No More Learning

'
On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the
decay of aristocratic values, that the antitheses
between " egoistic " and " altruistic '' presses more
and more heavily on the human conscience — it
is, to use my own language, the herd instinct which
finds in this antithesis an expression in many ways.
And even then it takes a considerable time for
this instinct to become sufficiently dominant, for
the valuation to be inextricably dependent on
this antithesis (as is the case in contemporary
Europe) ; for to-day that prejudice is predominant,
which, acting even now with all the intensity of
an obsession and brain disease, holds that " moral,"
"altruistic," and " d^sint&ess^" are concepts of
equal value.

In the second place, quite apart from the fact
that this hypothesis as to the genesis of the value
" good " cannot be historically upheld, it suffers
from an inherent psychological contradiction.
The ,jitjlity;^j^ ^tjruistic^conduct— has- p re su mably

origin h ap hprnmp fnro-nfUjuj — But in what con-
ceivable way is this forgetting . . po^sitde} Has
perchance the utility of such conduct ceased at
some given moment? The contrary is the case.
Thjsjitjljty j^gg ra. thpr hppn experienced every day



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22 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

at all times, and is consequently a feature that
oUtalns a new and regular emphasis with every
fresh day ; it follows that, so far from vanishing
from The consciousness, so far mdeed from^ being
forgotten, it must necessarily become impresse3~
on the consciousness with ever-increasing distmet-
ness. How much more logical is that contrary
theory (it is not the truer for that) which is repre-
sented, for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places
the concept " good " as essentially similar to the
concept " useful," " purposive," so that in the
judgments " good " and " bad " mankind is simply
summarising and investing with a sanction its
unforgotten and unforgettable experiences concern-
ing the " useful-purposive " and the " mischievous-
non-purposive. " According to this theory, " good"
is the attribute of that which has previously shown
itself useful ; and so is able to claim to be con-
sidered " valuable in the highest degree," " valu-
able in itself. " This method of explanation is
also, as I have said, wrong, but at any rate
the explanation itself is coherent, and psycho-
logically tenable.

Th£j[uide^pjt jvhichjfirst put me on the right
track was this question— what is the true etymo;^
logical jignificance of the various symbols for the
idea " good " which haye^been-coinedin the various
languages ? I then found that they all led back toT
the same evolution of the same idea — that every-
where " aristocrat," " noble " (in the social sense), is
the root idea, out of which have necessarily devel-



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 23

Oped " good " in the sense of " with aristocratic
soul," " noble," in the sense of " with a soul of high
calibre," " with a privileged soul " — a development
which invariably runs parallel with that other
evolution by which "vulgar," "plebeian," "low,"
are made to change finally into " bad. " t The
most eloquent proof of this last contention is
the German word ^^ schlecht" itself: this word is
identical with " schlicht" — (compare " schlechtweg"
and " schlechterdings ") — which, originally and
as yet without any sinister innuendo, simply
denoted the plebeian man in contrast to the aristo-
cratic man. It is at the sufficiently late period of
the Thirty Years' War that this sense becomes
changed to the sense now current. From the
standpoint of the Genealogy of Morals this dis-
covery seems to be substantial : the lateness of it
is to be attributed to the retarding influence exer-
cised in the modern world by democratic prejudice
in the sphere of all questions of origin. This ex-
tends, as will shortly be shown, even to the province
of natural science and physiology, vthlchprima facie
is the most objective. The extent of the mischief
which is caused by this prejudice (once it is free of
all trammels except those of its own malice), parti-
cularly to Ethics and History, is shown by the
notorious case of Buckle : it was in Buckle that
that plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is of
English origin, broke out once again from its
malignant soil with all the violence of a slimy
volcano, and with that salted, rampant, and vulgar
eloquence with which up to the present time all
volcanoes have spoken.



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24 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

s.

With regard to our problem, which can justly
be called an intimate problem, and which elects
to appeal to only a limited number of ears: it
is of no small interest to ascertain that in those
words and roots which denote " good " we catch
glimpses of that arch-trait, on the strength of
which the aristocrats feel themselves to be beings
of a higher order than their fellows. Indeed, they
call themselves in perhaps the most frequent
instances simply after their superiority in power
{e. g. " the powerful," " the lords," " the com-
manders "), or after the most obvious sign of their
superiority, as for example " the rich," " the pos-
sessors " (that is the meaning of arva_i and the
Iranian and Slav languages correspond). But
they also call themselves after some characteristic
idiosyncrasy ; and this is the case which now
concerns us. They name themselves, for instance,
" the truthful " : this is first done by the Greek
nobility whose mouthpiece is found in Theognis,
the Megarian poet. The word iaQXo<i, which is
coined for the purpose, signifies etymologically
" one who is" who has reality, who is real, who is
true ; and then with a subjective twist, the " true,"
as the " truthful " : at this stage in the evolution
of the idea, it becomes the motto and party cry of
the nobility, and quite completes the transition to
the meaning " noble," so as to place outside the
pale the lying, vulgar man, as Theognis conceives
and portrays him — till finally the word after the
decay of the nobility is left to delineate psycho-



