No More Learning

Whoever has seen deeply into the world has
doubtless divined what wisdom there is in the fact
that men are superficial. It is their preservative
instinct which teaches them to be flighty, lightsome,
and false. Here and there one finds a passionate
and exaggerated adoration of "pure forms” in
philosophers as well as in artists: it is not to be
doubted that whoever has need of the cult of the
superficial to that extent, has at one time or another
made an unlucky dive beneath it. Perhaps there is
even an order of rank with respect to those burnt
children, the born artists who find the enjoyment
of life only in trying to falsify its image (as if
taking wearisome revenge on it); one might guess
to what degree life has disgusted them, by the
extent to which they wish to see its image falsified,
attenuated, ultrified, and deified;-one might reckon
the homines religiosi amongst the artists, as their
highest rank. It is the profound, suspicious fear
of an incurable pessimism which compels whole
centuries to fasten their teeth into a religious inter-
pretation of existence: the fear of the instinct
which divines that truth might be attained too
soon, before man has become strong enough, hard
enough, artist enough. . . Piety, the “Life in
.


## p. 79 (#101) #############################################

THE RELIGIOUS MOOD.
79
God,” regarded in this light, would appear as the
most elaborate and ultimate product of the fear of
truth, as artist-adoration and artist-intoxication in
presence of the most logical of all falsifications, as
the will to the inversion of truth, to untruth at any
price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more
effective means of beautifying man than piety ; by
means of it man can become so artful, so super-
ficial, so iridescent, and so good, that his appear-
ance no longer offends.
60.
To love mankind for God's sake--this has so far
been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which
mankind has attained. That love to mankind,
without any redeeming intention in the background,
is only an additional folly and brutishness, that the
inclination to this love has first to get its propor-
tion, its delicacy, its grain of salt and sprinkling of
ambergris from a higher inclination:whoever first
perceived and "experienced” this, however his
tongue may have stammered as it attempted to
express such a delicate matter, let him for all time
be holy and respected, as the man who has so far
flown highest and gone astray in the finest fashion!
TH
61.
The philosopher, as we free spirits understand
him-as the man of the greatest responsibility, who
has the conscience for the general development of
mankind,—will use religion for his disciplining and
educating work, just as he will use the contem-
porary political and economic conditions. The


## p. 80 (#102) #############################################

80
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
selecting and disciplining influence—destructive, as
well as creative and fashioning—which can be exer-
cised by means of religion is manifold and varied,
according to the sort of people placed under its
spell and protection. For those who are strong and
independent, destined and trained to command, in
whom the judgment and skill of a ruling race is
incorporated, religion is an additional means for
overcoming resistance in the exercise of authority
as a bond which binds rulers and subjects in
common, betraying and surrendering to the former
the conscience of the latter, their inmost heart,
which would fain escape obedience. And in the
case of the unique natures of noble origin, if by
virtue of superior spirituality they should incline
to a more retired and contemplative life, reserving
to themselves only the more refined forms of
government (over chosen disciples or members of
an order), religion itself may be used as a means
for obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of
managing grosser affairs, and for securing immunity
from the unavoidable filth of all political agita-
tion. The Brahmins, for instance, understood this
fact. With the help of a religious organisation,
they secured to themselves the power of nominat-
ing kings for the people, while their sentiments
prompted them to keep apart and outside, as men
with a higher and super-regal mission. At the
same time religion gives inducement and oppor-
tunity to some of the subjects to qualify themselves
for future ruling and commanding : the slowly
ascending ranks and classes, in which, through
fortunate marriage customs, volitional power and


