! Finally, ye know sufficiently well
that it cannot be of any consequence if ye just carry
your point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher
has carried his point, and that there might be a
more laudable truthfulness in every little interroga-
tive mark which you place after your special words
and favourite doctrines (and occasionally after your-
selves) than in all the solemn pantomime and


## p. 37 (#59) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
37
>
trumping games before accusers and law-courts !
Rather go out of the way! Flee into concealment !
And have your masks and your ruses, that ye may
be mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared !
And pray, don't forget the garden, the garden with
golden trellis-work! And have people around you
who are as a garden-or as music on the waters at
eventide, when already the day becomes a memory.
Choose the good solitude, the free, wanton, light-
some solitude, which also gives you the right still
to remain good in any sense whatsoever! How
poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war
make one, which cannot be waged openly by means
of force! How personal does a long fear make one,
a long watching of enemies, of possible enemies !
These pariahs of society, these long-pursued, badly-
persecuted ones—also the compulsory recluses, the
Spinozas or Giordano Brunos—always become in
the end, even under the most intellectual masquer-
ade, and perhaps without being themselves aware
of it, refined vengeance-seekers, and poison-brewers
(just lay bare the foundation of Spinoza's ethics
and theology! ), not to speak of the stupidity of
moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a
philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour
has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher,
his “sacrifice for the sake of truth," forces into the
light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in
him; and if one has hitherto contemplated him
only with artistic curiosity, with regard to many a
philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous
desire to see him also in his deterioration (deterior-
ated into a “martyr," into a stage- and tribune
I
»
j


## p. 38 (#60) ##############################################

38
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
bawler). Only, that it is necessary with such a
desire to be clear what spectacle one will see in any
case—merely a satyric play, merely an epilogue
farce, merely the continued proof that the long, real
tragedy is at an end, supposing that every philosophy
has been a long tragedy in its origin.
26.
1
Every select man strives instinctively for a
citadel and a privacy, where he is free from the
crowd, the many, the majority–where he may
forget "men who are the rule," as their exception ;
-exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed
straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as
a discerner in the great and exceptional sense.
Whoever, in intercourse with men, does not occa-
sionally glisten in all the green and grey colours
of distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy,
gloominess and solitariness, is assuredly not a
man of elevated tastes; supposing, however, that
he does not voluntarily take all this burden and
disgust upon himself, that he persistently avoids it,
and remains, as I said, quietly and proudly hidden
in his citadel, one thing is then certain : he was not
made, he was not predestined for knowledge. For
as such, he would one day have to say to himself:
"The devil take my good taste! but the rule' is
more interesting than the exception—than myself,
the exception ! " And he would go down, and
above all, he would go "inside. ” The long and
serious study of the average man-and conse-
quently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity,
and bad intercourse all intercourse is bad inter-
"


## p. 39 (#61) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
39
(
")
course except with one's equals) that constitutes
a necessary part of the life-history of every
philosopher ; perhaps the most disagreeable,
odious, and disappointing part. If he is fortun-
ate, however, as a favourite child of knowledge
should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries
who will shorten and lighten his task; I mean so-
called cynics, those who simply recognise the
animal, the common-place and “the rule” in them-
selves, and at the same time have so much spiritu-
ality and ticklishness as to make them talk of
themselves and their like before witnesses-some-
times they wallow, even in books, as on their own
dung-hill. Cynicism is the only form in which
base souls approach what is called honesty; and
the higher man must open his ears to all the
coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself
when the clown becomes shameless right before
him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There are
even cases where enchantment mixes with the
disgust-namely, where by a freak of nature, genius
is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and
ape, as in the case of the Abbé Galiani, the pro-
foundest, acutest, and perhaps also filthiest man of
his century-he was far profounder than Voltaire,
and consequently also, a good deal more silent.
It happens more frequently, as has been hinted,
that a scientific head is placed on an ape's body, a
fine exceptional understanding in a base soul, an
occurrence by no means rare, especially amongst
doctors and moral physiologists. And whenever
any one speaks without bitterness, or rather quite
innocently of man, as a belly with two requirements,