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 25

logical noblesse, and becomes as it were ripe and
mellow. In the word /ca«o? as in SetXos (the
plebeian in contrast to the cuya66<s) the cowardice
is emphasised. This affords perhaps an inkling
on what lines the etymological origin of the very
ambiguous ayaOo^ is to be investigated. In the
Latin malus (which I place side by side with
fjLe\a<s) the vulgar man can be distinguished as
the dark-coloured, and above all as the black-
haired {" kic niger est"), as the pre- Aryan in-
habitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion
formed the clearest feature of distinction from the
dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan conquering
race : — at any rate Gaelic has afforded me the exact
analogue — Fin (for instance, in the name Fin-Gal),
the distinctive word of the nobility, finally — good,
noble, clean, but originally the blonde-haired man
in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals.
The Celts, if I may make a parenthetic statement,
were throughout a blonde race; and it is wrong
to connect, as Virchow still connects, those traces
of an essentially dark-haired population which
are to be seen on the more elaborate ethno-
graphical maps of Germany with any Celtic
ancestry or with any admixture of Celtic blood :
in this context it is rather the pre-Aryan population
of Germany which surges up to these districts.
(The same is true substantially of the whole of
Europe : in point of fact, the subject race has
finally again obtained the upper hand, in com-
plexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps
in the intellectual and social qualities. Who
can guarantee that modern democracy, still more



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26 ' THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

jHodern anarchy, and indeed that tendency to the
" Commune," the most primitive form of society,
which is now common to all the Socialists in
Europe, does not in its real essence signify a
monstrous reversion — and that the conquering
and master race — the Aryan race, is not also
becoming inferior physiologically? ) I believe that
I can explain the Latin bonus as the "warrior":
my hypothesis is that I am right in deriving bonus
from an older duonus (compare bellum = duellum
= duen-lum, in which 'the word duonus appears to
me to be contained). Bonus accordingly as the
man of discord, of variance, " entzweiung " {duo), as
the warrior : one sees what in ancient Rome " the
good" meant for a man. Must not our actual
German word gut mean " the godlike, the man of
godlike race " ? and be identical with the national
name (originally the nobles' name) of the Goths ?
The grounds for this supposition do not apper-
tain to this work.

6.

fAlDove all, there is no exception (though there
are opportunities for exceptions) to this rule, that
the idea of politi cal supe riority, al ways resok es
itsel f into the idea of psycho logical superioritg t
in those cases where the highest caste is at the
same time Xh&priestly caste, and in accordance with
its general characteristics confers on itself the
privilege of a title which alludes specifically to
its priestly function^ It is in these cases, for
instance, that " clean^ and " unclean " confront



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 27

each other fJOTthe first time as badges of class
distigstion^-here again" there develops a"j[ood"
and a " bad," in a sense~wIiicK"Tias ceased to be
merely social. Moreover, care should be taken
not 't6~take these ideas of " clean " and " unclean "
too seriously, too broadly, or too symbolically :
all the ideas of ancient man have, on the contrary,
got to be understood in their initial stages, in a
sense which is, to an almost inconceivable extent,
crude, coarse, physical, and narrow, and above all
essentially unsymbolical. The " clean man " is
originally only a man who washes himself, who
abstains from certain foods which are conducive
to skin diseases, who does not sleep with the
unclean women of the lower classes, who has a
horror of blood — not more, not much more ! On
the other hand, the very nature of a priestly
aristocracy shows the reasons why just at such
an early juncture there should ensue a really
dangerous sharpening and intensification of
opposed values : it is, in fact, through these
opposed values that gulfs are cleft in the social
plane, which a veritable Achilles of free thought
would shudder to cross. There is from the
outset a certain diseased taint in such sacerdotal
aristocracies, and in the habits which prevail in
such societies — habits which, averse as they are
to action, constitute a compound of introspection
and explosive emotionalism, as a result of which
there appears that introspective morbidity and
neurasthenia, which adheres almost inevitably to
all priests at all times : with regard, however, to
the remedy which they themselves have invented



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28 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

for this disease — the philosopher has no option
but to state, that it has proved itself in its effects
a hundred times more dangerous than the disease,
from which it should have been the deliverer.
Humanity itself is still diseased from the effects
of the naivetds of this priestly cure. Take, for
instance, certain kinds of diet (abstention from
flesh), fasts, sexual continence, flight into the
wilderness (a kind of Weir- Mitchell isolation,
though of course without that system of exces-
sive feeding and fattening which is the most
efficient antidote to all the hysteria of the ascetic
ideal) ; consider too the whole metaphysic of the
priests, with its war on the senses, its enerva-
tion, its hair-splitting ; consider its self-hypnotism
on the fakir and Brahman principles (it uses
Brahman as a glass disc and obsession), and that
climax which we can understand only too well
of an unusual satiety with its panacea of nothing-
ness (or God : — the demand for a unto mystica
with God is the demand of the Buddhist for
nothingness, Nirvana — and nothing else ! ). In
sacerdotal societies every element is on a more
dangerous scale, not merely cures and remedies,
but also pride, revenge, cunning, exaltation, love,
ambition, virtue, morbidity :■ — further, it can fairly]
be stated that it is on the soil of this essentially\
dangerous form of human society, the sacerdotal
form, that man really becomes for the first time
an interesting animal, that it is in this form that
the soul of man has in a higher sense attained
depths and become evil — and those are the two
fundamental forms of the superiority which up