## p. 81 (#103) #############################################

THE RELIGIOUS MOOD.
81
delight in self-control are on the increase. To them
religion offers sufficient incentives and temptations
to aspire to higher intellectuality, and to experience
the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of
silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism
are almost indispensable means of educating and
ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its
hereditary baseness and work itself upward to
future supremacy. And finally, to ordinary men,
to the majority of the people, who exist for
service and general utility, and are only so far
entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable con-
tentedness with their lot and condition, peace of
heart, ennoblement of obedience, additional social
happiness and sympathy, with something of trans-
figuration and embellishment, something of justifica-
tion of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness,
all the semi-animal poverty of their souls. Reli-
gion, together with the religious significance of life,
sheds sunshine over such perpetually harassed
men, and makes even their own aspect endurable
to them; it operates upon them as the Epicurean
philosophy usually operates upon sufferers of a
higher order, in a refreshing and refining manner,
almost turning suffering to account, and in the end
even hallowing and vindicating it. There is per-
haps nothing so admirable in Christianity and
Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest
to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly
higher order of things, and thereby to retain their
satisfaction with the actual world in which they
find it difficult enough to live—this very difficulty
being necessary.
-
F


## p. 82 (#104) #############################################

82
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
62.
To be sure to make also the bad counter-
reckoning against such religions, and to bring to
light their secret dangers—the cost is always ex-
cessive and terrible when religions do not operate
as an educational and disciplinary medium in the
hands of the philosopher, but rule voluntarily and
paramountly, when they wish to be the final end, and
not a means along with other means. Among men,
as among all other animals, there is a surplus of
defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and neces-
sarily suffering individuals; the successful cases,
among men also, are always the exception; and in
view of the fact that man is the animal not yet
properly adapted to his environment, the rare excep-
tion. But worse still. The higher the type a man
represents, the greater is the improbability that he
will succeed; the accidental, the law of irrationality
in the general constitution of mankind, manifests
itself most terribly in its destructive effect on the
higher orders of men, the conditions of whose lives
are delicate, diverse, and difficult to determine.
What, then, is the attitude of the two greatest
religions above-mentioned to the surplus of failures
in life? They endeavour to preserve and keep
alive whatever can be preserved ; in fact, as the
religions for sufferers, they take the part of these
upon principle; they are always in favour of those
who suffer from life as from a disease, and they
would fain treat every other experience of life as
false and impossible.
However highly we may
esteem this indulgent and preservative care (inas-


## p. 83 (#105) #############################################

THE RELIGIOUS MOOD.
83
much as in applying to others, it has applied, and
applies also to the highest and usually the most
suffering type of man), the hitherto paramount
religions—to give a general appreciation of them
are among the principal causes which have kept the
type of “man” upon a lower level—they have pre-
-
served too much that which should have perished.
One has to thank them for invaluable services; and
who is sufficiently rich in gratitude not to feel poor
at the contemplation of all that the “spiritual men
of Christianity have done for Europe hitherto ! But
when they had given comfort to the sufferers,
courage to the oppressed and despairing, a staff and
support to the helpless, and when they had allured
from society into convents and spiritual peni-
tentiaries the broken-hearted and distracted: what
else had they to do in order to work systematically
in that fashion, and with a good conscience, for the
preservation of all the sick and suffering, which
means, in deed and in truth, to work for the deterio-
ration of the European race? To reverse all esti-
mates of value—that is what they had to do! And
to shatter the strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast
suspicion on the delight in beauty, to break down
everything autonomous, manly, conquering, and
imperious-all instincts which are natural to the
highest and most successful type of “man"-into
uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self-destruc-
tion; forsooth, to invert all love of the earthly and
of supremacy over the earth, into hatred of the
earth and earthly things that is the task the Church
imposed on itself, and was obliged to impose, until,
according to its standard of value, “ unworldliness,”
1


## p. 84 (#106) #############################################

84
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
>
unsensuousness, and “higher man fused into
one sentiment. If one could observe the strangely
painful, equally coarse and refined comedy of
European Christianity with the derisive and im-
partial eye of an Epicurean god, I should think one
would never cease marvelling and laughing ; does
it not actually seem that some single will has ruled
over Europe for eighteen centuries in order to
make a sublime abortion of man? He, however,
who, with opposite requirements (no longer
Epicurean) and with some divine hammer in his
hand, could approach this almost voluntary degene-
ration and stunting of mankind, as exemplified
in the European Christian (Pascal, for instance),
would he not have to cry aloud with rage, pity
and horror: “Oh, you bunglers, presumptuous
:
pitiful bunglers, what have you done! Was that a
work for your hands ? How you have hacked and
botched my finest stone! What have you presumed
to do! ”-I should say that Christianity has hitherto
been the most portentous of presumptions. Men,
not great enough, nor hard enough, to be entitled
as artists to take part in fashioning man ; men, not
sufficiently strong and far-sighted to allow, with
sublime self-constraint, the obvious law of the
thousandfold failures and perishings to prevail ;
men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically dif-
ferent grades of rank and intervals of rank that
separate man from man :-such men, with their
"equality before God,” have hitherto swayed the
destiny of Europe ; until at last a dwarfed, almost
ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious
animal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the
European of the present day.