## p. 40 (#62) ##############################################

40
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
(
G
and a head with one; whenever any one sees, seeks
and wants to see only hunger, sexual instinct, and
vanity as the real and only motives of human
actions; in short, when any one speaks " badly”
-and not even "ill"-of man, then ought the
lover of knowledge to hearken attentively and
diligently; he ought, in general, to have an open
ear wherever there is talk without indignation.
For the indignant man, and he who perpetually
tears and lacerates himself with his own teeth (or,
in place of himself, the world, God, or society), may
indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the
laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other
sense he is the more ordinary, more indifferent, and
less instructive case. And no one is such a liar as
the indignant man.
27
It is difficult to be understood, especially when one
thinks and lives gangasrotogati* among those only
who think and live otherwise-namely, kurmagati, t
or at best" froglike," mandeikagatif (I do everything
to be “difficultly understood " myself!
)—and one
should be heartily grateful for the good will to some
refinement of interpretation. As regards "the good
friends,” however, who are always too easy-going,
and think that as friends they have a right to ease,
one does well at the very first to grant them a play-
ground and romping-place for misunderstanding-
one can thus laugh still; or get rid of them alto-
gether, these good friends--and laugh then also!
"
* Like the river Ganges : presto.
+ Like the tortoise : lento. I Like the frog: staccato.
:


## p. 41 (#63) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
41
28.
What is most difficult to render from one language
into another is the tempo of its style, which has its
basis in the character of the race, or to speak more
physiologically, in the average tempo of the
assimilation of its nutriment. There are honestly
meant translations, which, as involuntary vulgarisa-
tions, are almost falsifications of the original,
merely because its lively and merry tempo (which
overleaps and obviates all dangers in word and
expression) could not also be rendered. A German
is almost incapacitated for presto in his language;
consequently also, as may be reasonably inferred,
for many of the most delightful and daring nuances
of free, free-spirited thought. And just as the
buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and
conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are
untranslatable for him. Everything ponderous,
viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded
and wearying species of style, are developed in
profuse variety among Germans-pardon me for
stating the fact that even Goethe's prose, in its
mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception,
as a reflection of the “good old time" to which it
belongs, and as an expression of German taste at a
time when there was still a "German taste," which
was a rococo-taste in moribus et artibus. Lessing
is an exception, owing to his histrionic nature, which
understood much, and was versed in many things;
he who was not the translator of Bayle to no
purpose, who took refuge willingly in the shadow
of Diderot and Voltaire, and still more willingly


## p. 42 (#64) ##############################################

42
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
among the Roman comedy-writers-Lessing loved
also free-spiritism in the tempo, and flight out of
Germany. But how could the German language,
even in the prose of Lessing, imitate the tempo of
Machiavelli, who in his “Principe" makes us breathe
the dry, fine air of Florence, and cannot help pre-
senting the most serious events in a boisterous
allegrissimo, perhaps not without a malicious artistic
sense of the contrast he ventures to present-long,
heavy, difficult, dangerous thoughts, and a tempo of
the gallop, and of the best, wantonest humour ?
Finally, who would venture on a German translation
of Petronius, who, more than any great musician
hitherto, was a master of presto in invention, ideas,
and words? What matter in the end about the
swamps of the sick, evil world, or of the "ancient
world,” when like him, one has the feet of a wind,
the rush, the breath, the emancipating scorn of a
wind, which makes everything healthy, by making
everything run! And with regard to Aristophanes
—that transfiguring, complementary genius, for
whose sake one pardons all Hellenism for having
existed, provided one has understood in its full
profundity all that there requires pardon and trans-
figuration ; there is nothing that has caused me to
meditate more on Plato's secrecy and sphinx-like
nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that
under the pillow of his death-bed there was found
no “ Bible,” nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean,
or Platonic—but a book of Aristophanes. How
could even a Plato have endured life-a Greek life
which he repudiated-without an Aristophanes !
"