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"GOOD AND EVIL," " GOOD AND BAD. " 29

to the present man has exhibited over every other
animal. {

The reader will have already surmised with
what ease the priestly mode of valuation can
branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode,
and then develop into the very antithesis of the
latter: special impetus is given to this opposition,
by every occasion when the castes of the priests
and warriors confront each other with mutual
jealousy and cannot agree over the prize. The
knightly-aristocratic " values " are based on a care-
ful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and
even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably
beyond what is necessary for maintaining life, on
war, adventure, the chase, the dance, the tourney —
on everything, in fact, which is contained in strong,
free, and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic
mode of valuation is — we have seen — based on
other hypotheses : it is bad enough for this class
when it is a question of war ! Yet the priests are,
as is notorious, the worst enemies — why ? Because
they are the weakest. Their weakness causes
their hate to expand into a monstrous and
sinister shape, a shape which is most crafty and
most poisonous. The really great haters in the!
history of the world have always been priests, who
are also the cleverest haters — in comparison with
the cleverness of priestly revenge, every other piece
of cleverness is practically negligiblej Human
history would be too fatuous for anything were
it not for the cleverness imported into it by the



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30 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

weak — take at once the most important instance.
All the world's efforts against the "aristocrats,"
the " mighty," the " masters," the " holders of
power," are negligible by comparison with what
has been accomplished against those classes by
the Jews — the Jews, that priestly nation which
eventually realised that the one method of effect-
ing satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by
means of a radical transvaluation of values, which
was at the same time an act of the cleverest
revenge. Yet the method was only appropriate
to a nation of priests, to a nation of the most
jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was
the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equa-
tion (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy =
loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying logic
to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to
maintain with the teeth of the most profound
hatred (the hatred of weakness) this contrary
equation, namely, " the wretched are alone the
good ; the poor, the weak, the lowly, are alone
the good ; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the
loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the
only ones who are blessed, for them alone is
salvation — but you, on the other hand, you
aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all
eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the
insatiate, the godless ; eternally also shall you be
the unblessed, the cursed, the damned ! " We
know who it was who reaped the heritage of this
Jewish transvaluation. In the context of the
monstrous and inordinately fateful initiative
which the Jews have exhibited in connection with



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 3 1

this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I
remember the passage which came to my pen on
another occasion {Beyond Good and Evil, Aph.
195) — that it was, in fact, with the Jews that
the revolt of the slaves begins in the sphere of
morals; that revolt which has behind it a history
of two millennia, and which at the present day has
only moved out of our sight, because it — has
achieved victory.

8,

But you understand this not? You have no
eyes for a force which hcis taken two thousand
years to achieve victory? — There is nothing
wonderful in this : all lengthy processes are hard
to see and to realise. But this is what took
place : from the trunk of that tree of revenge and
hate, Jewish hate, — that most profound and
sublime hate, which creates ideals and changes
old values to new creations, the like of which has
never been on earth, — there grew a phenomenon
which was equally incomparable, a new love, the
most profound and sublime of all kinds of love ;
— and from what other trunk could it have
grown ? But beware of supposing that this love
has soared on its upward growth, as in any way
a real negation of that thirst for revenge, as an
antithesis to the Jewish hate ! No, the contrary-
is the truth ! This love grew out of that hate, as its
crown, as its triumphant crown, circling wider and
wider amid the clarity and fulness of the sun, and
pursuing in the very kingdom of light and height
its goal of hatred, its victory, its spoil, its strategy,



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32 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

with the same intensity with which the roots of
that tree of hate sank into everything which was
deep and evil with increasing stability and in-
creasing desire. This Jesus of Nazareth, the
incarnate gospel of love, this " Redeemer " bringing
salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the
sinful — was he not really temptation in its most
sinister and irresistible form, temptation to take
the tortuous path to those very Jewish values and
those very Jewish ideals ? Has not Israel really
obtained the final goal of its sublime revenge, by
the tortuous paths of this " Redeemer," for all
that he might pose as Israel's adversary and
Israel's destroyer? Is it not due to the black
magic of a really great policy of revenge, of a
far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and
calculating with slowness, that Israel himself
must repudiate before all the world the actual
instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the
cross, so that all the world — that is, all the enemies
of Israel — could nibble without suspicion at this
very bait ? Could, moreover, any human mind with
all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait that was
more truly dangerous} Anything that was even
equivalent in the power of its seductive, intoxicat-
ing, defiling, and corrupting influence to that
symbol of the holy cross, to that awful paradox
of a " god on the cross," to that mystery of the
unthinkable, supreme, and utter horror of the
self-crucifixion of a god for the salvation of man ?
It is at least certain that sub hoc signo Israel, with
its revenge and transvaluation of all values, has
up to the present always triumphed again over



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 33

all other ideals, over all more aristocratic
ideals.