## p. 85 (#107) #############################################

FOURTH CHAPTER
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES.
63.
He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously
—and even himself-only in relation to his pupils.
66
)
64.
Knowledge for its own sake”_that is the last
snare laid by morality: we are thereby completely
entangled in morals once more.
65.
The charm of knowledge would be small, were it
not that so much shame has to be overcome on
the way to it.
65A.
We are most dishonourable towards our God: he
is not permitted to sin.
66.
The tendency of a person to allow himself to be
degraded, robbed, deceived, and exploited might
be the diffidence of a God amongst men.
a
67.
Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised
at the expense of all others. Love to God also!


## p. 86 (#108) #############################################

86
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
68.
"I did that," says my memory.
“ I could not
have done that," says my pride, and remains in-
exorable. Eventually—the memory yields.
69.
One has regarded life carelessly, if one has failed
to see the hand that-kills with leniency.
70.
If a man has character, he has also his typical
experience, which always recurs.
71.
The Sage as Astronomer. —So long as thou feelest
the stars as an “above thee,” thou lackest the eye
of the discerning one.
72.
It is not the strength, but the duration of great
sentiments that makes great men.
73.
He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby
surpasses it.
73A.
Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye-
and calls it his pride.
74.
A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess
at least two things besides : gratitude and purity.


## p. 87 (#109) #############################################

APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES.
87
75.
The degree and nature of a man's sensuality
extends to the highest altitudes of his spirit.
76.
Under peaceful conditions the militant man
attacks himself,
77.
With his principles a man seeks either to domi-
nate, or justify, or honour, or reproach, or conceal
his habits : two men with the same principles
probably seek fundamentally different ends there-
with.
78.
He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems
himself thereby, as a despiser.
79.
A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not
itself love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.
80
A thing that is explained ceases to concern us. -
What did the God mean who gave the advice,
“Know thyself! ” Did it perhaps imply : “Cease
to be concerned about thyself! become objective ! "
-And Socrates ? -And the “ scientific man"?
6
81.
It is terrible to die of thirst at sea.
Is it necessary
that you should so salt your
truth that it will no
longer~-quench thirst ?


## p. 88 (#110) #############################################

88
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
66
82.
Sympathy for all ”—would be harshness and
tyranny for thee, my good neighbour !
-
83
Instinct. -When the house is on fire one forgets
even the dinner. —Yes, but one recovers it from
amongst the ashes.
84.
Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she-
forgets how to charm.
85.
The same emotions are in man and woman, but
in different tempo; on that account man and woman
never cease to misunderstand each other.
86.
In the background of all their personal vanity,
women themselves have still their impersonal
scorn-for “woman. "
87.
Fettered Heart, Free Spirit. -When one firmly
fetters one's heart and keeps it prisoner, one can
allow one's spirit many liberties : I said this once
before. But people do not believe it when I say
so, unless they know it already.
4
88.
One begins to distrust very clever persons when
they become embarrassed.


## p. 89 (#111) #############################################

APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES.
89
89.
Dreadful experiences raise the question whether
he who experiences them is not something dreadful
also.
90.
Heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, and come
temporarily to their surface, precisely by that
which makes others heavy-by hatred and love.
91.
So cold, so icy, that one burns one's finger at
the touch of him! Every hand that lays hold of
him shrinks back ! -And for that very reason
many think him red-hot.
92.
Who has not, at one time or another-sacrificed
himself for the sake of his good name?
93.
In affability there is no hatred of men, but
precisely on that account a great deal too much
contempt of men.
94.
The maturity of man—that means, to have
reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child
at play.
95.
To be ashamed of one's immorality is a step on
the ladder at the end of which one is ashamed also
of one's morality.