## p. 43 (#65) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
43
29.
It is the business of the very few to be inde-
pendent; it is a privilege of the strong. And who-
ever attempts it, even with the best right, but
without being obliged to do so, proves that he is
probably not only strong, but also daring beyond
measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies
a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself
already brings with it; not the least of which is
that no one can see how and where he loses his
way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by
some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a
one comes to grief, it is so far from the compre-
hension of men that they neither feel it, nor
sympathise with it. And he cannot any longer go
back! He cannot even go back again to the
sympathy of men!
30.
Our deepest insights must-and should-appear
as follies, and under certain circumstances as crimes,
when they come unauthorisedly to the ears of those
who are not disposed and predestined for them.
The exoteric and the esoteric, as they were formerly
distinguished by philosophers—among the Indians,
as among the Greeks, Persians, and Mussulmans,
in short, wherever people believed in gradations of
rank and not in equality and equal rights--are not
so much in contradistinction to one another in
respect to the exoteric class, standing without, and
viewing, estimating, measuring, and judging from
the outside, and not from the inside ; the more


## p. 44 (#66) ##############################################

44
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
essential distinction is that the class in question
views things from below upwards — while the
esoteric class views things from above downwards.
There are heights of the soul from which tragedy
itself no longer appears to operate tragically; and
if all the woe in the world were taken together, who
would dare to decide whether the sight of it would
necessarily seduce and constrain to sympathy, and
thus to a doubling of the woe? . . . That which
serves the higher class of men for nourishment or
refreshment, must be almost poison to an entirely
different and lower order of human beings. The
virtues of the common man would perhaps mean
vice and weaknesses in a philosopher; it might be
possible for a highly developed man, supposing him
to degenerate and go to ruin, to acquire qualities
thereby alone, for the sake of which he would have
to be honoured as a saint in the lower world into
which he had sunk. There are books which have
an inverse value for the soul and the health accord-
ing as the inferior soul and the lower vitality, or the
higher and more powerful, make use of them. In
the former case they are dangerous, disturbing, un-
settling books, in the latter case they are herald-
calls which summon the bravest to their bravery.
Books for the general reader are always ill-smelling
books, the odour of paltry people clings to them.
Where the populace eat and drink, and even
where they reverence, it is accustomed to stink.
One should not go into churches if one wishes
to breathe pure air.


## p. 45 (#67) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
45
31.
In our youthful years we still venerate and
despise without the art of nuance, which is the best
gain of life, and we have rightly to do hard penance
for having fallen upon men and things with Yea and
Nay. Everything is so arranged that the worst of
all tastes, the taste for the unconditional, is cruelly
befooled and abused, until a man learns to introduce
a little art into his sentiments, and prefers to try
conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists
of life. The angry and reverent spirit peculiar to
youth appears to allow itself no peace, until it has
suitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent
its passion upon them : youth in itself even, is some-
thing falsifying and deceptive. Later on, when the
young soul, tortured by continual disillusions, finally
turns suspiciously against itself-still ardent and
savage even in its suspicion and remorse of con-
science: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it
tears itself, how it revenges itself for its long self-
blinding, as though it had been a voluntary blind-
ness! In this transition one punishes oneself by
!
distrust of one's sentiments; one tortures one's
enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good
conscience to be a danger, as if it were the self-
concealment and lassitude of a more refined up-
rightness; and above all, one espouses upon prin-
ciple the cause against "youth. ”-A decade later,
and one comprehends that all this also was still--
youth !


## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################

46
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
32.
Throughout the longest period of human history
-one calls it the prehistoric period—the value o
non-value of an action was inferred from its con-
sequences; the action in itself was not taken into
consideration, any more than its origin; but pretty
much as in China at present, where the distinction
or disgrace of a child redounds to its parents, the
retro-operating power of success or failure was what
induced men to think well or ill of an action. Let
us call this period the pre-moral period of mankind;
the imperative, “know thyself ! ” was then still un-
known. In the last ten thousand years, on the
other hand, on certain large portions of the earth,
one has gradually got so far, that one no longer lets
the consequences of an action, but its origin, decide
with regard to its worth : a great achievement as a
whole, an important refinement of vision and of
criterion, the unconscious effect of the supremacy
of aristocratic values and of the belief in "origin,"
the mark of a period which may be designated in
the narrower sense as the moral one: the first
attempt at self-knowledge is thereby made. In-
stead of the consequences, the origin-what an
inversion of perspective! And assuredly an in-
version effected only after long struggle and
wavering! To be sure, an ominous new superstition,
a peculiar narrowness of interpretation, attained
supremacy precisely thereby: the origin of an action
was interpreted in the most definite sense possible,
as origin out of an intention; people were agreed
in the belief that the value of an action lay in the
))


## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
47
value of its intention. The intention as the sole
origin and antecedent history of an action: under
the influence of this prejudice moral praise and
blame have been bestowed, and men have judged
and even philosophised almost up to the present
day. -Is it not possible, however, that the necessity
may now have arisen of again making up our minds
with regard to the reversing and fundamental shift-
ing of values, owing to a new self-consciousness and
acuteness in man-is it not possible that we may
be standing on the threshold of a period which to
begin with, would be distinguished negatively as
ultra-moral: nowadays when, at least amongst us
immoralists, the suspicion arises that the decisive
value of an action lies precisely in that which is not
intentional, and that all its intentionalness, all that
is seen, sensible, or “sensed” in it, belongs to its
surface or skin—which, like every skin, betrays
something, but conceals still more? In short, we
believe that the intention is only a sign or symptom,
which first requires an explanation—a sign, more-
over, which has too many interpretations, and
consequently hardly any meaning in itself alone:
that morality, in the sense in which it has been
understood hitherto, as intention-morality, has been
a prejudice, perhaps a prematureness or preliminari-
ness, probably something of the same rank as astro-
logy and alchemy, but in any case something which
must be surmounted. The surmounting of morality,
in a certain sense even the self-surmounting of
morality—let that be the name for the long secret
labour which has been reserved for the most re-
fined, the most upright, and also the most wicked


## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################

48
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
consciences of to-day, as the living touchstones of
the soul.
33.
It cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender,
of sacrifice for one's neighbour, and all self-renun-
ciation - morality, must be mercilessly called to
account, and brought to judgment; just as the
æsthetics of “disinterested contemplation," under
which the emasculation of art nowadays seeks in-
sidiously enough to create itself a good conscience.
There is far too much witchery and sugar in the
sentiments "for others" and "not for myself,” for
one not needing to be doubly distrustful here, and
for one asking promptly: "Are they not perhaps-
deceptions? ”—That they please_him who has them,
and him who enjoys their fruit, and also the mere
spectator—that is still no argument in their favour,
but just calls for caution. Let us therefore be
cautious!
34.
At whatever standpoint of philosophy one may
place oneself nowadays, seen from every position,
the erroneousness of the world in which we think
we live is the surest and most certain thing our
eyes can light upon: we find proof after proof
thereof, which would fain allure us into surmises
concerning a deceptive principle in the "nature of
things. " He, however, who makes thinking itself,
and consequently "the spirit,” responsible for the
falseness of the world-an honourable exit, which
every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei avails
himself of-he who regards this world, including


## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
49
"
space, time, forra, and movement, as falsely deduced,
would have at least good reason in the end to
become distrustful also of all thinking ; has it not
hitherto been playing upon us the worst of scurvy
tricks ? and what guarantee would it give that it
would not continue to do what it has always been
doing? In all seriousness, the innocence of thinkers
has something touching and respect-inspiring in it,
which even nowadays permits them to wait upon
consciousness with the request that it will give them
honest answers : for example, whether it be “real”
or not, and why it keeps the outer world so reso-
lutely at a distance, and other questions of the
same description. The belief in "immediate cer-
tainties” is a moral naïveté which does honour to
us philosophers; but we have now to cease being
“ “ merely moral” men! Apart from morality, such
belief is a folly which does little honour to us! If
in middle-class life an ever-ready distrust is re-
garded as the sign of a "bad character," and
consequently as an imprudence, here amongst us,
beyond the middle-class world and its Yeas and
Nays, what should prevent us being imprudent and
saying: the philosopher has at length a right to
“bad character," as the being who has hitherto
been most befooled on earth he is now under
obligation to distrustfulness, to the wickedest squint-
ing out of every
abyss of suspicion. -Forgive me
the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of ex-
pression; for I myself have long ago learned to
think and estimate differently with regard to de-
ceiving and being deceived, and I keep at least
couple of pokes in the ribs ready for the blind rage
D


## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################

50
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
with which philosophers struggle against being
deceived. Why not? It is nothing more than a
moral prejudice that truth is worth more than
semblance; it is, in fact, the worst proved supposi-
2
tion in the world. So much must be conceded :
there could have been no life at all except upon the
basis of perspective estimates and semblances; and
if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and stupidity of
many philosophers, one wished to do away alto-
gether with the “seeming world”-well, granted that
you could do that,—at least nothing of your "truth ”
“
would thereby remain! Indeed, what is it that
forces us in general to the supposition that there is
an essential opposition of "true" and "false"? Is
it not enough to suppose degrees of seemingness,
and as it were lighter and darker shades and
tones of semblance — different valeurs, as the
painters say? Why might not the world which
concerns us—be a fiction? And to any one who sug-
gested : “But to a fiction belongs an originator ? "
-might it not be bluntly replied: Why? May not
this " belong" also belong to the fiction? Is it not
at length permitted to be a little ironical towards
the subject, just as towards the predicate and
object? Might not the philosopher elevate himself
above faith in grammar? All respect to governesses,
but is it not time that philosophy should renounce
governess-faith?
35.
O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There
is something ticklish in "the truth, and in the
search for the truth; and if man goes about it too


## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
51
humanely-"il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le
bien"-1 wager he finds nothing !
3
36.
Supposing that nothing else is "given” as real
but our world of desires and passions, that we can-
not sink or rise to any other “reality” but just that
of our impulses-for thinking is only a relation of
these impulses to one another :-are we not per-
mitted to make the attempt and to ask the question
whether this which is "given” does not suffice, by
means of our counterparts, for the understanding
even of the so-called mechanical (or “material") .
world? I do not mean as an illusion, a “sem-
blance," a "representation " (in the Berkeleyan and
Schopenhauerian sense), but as possessing the same
degree of reality as our emotions themselves—as a
more primitive form of the world of emotions, in
which everything still lies locked in a mighty unity,
which afterwards branches off and develops itself
in organic processes (naturally also, refines and de-
bilitates)—as a kind of instinctive life in which all
organic functions, including self-regulation, assimi-
lation, nutrition, secretion, and change of matter,
are still synthetically united with one another—as
a primary form of life ? - In the end, it is not only
permitted to make this attempt, it is commanded
by the conscience of logical method. Not to assume
several kinds of causality, so long as the attempt to
get along with a single one has not been pushed to
its furthest extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed
to say so): that is a morality of method which one
may not repudiate nowadays—it follows “from its
-



## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################

52
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
1)
:
definition," as mathematicians say. The question
.
is ultimately whether we really recognise the will
as operating, whether we believe in the causality of
the will; if we do so—and fundamentally our belief
in this is just our belief in causality itself—we must
make the attempt to posit hypothetically the caus-
ality of the will as the only causality. “Will” can
naturally only operate on "will”-and not on
"matter" (not on "nerves," for instance): in short,
the hypothesis must be hazarded, whether will does
not operate on will wherever “effects
are recog-
nised-and whether all mechanical action, inasmuch
as a power operates therein, is not just the power
of will, the effect of will. Granted, finally, that we
succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as
the development and ramification of one funda-
mental form of will_namely, the Will to Power, as
my thesis puts it; granted that all organic functions
could be traced back to this Will to Power, and
that the solution of the problem of generation and
nutrition-it is one problem-could also be found
therein: one would thus have acquired the right to
define all active force unequivocally as Will to
Power. The world seen from within, the world
defined and designated according to its "intelligible
character”-it would simply be “Will to Power,"
and nothing else.
"
37.
“What? Does not that mean in popular lan-
guage: God is disproved, but not the devil ? "_On
the contrary! On the contrary, my friends! And
who the devil also compels you to speak popularly!


## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
53
38.
As happened finally in all the enlightenment of
modern times with the French Revolution (that
terrible farce, quite superfluous when judged close
at hand, into which, however, the noble and vision-
ary spectators of all Europe have interpreted
from a distance their own indignation and enthu-
siasm so long and passionately, until the text has
disappeared under the interpretation), so a noble
posterity might once more misunderstand the whole
of the past, and perhaps only thereby make its
aspect endurable. - Or rather, has not this already
happened? Have not we ourselves been-that
"noble posterity”? And, in so far as we now
comprehend this, is it not-thereby already past?
39.
Nobody will very readily regard a doctrine
as true merely because it makes people happy
or
virtuous — excepting perhaps the amiable
“Idealists," who are enthusiastic about the good,
true, and beautiful, and let all kinds of motley,
coarse, and good-natured desirabilities swim about
promiscuously in their pond. Happiness and
virtue are no arguments. It is willingly forgotten,
however, even on the part of thoughtful minds,
that to make unhappy and to make bad are just
as little counter-arguments. A thing could be true,
although it were in the highest degree injurious
and dangerous ; indeed, the fundamental constitu-
tion of existence might be such that one succumbed
by a full knowledge of it-so that the strength of


## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################

54
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
a mind might be measured by the amount of
“ truth” it could endure—or to speak more plainly,
by the extent to which it required truth attenuated,
veiled, sweetened, damped, and falsified. But there
is no doubt that for the discovery of certain portions
of truth the wicked and unfortunate are more
favourably situated and have a greater likelihood
of success; not to speak of the wicked who are
happy-a species about whom moralists are silent.
Perhaps severity and craft are more favourable
conditions for the development of strong, inde-
pendent spirits and philosophers than the gentle,
refined, yielding good-nature, and habit of taking
things easily, which are prized, and rightly prized
in a learned man. Presupposing always, to begin
with, that the term "philosopher" be not confined
to the philosopher who writes books, or even
introduces his philosophy into books Stendhal
furnishes a last feature of the portrait of the free-
spirited philosopher, which for the sake of German
taste I will not omit to underline—for it is opposed
to German taste. “Pour être bon philosophe," says
this last great psychologist, “il faut être sec, clair,
sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une
partie du caractère requis pour faire des découvertes
en philosophie, c'est-à-dire pour voir clair dans ce
qui est. "
"
9
40.
Everything that is profound loves the mask; the
profoundest things have a hatred even of figure
and likeness. Should not the contrary only be the
right disguise for the shame of a God to go about


## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
55
a
in? A question worth asking ! —it would be strange
if some mystic has not already ventured on the
same kind of thing. There are proceedings of such
a delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them
with coarseness and make them unrecognisable ;
there are actions of love and of an extravagant
magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than
to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly :
one thereby obscures his recollection. Many a
one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory,
in order at least to have vengeance on this sole
party in the secret: shame is inventive. They are
not the worst things of which one is most ashamed:
there is not only deceit behind a mask—there is so
much goodness in craft. I could imagine that a
man with something costly and fragile to conceal,
would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like
an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refine-
ment of his shame requiring it to be so.
A man
who has depths in his shame meets his destiny
and his delicate decisions upon paths which few
ever reach, and with regard to the existence of
which his nearest and most intimate friends may
be ignorant; his mortal danger conceals itself from
their eyes, and equally so his regained security.
Such a hidden nature, which instinctively employs
speech for silence and concealment, and is in-
exhaustible in evasion of communication, desires
and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy his
place in the hearts and heads of his friends; and
supposing he does not desire it, his eyes will some
day be opened to the fact that there is nevertheless
a mask of him there--and that it is well to be so.