9-

" But why do you talk of nobler ideals ? Let
us submit to the facts ; that the people have
triumphed — or the slaves, or the populace, or the
herd, or whatever name you care to give them —
if this has happened through the Jews, so be it !
In that case no nation ever had a greater mission
in the world's history. The ' masters ' have bee^
done away with ; the morality of the vulgar man
has triumphed. This triumph may also be called
a blood - poisoning (it has mutually fused the
races) — I do not dispute it; but there is no
doubt but that this intoxication has succeededj
The ' redemption ' of the human race (that is,
from the masters) is progressing swimmingly ;
everything is obviously becoming Judaised, or
Christianised, or vulgarised (what is there in the
words? ). It seems impossible to stop the
course of this poisoning through the whole body
politic of mankind — but its tempo and pace may
from the present time be slower, more delicate,
quieter, more discreet — there is time enough. In
view of this context has the Church nowadays any
necessary purpose ? has it, in fact, a right to live ?
Or could man get on without it? Qucsritur.
It seems that it fetters and retards this tendency,
instead of accelerating it. Well, even that might
be its utility. The Church certainly is a crude
and boorish institution, that is repugnant to an
intelligence with any pretence at delicacy, to a



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34 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

really modern taste. Should it not at any rate
learn to be somewhat more subtle? It alienates
nowadays, more than it allures. Which of us
would, forsooth, be a freethinker if there were no
Church ? It is the Church which repels us, not
its poison — apart from the Church we like the
poison. " This is the epilogue of a freethinker to
my discourse, of an honourable animal (as he has
given abundant proof), and a democrat to boot;
he had up to that time listened to me, and could
not endure my silence, but for me, indeed, with
regard to this topic there is much on which to
be silent.

lO.

I The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the
very principle of resentment becoming creatiye^nS"
givinglDirth to values — -a,, resentment __exg,erijgDced^
bj^ creatures who, deprived as they are of the
proper outlet of action, are forced to find their_ _
compensation in an imaginary revenge, j Whi]e _
every aristocratic morality s prings from a tri-
umphant affirmation^ of . its own de mands, tBe^
sla ve morality says " no " from the very outsetT 5~'
what is " outside itself," " different from itself,
and "not itself": and this "^"rio " is its creative^
deed. ' This volte-face of thS valuing stan3-
point — this___^wiii2;^Zg. . . . gravitation to the ob-
jective instead of back to the subjecHVe —
is Typical of " resentment " : the "slave- Iflorellit3^^
requires as the ^condition of its existence "arT
external, and objective world, to employ physio-
logical terminology, it requires objectiv e stimu li



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 35

tn he. capable of a ctioa— aL-all— [^i ts action i s
fundam ental ly a reactio n. The contrary is the '
case when we come to the aristocrat's system of
values : it acts and grows spontaneously, it jmerely
seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a niore
grateful and exulHSE3y^' jolts own self; — its
negative conception, "low," " vulgarT* " " bad," is
merely a pale late-born foil in comparison with its
positive and fundamental conception (saturated as
it is with life and passion), of " we aristocrats, we
good ones, we beautiful ones, we happy ones. ^

When the aristocratic morality goes astray and
commits sacrilege on reality, this is limited to that
particular sphere with which it is not sufficiently
acquainted — a sphere, in fact, from the real
knowledge of which it disdainfully defends itself.
It misjudges, in some cases, the sphere which it
despises, the sphere of the common vulgar man
and the low people : on the other hand, due weight
should be given to the consideration that in any
case the mood of contempt, of disdain, of super-
ciliousness, even on the supposition that it falsely
portrays the object of its contempt, will always
be far removed from that degree of falsity which
will always characterise the attacks — in effigy, of
course — of the vindictive hatred and revengeful-
ness of the weak in onslaughts on their enemies.
In point of fact, there is in contempt too strong
an admixture of nonchalance, of casualness, of
boredom, of impatience, even of personal exultation,
for it to be capable of distorting its victim into a
real caricature or a real monstrosity. Attention
again should be paid to the almost benevolent