## p. 90 (#112) #############################################

90
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
96.
One should part from life as Ulysses parted
from Nausicaa-blessing it rather than in love
with it.
97
What? A great man? I always see merely
the play-actor of his own ideal,
98.
When one trains one's conscience, it kisses one
while it bites.
99.
The Disappointed One Speaks. -"I listened for
the echo and I heard only praise. ”
100.
We all feign to ourselves that we are simpler
than we are; we thus relax ourselves away from
our fellows.
IOI.
A discerning one might easily regard himself at
present as the animalisation of God.
102.
Discovering reciprocal love should really dis-
enchant the lover with regard to the beloved.
“What! She is modest enough to love even you?
Or stupid enough? Or-or-
103
The Danger in Happiness. -"Everything now
turns out best for me, I now love every fate :—who
would like to be my fate ? "


## p. 91 (#113) #############################################

APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES.
91
104.
Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of
their love, prevents the Christians of to-day-
burning us.
105.
The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste
(the “piety ") of the free spirit (the “pious man of
knowledge ") than the impia fraus. Hence the
”
profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the
church, characteristic of the type “free spirit”-as
its non-freedom.
106.
By means of music the very passions enjoy
themselves.
107.
A sign of strong character, when once the
resolution has been taken, to shut the ear even to
the best counter-arguments. Occasionally, there-
fore, a will to stupidity.
108.
There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but
only a moral interpretation of phenomena.
109.
The criminal is often enough not equal to his
deed : he extenuates and maligns it.
IIO.
The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists
enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the
deed to the advantage of the doer.


## p. 92 (#114) #############################################

92
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
III.
Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when
our pride has been wounded.
112.
To him who feels himself preordained to con-
templation and not to belief, all believers are too
noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.
113.
“You want to prepossess him in your favour?
Then you must be embarrassed before him. ”
114.
The immense expectation with regard to sexual
love, and the coyness in this expectation, spoils all
the perspectives of women at the outset.
115.
Where there is neither love nor hatred in the
game, woman's play is mediocre.
116.
The great epochs of our life are at the points
when we gain courage to rebaptize our badness as
the best in us.
117
The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately
only the will of another, or of several other,
emotions.
118.
There is an innocence of admiration: it is


## p. 93 (#115) #############################################

APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES.
93
possessed by him to whom it has not yet occurred
that he himself may be admired some day.
119.
Our loathing of dirt may be so great as to
prevent us cleaning ourselves—"justifying” our-
selves.
I 20.
Sensuality often forces the growth of love too
much, so that its root remains weak, and is easily
torn up
I21.
It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when
a
he wished to turn author—and that he did not learn
it better.
I 22.
To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases
merely politeness of heart—and the very opposite
of vanity of spirit.
123.
Even concubinage has been corrupted by
marriage.
I 24.
He who exults at the stake, does not triumph
over pain, but because of the fact that he does not
feel pain where he expected it. A parable.
125.
When we have to change an opinion about any
one, we charge heavily to his account the incon-
venience he thereby causes us.


## p. 94 (#116) #############################################

94
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
1 26.
A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or
seven great men. -Yes, and then to get round them.
127.
In the eyes of all true women science is hostile to
the sense of shame. They feel as if one wished to
peep under their skin with it- or worse still! under
their dress and finery.
128.
The more abstract the truth you wish to teach,
the more must you allure the senses to it.
129.
The devil has the most extensive perspectives for
God; on that account he keeps so. far
away from
him :—the devil, in effect, as the oldest friend of
knowledge.
130.
What a person is begins to betray itself when
his talent decreases, when he ceases to show what
he can do. Talent is also an adornment; an
adornment is also a concealment.
131.
The sexes deceive themselves about each other :
the reason is that in reality they honour and love
only themselves (or their own ideal, to express it
more agreeably). Thus man wishes woman to be
peaceable: but in fact woman is essentially unpeace-
able, like the cat, however well she may have
assumed the peaceable demeanour.