## p. 56 (#78) ##############################################

56
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
Every profound spirit needs a mask; nay, more,
around every profound spirit there continually
grows a mask, owing to the constantly false, that
is to say, superficial interpretation of every word he
utters, every step he takes, every sign of life he
manifests.
a recess.
41.
One must subject oneself to one's own tests that
one is destined for independence and command, and
do so at the right time. One must not avoid one's
tests, although they constitute perhaps the most
dangerous game one can play, and are in the end
tests made only before ourselves and before no
other judge. Not to cleave to any person, be it
even the dearest-every person is a prison and also
Not to cleave to a fatherland, be it even
the most suffering and necessitous—it is even less
difficult to detach one's heart from a victorious
fatherland. Not to cleave to a sympathy, be it
even for higher men, into whose peculiar torture
and helplessness chance has given us an insight.
Not to cleave to a science, though it tempt one
with the most valuable discoveries, apparently
specially reserved for us. Not to cleave to one's
.
own liberation, to the voluptuous distance and
remoteness of the bird, which always flies further
aloft in order always to see more under it—the
danger of the fier. Not to cleave to our
virtues, nor become as a whole a victim to any of
our specialities, to our "hospitality” for instance,
which is the danger of dangers for highly developed
and wealthy souls, who deal prodigally, almost
own


## p. 57 (#79) ##############################################

THE FREE SPIRIT.
57
indifferently with themselves, and push the virtue
of liberality so far that it becomes a vice. One y
must know how to conserve oneself-the best test of
independence.
42.
A new order of philosophers is appearing; I
shall venture to baptize them by a name not
without danger. As far as I understand them, as
far as they allow themselves to be understood for
it is their nature to wish to remain something of a
puzzle—these philosophers of the future might
rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be desig-
nated as "tempters. This name itself is after all
only an attempt, or, if it be preferred, a temptation.
43.
Will they be new friends of “ truth,” these coming
philosophers ? Very probably, for all philosophers
hitherto have loved their truths. But assuredly
they will not be dogmatists. It must be contrary
to their pride, and also contrary to their taste, that
their truth should still be truth for every one-
that which has hitherto been the secret wish and
ultimate purpose of all dogmatic efforts. : “My
opinion is my opinion: another person has not
easily a right to it”—such a philosopher of the
future will say, perhaps. One must renounce the
bad taste of wishing to agree with many people.
"Good" is no longer good when one's neighbour
takes it into his mouth. And how could there be
a "common good”! The expression contradicts
itself; that which can be common is always of
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58
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
small value. In the end things must be as they
are and have always been—the great things remain
for the great, the abysses for the profound, the
delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum
up shortly, everything rare for the rare.
44.
Need I say expressly after all this that they will
be free, very free spirits, these philosophers of the
future-as certainly also they will not be merely
free spirits, but something more, higher, greater, and
fundamentally different, which does not wish to be
misunderstood and mistaken? But while I say
this, I feel under obligation almost as much to them
as to ourselves (we free spirits who are their heralds
and forerunners), to sweep away from ourselves alto-
gether a stupid old prejudice and misunderstanding,
which, like a fog, has too long made the concep-
tion of “free spirit" obscure. In every country of
Europe, and the same in America, there is at
present something which makes an abuse of this
name: a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class
of spirits, who desire almost the opposite of what
our intentions and instincts prompt-not to mention
that in respect to the new philosophers who are
appearing, they must still more be closed windows
and bolted doors. Briefly and regrettably, they
belong to the levellers, these wrongly named "free
spirits" - as glib - tongued and scribe - fingered
slaves of the democratic taste and its “modern
ideas": all of them men without solitude, without
personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom
neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to
C
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THE FREE SPIRIT.