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36 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

nuances which, for instance, the Greek nobility
imports into all the words by which it distinguishes
the common people from itself; note how con-
tinuously a kind of pity, care, and consideration
imparts its honeyed flavour, until at last almost all
the words which are applied to the vulgar man
survive finally as expressions for "unhappy,"
" worthy of pity " (compare ieCKd<s, SeiKaio';, irovijpo^,
IwxOrjpo^ ; the latter two names really denoting
the vulgar man as labour-slave and beast of burden)
— and how, conversely, " bad," " low," " unhappy "
have never ceased to ring in the Greek ear with
a tone in which " unhappy " is the predominant
note: this is a heritage of the old noble
aristocratic morality, which remains true to itself
even in contempt (let philologists remember
the sense in which oi^vpo^, dvoX^oi;, rKriimv,
Bvcrrvxelv, ^v/Mpopd used to be employed). The
" well-born " simply /eU themselves the " happy " ;
they did not have to manufacture their happiness
artificially through looking at their enemies, or in
cases to talk and lie themselves into happiness (as
is the custom with all resentful men); and
similarly, complete men as they were, exuberant
with strength, and consequently necessarily ener-
getic, they were too wise to dissociate happi-
ness from action — activity becomes in their
minds necessarily counted as happiness (that is
the etymology of ev irp&TTeiv) — all in sharp con-
trast to the " happiness " of the weak and the
oppressed, with their festering venom and malignity,
among whom happiness appears essentially as
a narcotic, a deadening, a quietude, a peace, a



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 37

"Sabbath," an enervation of the mind and re-
laxation of the limbs, — in short, a purely passive
phenomenon. While the aristocratic man livedi
in confidence and openness with himself (yevvaio';,
" noble-born," emphasises the nuance " sincere,"
and perhaps also " naif"), the resentful man, on
the other hand, is neither sincere nor naif, nor
honest and candid with himself^ His soul squints ;
his mind loves hidden crannies, tortuous paths and
back-doors, everything secret appeals to him as
Ais world, Ms safety, Ais balm ; he is past master
in silence, in not forgetting, in waiting, in provi-
sional self-depreciation and self-abasement. A race
of such resentful men will of necessity eventually
prove more prudent than any aristocratic race, it
will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale,
as, in fact, a paramount condition of existence, while
prudence among aristocratic men is apt to be
tinged with a delicate flavour of luxury and
refinement ; so among them it plays nothing like
so integral a part as that complete certainty of
function of the governing unconscious instincts, or
as indeed a certain lack of prudence, such as
a vehement and valiant charge, whether against
danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic bursts
of rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all
times noble souls have recognised each other.
When the resentment of the aristocratic man
manifests itself, it fulfils and exhausts itself in an
immediate reaction, and consequently instills no
venom : on the other hand, it never manifests itself
at all in countless instances, when in the case of
the feeble and weak it would be inevitablej An



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38 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

inabilit y to take seriously for any I gngth of time
their e nemies, their disasters, th eir misdeeds^^^^^^ ^
"mTTe srVn of thejull_strong n atures who po ssess_a_^
superfluity of moulding plastic force^t hat heals c om-
pleitely and pro duces forget fulngssj^j^oodexaniple^
offfi sTn the modern world is Jlimbeau ^who had n o
memory f or any insults a nd meannesses whic h wer e
practised_on_him, and wjio_wa§_j3n]y:-incapahlpi nf
forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed
shakes off with a shrug many a worm which
would have buried itself in another ; it is only in
characters like these that we see the possibility
(supposing, of course, that there is such a possibility
in the world) of the real " love of one's enemies. "
What respect for his enemies is found, forsooth,
in an aristocratic man — and such a reverence is
already a bridge to love ! He insists on having
his enemy to himself as his distinction. He
tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose
character there is nothing to despise and much
to honour ! On the other hand, imagine the
"enemy" as the resentful man conceives hjm —
and it is here exactly that we see his work, his
creativeness ; he has conceived " the evil enemy,"
the " evil one," and indeed that is the root idea
from which he now evolves as a contrasting and
corresponding figure a " good one," himself — his
very self!

II.

I The method of this man is quite contrary to
that of the aristocratic man, who conceives the
root idea " good " spontaneously and straight



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 39

away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that
material then creates for himself a concept of
" bad "J_J Th. \s^^sd"-. J^i aristocia. tlc^. oti§ia^_and. .
that " evil " out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred

— -the tormer an imitation, an " extra," an additional
nuance; the lafterJ'oiTthe otli«'Tian37tKe~original,
the' "beginning, the ^senlial"act in the conception]
ti f^" srave-mo rality— -thgse . two ffiQld§. ,'l. badI'^ad„
"evil," how "great a ^ig^ence do they, mark, in
spite of the fact that they have an identical con-
tr ary in fhe idea '~good. ^ But the idea " good "
is not the same : much rather let the question be
asked, " Who is re ally evil according to the mean-
ing of the m oJEalitv . of- resentment ? " In all
sternness let it be answered thus -. —just the good
man of the other morality, just the aristocrat, the
powerfuFone^the one who rules, but who is dis-
torted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, into
a new colour, a jiew si^jficatioii,. a new appear-
. ance. _ J his particular point we would be the last
to deny : the man who learnt to know those
" good " ones only as enemies, learnt at the same
time not to know them only as ^^ evil enemies"
and the same men who inter pares were kept so
rigorously in bounds through convention, respect,
custom, and gratitude, though much more through
mutual vigilance and jealousy inter pares, these
men who in their relations with each other find so
many new ways of manifesting consideration, self-
control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship,
these men are in reference to what is outside
their circle (where the foreign element, a
foreign country, begins), not much better than