## p. 95 (#117) #############################################

APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES.
95
132.
One is punished best for one's virtues.
133.
He who cannot find the way to his ideal, lives
more frivolously and shamelessly than the man
without an ideal.
134.
From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all
good conscience, all evidence of truth.
135.
Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man;
a considerable part of it is rather an essential condi-
tion of being good.
136.
The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the
other seeks some one whom he can assist: a good
conversation thus originates.
.
137.
In intercourse with scholars and artists one
readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds : in a
remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a
mediocre man; and often even in a mediocre artist,
one finds a very remarkable man.
138.
We do the same when awake as when dreaming:
we only invent and imagine him with whom we
have intercourse—and forget it immediately.


## p. 96 (#118) #############################################

96
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
139.
In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous
than man.
140.
Advice as a Riddle. -—“If the band is not to break,
bite it first-secure to make ! "
141.
The belly is the reason why man does not so
readily take himself for a God.
142.
The chastest utterance I ever heard : “ Dans le
véritable amour c'est l'âme qui enveloppe le corps. "
143.
Our vanity would like what we do best to pass
precisely for what is most difficult to us. —Con-
cerning the origin of many systems of morals.
144.
When a woman has scholarly inclinations there
is generally something wrong with her sexual
nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a certain
virility of taste ; man, indeed, if I may say so, is
“ the barren animal. ”
145.
Comparing man and woman generally, one may
say that woman would not have the genius for
adornment, if she had not the instinct for the
secondary rôle.


## p. 97 (#119) #############################################

APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES.
97
146.
He who fights with monsters should be careful
lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou
gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze
into thee.
147.
From old Florentine novels—moreover, from life:
Buona femmina e mala femmina vuol bastone. -
Sacchetti, Nov. 86.
148.
To seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion,
and afterwards to believe implicitly in this opinion
of their neighbour-who can do this conjuring trick
so well as women?
149.
That which an age considers evil is usually an
unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered
good-the atavism of an old ideal.
150.
Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy ;
around the demigod everything becomes a satyr-
play; and around God everything becomes—what?
perhaps a “world”?
151.
It is not enough to possess a talent: one must
also have your permission to possess it ;-eh, my
friends ?
152.
“Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is
always Paradise :" so say the most ancient and the
most modern serpents.
G


## p. 98 (#120) #############################################

98
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
153.
What is done out of love always takes place
beyond good and evil.
154.
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of
irony are signs of health ; everything absolute
belongs to pathology.
155.
The sense of the tragic increases and declines
with sensuousness.
156.
Insanity in individuals is something rare-but in
groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
:
157.
The thought of suicide is a great consolation:
by means of it one gets successfully through many
a bad night.
158.
Not only our reason, but also our conscience,
truckles to our strongest impulse-the tyrant in us.
159.
One must repay good and ill; but why just to
the person who did us good or ill?
160.
One no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently
after one has communicated it.


## p. 99 (#121) #############################################

APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES.
99
161.
Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences :
they exploit them.
162.
“Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but
our neighbour's neighbour :”— so thinks every
-
nation.
163.
Love brings to light the noble and hidden
"qualities of a lover-his rare and exceptional traits:
it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his normal
character.
164
Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for
"
servants ;-love God as I love him, as his Son!
What have we Sons of God to do with morals ! ”
165.
In Sight of every Party. -A shepherd has always
need of a bell-wether-or he has himself to be a
wether occasionally.
166.
One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with
the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells
the truth.
167.
To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame
-and something precious.
168.
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did
not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.


## p. 100 (#122) ############################################

100
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
169.
To talk much about oneself may also be a means
of concealing oneself.
170.
In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in
blame.
171.
Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of
knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops.
172.
One occasionally embraces some one or other, out
of love to mankind (because one cannot embrace
all); but this is what one must never confess to the
individual.
173.
One does not hate as long as one disesteems,
but only when one esteems equal or superior.
174.
Ye Utilitarians-ye, too, love the utile only as a
vehicle for your inclinations,—ye, too, really find the
noise of its wheels insupportable !
175.
One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing
desired.
176.
The vanity of others is only counter to our taste
when it is counter to our vanity.