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40 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

beasts of prey, which have been let loose. They
enjoy there freedom from all social control, they
feel that in the wilderness they can give vent with
impunity to that tension which is produced by
enclosure and imprisonment in the peace of society,
they revert to the innocence of the beast-of-prey
conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps
come from a ghastly bout of murder, arson, rape,
and torture, with bravado and a moral equanimity,
as though merely some wild student's prank had
been played, perfectly convinced that the poets
have now an ample theme to sing and celebrate.
It is impossible not to recognise at the core of all
these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the
magnificent blonde brute, avidly rampant for spoil
and victory ; this hidden core needed an outlet
from time to time, the beast must get loose again,
must return into the wilderness — the Roman,
Arabic, German, and Japanese nobility, the
Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings, are
all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic races
who have left the idea " Barbarian " on all the
tracks in which they have marched ; nay, a con-
sciousness of this very barbarianism, and even a
pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest
civilisation (for example, when Pericles says to
his Athenians in that celebrated funeral oration,
" Our audacity has forced a way over every
land and sea, rearing everywhere imperishable
memorials of itself {qx good -axiA for evil"). This
audacity of aristocratic races, mad, absurd, and
spasmodic as may be its expresssion ; the incalcul-
able and fantastic nature of their enterprises, —



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 41

Pericles sets in special relief and glory the padvfiia
of the Athenians, their nonchalance and contempt
for safety, body, life, and comfort, their awful joy
and intense delight in all destruction, in all the
ecstasies of victory and cruelty, — all these features
become crystallised, for those who suffered thereby
in the picture of the " barbarian," of the " evil
enemy," perhaps of the " Goth " and of the
" Vandal. " The profound, icy mistrust which the
German provokes, as soon as he arrives at power, —
even at the present time, — is always still an after-
math of that inextinguishable horror with which
for whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath
of the blonde Teuton beast (although between the
old Germans and ourselves there exists scarcely a
psychological, let alone a physical, relationship).
I have once called attention to the embarrassment
of Hesiod, when he conceived the series of social
ages, and endeavoured to express them in gold,
silver, and bronze. He could only dispose of the
contradiction, with which he was confronted, by
the Homeric world, an age magnificent indeed,
but at the same time so awful and so violent, by
making two ages out of one, which he henceforth
placed one behind each other — first, the age of the
heroes and demigods, as that world had remained
in the memories of the aristocratic families, who
found therein their own ancestors ; secondly, the
bronze age, as that corresponding age appeared to
the descendants of the oppressed, spoiled, ill-
treated, exiled, enslaved ; namely, as an age of
bronze, as I have said, hard, cold, terrible, without
feelings and without conscience, crushing every-



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42 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

thing, and bespattering everything with blood.
Grantedjhe truth of the theory now belie_ yed to_
belrue, that the very essence^ of all civilisat ion is to

I train ^^"o'f man, the beast of prey, a ta me and

civilised animal, a domesticatgd animal, it fol lows

indubitably that we must regard as . . the real tools

Vof civilisation all Jhose instincts of reac ti on and

resentment, by the help of which the . Aristocratic.

, races, together with their ideals,, were, J5«aUjj-de. -
graded ^nd overpoweredj though that has not
yet come to be synonymous with saying that the
bearers of those tools also represented the civilisa-
tion. It is rather the contrary that is not only
probable — nay, it is palpable to-day ; these bearers
of vindictive instincts that have to be bottled up,
these descendants of all European and non-
European slavery, especially of the pre-Aryan
population — these people, I say, represent the
decline of humanity ! j^hese " tools of civilisa-
tion " are a disgrace to humanity, and constitute
in reality more of an argument against civilisation,
more of a reason why civilisation should be sus-
pectqdj One may be perfectly justified in being
always afraid of the blonde beast that lies at the
core of all aristocratic races, and in being on
one's guard : but who would not a hundred times
prefer to be afraid, when one at the same time
admires, than to be immune from fear, at the cost
of being perpetually obsessed with the loathsome
spectacle of the distorted, the dwarfed, the stunted,
the envenomed ? And is that not our fate ? What
produces to-day our repulsion towards " man " ?
— for we suffer from " man," there is no doubt



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 43

about it. It IS not fear ; it is rather that we have
nothing more to fear from men ; it is that the
worm " man " is in the foreground and pullulates ;
it is thatjj^e " tame man,'' the wretched jnedipcre
and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider
himself a goal and a pinnacle, an inner meaning,
an hfsTonc principle, a ""'higher man '1; yes, it
is" that he has a certain right so to consider
himself, in so far as he feels that in contrast to
that excess of deformity, disease, exhaustion, and
effeteness whose odour is beginning to pollute
present-day Europe, he at any rate has achieved
a relative success, he at any rate still says " yes "
to life.

12.

I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering
a sigh and one last hope.
What is it precisely
which I find intolerable? That which I alone
cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and
faint ? Bad air ! bad air ! That something
misbegotten comes near me; that I must inhale
the odour of the entrails of a misbegotten soul ! —
That excepted, what can one not endure in the
way of need, privation, bad weather, sickness,
toil, solitude? In point of fact, one manages to
get over everything, born as one is to a burrowing
and battling existence ; one always returns once
again to the light, one always lives again one's
golden hour of victory — and then one stands as
one was born, unbreakable, tense, ready for some-
thing more difficult, for something more distant,
like a bow stretched but the tauter by every strain.



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44 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

But from time to time do ye grant me — assuming
that " beyond good and evil " there are goddesses
who can grant — one glimpse, grant me but one
glimpse only, of something perfect, fully realised,
happy, mighty, triumphant, of something that
still gives cause for fear ! A glimpse of a man
that justifies the existence of ftian^_a_glimgse_ ot"
"an lncarnateniirfnarr~hg|^fie"sTTEa t realisS^n d
redeems, -for the sake of^'hich one may holdTfast
to the belief in man ! JForJJifi-jiosiJ'io'n is thja^
in the dwarfing and levelling of the Eur opean
man lurks our greatest perilj for it is this outlook
which fatigues — we see to-day nothing which
wishes to be greater, we^surmi^_that_Jhf prnrpss
is always still backwards^ still backwar^^aJtQSMtfds-
something more attenuated, more inoffensivg,JHflre
cunning, more comfortable, more med iocre, more
indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian — man,
there is no doubt about it, grows always " better "
— the destiny of Europe lies even in thisj j^that
in losing the fear of nian, wejiave also lost_the_
hope in man, yea, the wiU_to. be manJ~TE^light
of man now fatigues^ — What is presenF-day "
Nihilism if it is not that ? — We are tired of^«. ~

13.

But let us come back to it ; the problem of
another origin of the good — of the good, as the
resentful man has thought it out — demands its solu-
tion. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear
a grudge against the great birds of prey, but that
\is no reason for blaming the great birds of prey



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 45

sfor taking the little lambs. And when the l^bs^
I say among themselves, " These birds of prey are
evil, and he who is as far removed from being a
bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb, —
is he not good ? " then there is nothing to cavil at
in the setting up of this ideal, though it may also
be that the birds of prey will regard it a little
sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves, " We
bear no grudge against them, these good lambs,
we even like them : nothing is tastier than a
tender lamb. " (To require of strength that it
should not express itself as strength, that it should
not be a wish to overpower, a wish to overthrow,
a wish to become master, a thirst for enemies
and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd
as to require of weakness that it should express
itself as stren gth, fi A quantum o f force is j ust
such a quantum of m oy^nentjj all. action — rath er
i t is nothing else than just those very^^enomena^
of movin g, willing, acting, and can only appear
otherwisejn themisleadingerrors' ot language'
(and the fundamental fallacies of reason which
have become petrified therein), w hich unders tands,
and understands wrongly, all working as con -
ditioned~by a worker, E y''a~^subie ct. " And just
exactly as the people separate the lightning from
its flash, and interpret the latter as a thing done,
as the working of a subject which is called light-
ning, s o also d oes the popular morality separate
strength from tKe" expressiuii — uf htreiig l h^ ay
though behind the stron g man there existed_some
indifferent neutral substratum, which enjoyed a
caprice and option as to whether™or~not it shbul3



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46 \ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

express_sti;ength. But there is no such sui-
' stratum, there is no " being " behmd^ doing,
working, becoming; "the doer" is a nTerkJi^i^
agVio the action. The action is everything. In
point of fact, the people dupUcate the doing,
when they make the lightning lighten, that is a
" doing-doing " : they make the same phenomenon
first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that
cause. The scientists fail to improve matters
when they say, " Force moves, force causes," and
so on. Our whole science is stillj_in^s pite of all its
coldness, of all its freedom from passi on, a dup e
of the tricks of language, and has never succeeded"
in getting rid of that superstitious_chang. e ling "th e
subj,ec4;4U(the atom, to give another instance, is
such a changeling, just as the Kantian " Thing-in-
itself"). W hat wonder, if the suppressed and
stealthily simmering passions of revenge~^d
hatrpd pvplniF tor ffiejrnwn advantage this tjpjjgf,
and indeed hold. „no belief with a more steadfast
enthusiasm than this — "that the strong has~the
option of being weak, and the bir d of prey of B eing
a lamb. " THereby do they win for themselveiTftEr*
riglit of attributing to the birds of prey the re-
sponsibility for being birds of prey : when the
oppressed, down-trodden, and overpowered say to
themselves with the vindictive guile of weakness,
" Let us be otherwise than the evil, namely, good !
and good is every one who does not oppress, who
hurts no one, who does not attack, who does not
pay back, who hands over revenge to God, who
holds himself, as we do, in hiding ; who goes out
of the way of evil, and denia nds, in short, litt le. '