## p. 101 (#123) ############################################

APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES.
1ΟΙ
177.
With regard to what “truthfulness" is, perhaps
nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful.
178.
One does not believe in the follies of clever men :
what a forfeiture of the rights of man!
179.
The consequences of our actions seize us by the
forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have
meanwhile “reformed. ”
180.
There is an innocence in lying which is the sign
of good faith in a cause.
181.
It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.
182.
The familiarity of superiors embitters one, be-
cause it may not be returned.
183.
“I am affected, not because you have deceived
me, but because I can no longer believe in you. "
184.
There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the
appearance of wickedness.
185.
“I dislike him. ”_Why ? _“I am not a match
for him. ”—Did any one ever answer so?


## p. 102 (#124) ############################################

i


## p. 103 (#125) ############################################

FIFTH CHAPTER.
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
186.
а
THE moral sentiment in Europe at present is
perhaps as subtle, belated, diverse, sensitive, and
refined, as the “Science of Morals” belonging
thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and coarse-
fingered an interesting contrast, which sometimes
becomes incarnate and obvious in the very person
of a moralist. Indeed, the expression, “Science of
Morals” is, in respect to what is designated thereby,
far too presumptuous and counter to good taste,
—which is always a foretaste of more modest ex-
pressions. One ought to avow with the utmost
fairness what is still necessary here for a long time,
what is alone proper for the present: namely, the
collection of material, the comprehensive survey
and classification of an immense domain of deli-
cate sentiments of worth, and distinctions of worth,
which live, grow, propagate, and perish—and per-
haps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring
and more common forms of these living crystallisa-
tions-as preparation for a theory of types of
morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto
been so modest. All the philosophers, with a


## p. 104 (#126) ############################################

104
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
pedantic and ridiculous seriousness, demanded of
themselves something very much higher, more pre-
tentious, and ceremonious, when they concerned
themselves with morality as a science : they wanted
to give a basis to morality—and every philosopher
hitherto has believed that he has given it a basis;
morality itself, however, has been regarded as
something "given. " How far from their awkward
pride was the seemingly insignificant problem-left
in dust and decay-of a description of forms of
morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands and
senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was
precisely owing to moral philosophers knowing the
moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary epitome, or
an accidental abridgment—perhaps as the morality
of their environment, their position, their church,
their Zeitgeist, their climate and zone—it was pre-
cisely because they were badly instructed with
regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by
no means eager to know about these matters, that
they did not even come in sight of the real problems
of morals-problems which only disclose themselves
by a comparison of many kinds of morality. In
every “Science of Morals" hitherto, strange as it
may sound, the problem of morality itself has been
omitted; there has been no suspicion that there
was anything problematic there! That which
philosophers called "giving a basis to morality,"
and endeavoured to realise, has, wien seen in a
right light, proved merely a learned forın of good
faith in prevailing morality, a new means of its ex-
pression, consequently just a matter-of-fact within
the sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate


## p. 105 (#127) ############################################

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS.
105
a
motive, a sort of denial that it is lawful for this
morality to be called in question-and in any case
the reverse of the testing, analysing, doubting, and
vivisecting of this very faith. Hear, for instance,
with what innocence—almost worthy of honour-
Schopenhauer represents his own task, and draw
your conclusions concerning the scientificalness of
Science” whose latest master still talks in the
strain of children and old wives : “The principle,"
he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der
Ethik *), “the axiom about the purport of which
all moralists are practically agreed: neminem læde,
immo omnes quantum potes juva-is really the pro-
position which all moral teachers strive to establish,
the real basis of ethics which has been sought,
like the philosopher's stone, for centuries. ”—The
difficulty of establishing the proposition referred
to may indeed be great-it is well known that
Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his efforts ;
and whoever has thoroughly realised how absurdly
false and sentimental this proposition is, in a world
whose essence is Will to Power, may be reminded
that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist, actually,
played the flute . . . daily after dinner : one may
read about the matter in his biography.