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 47

from life ; like ourselves the patient, the meek, the
just," — yet all this, in its cold and unprejudiced
interpretation, means nothing more than " once for
all, the weak are weak ; it is good to do nothing
for which we are not strong enough " ; but this dismal
state of affairs, this prudence of the lowest order,
which even insects possess (which in a great danger
are fain to sham death so as to avoid doing " too
much "), has, thanks to the counterfeiting and
self-deception of weakness, come to masquerade in
the pomp of an ascetic, mute, and expectant virtue,
JTjust as though the verj/ weakness of the weak —
that is, forsooth, its being, its working, its whole
unique inevitable inseparable reality — were a
voluntary result, something wished, chosen, a deed,
an act of me rit. | This kind^of man finds-the belief
in a neutral, free-choosing " subject" necessary
from— affTTisttnfft of seli-preservation, of self-asser-
tion, in "Which'everyTie is fain to sanctify^ itself.
■Jhe^subject (or, to use jpopular language, the jg^Q. .
has perEaps~proved itself the best dogm. a. in the
world simply because it rendered . possible-to. the
horde of mortal, weak, and oppressed individuals
of every kind, that most sublime specimelT o f seTT-
deception, ! He~ interpretation of weakness as
freedom7"o^f~&eing'TKis,~6r being that, as merit.

14.

Will any one look a little into — right into — the
mystery of how ideals are manufactured in this
world ? Who has the courage to do it ? Come !

Here we have a vista opened into these grimy



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48 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

workshops. Wait just a moment, dear Mr. In-
quisitive and Foolhardy ; your eye must first grow
accustomed to this false changing light — Yes!
Enough ! Now speak ! What is happening
below down yonder? Speak out that what yoi
see, man of the most dangerous curiosity — for
now I am the listener.

" I see nothing, I hear the more. It is a
cautious, spiteful, gentle whispering and muttering
together in all the corners and crannies. It seems
to me that they are lying; a sugary softness
adheres to every sound. Weakness is turned to
merit, there is no doubt about it — it is just as
you say. "

Further !

" And the impotence which requites not, is
turned to " goodness,' craven baseness to meek-
ness, submission to those whom one hates, to
obedience (namely, obedience to one of whom
they say that he ordered this submission — they
call him God). The inoffensive character of the
weak, the very cowardice in which he is rich, his
standing at the door, his forced necessity of wait-
ing, gain here fine names, such as ' patience,'
which is also called ' virtue ' ; not being able to
avenge one's self, is called not wishing to avenge
one's self, perhaps even forgiveness (for they know
not what they do — we alone know what they do).
They also talk of the ' love of their enemies ' and
sweat thereby. "

Further !
/ " They are miserable, there is no doubt about
it, all these whisperers and counterfeiters in the



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 49

corners, although they try to get warm by
crouching close to each other, but they tell me
that their misery is a favour and distinction given
to them by God, just as one beats the dogs one
likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a
preparation, a probation, a training ; that perhaps
it is still more something which will one day be
compensated and paid back with a tremendous
interest in gold, nay in happiness. This they call
' Blessedness. '"!

Further !

" They are now giving me to understand, that
not only are they better men than the mighty,
the lords of the earth, whose spittle they have
got to lick {not out of fear, not at all out of fear !
But because God ordains that one should honour
all authority) — not only are they better men, but
that they also have a 'better time,' at any rate,
will one day have a ' better time. ' But enough !
Enough ! I can endure it no longer. Bad air !
Bad air ! These workshops where ideals are manu-
factured — ^verily they reek with the crassest lies. "

Nay. Just one minute ! You are saying
nothing about the masterpieces of these"~virtuosos
of^lack magic, whu can piuducti whiteness jlTuTk,
"and innocence out of any black you like : have
you not noticed what a pitch of refinement is
attained by their chef d'aeuvre, their most audacious,
subtle, ingenious, and lying artist-trick ? Take
care ! These cellar-beasts, full of revenge and

hate — what 3o ' they "^aESr forsooth, out of their

revenge and hate? __Do, you hejx_these. _words?
~~Wou0 yoiT suspect, if you trusted only their
D



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so THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS,

words, that you are among men of resentment
and nothing else ?

" I understand, I prick my ears up again (ah !
ah ! ah ! and I hold my nose). Now do I hear
for the first time that which they have said so
often : ' We good, we are the righteous ' — what
tfcey demand they call not revenge but 'the
triumph of righteousness ' ; what they hate is not
their enemy, no, they hate ' unrighteousness,'
f godlessness ' ; what they believe in and hope is
mot the hope of revenge, the intoxication of sweet
I revenge ( — " sweeter than honey," did Homer
call it ? ), but the victory of God, of the righteous
God over the ' godless ' ; what is left for them to
love in this world is not their brothers in hate,
but their ' brothers in love,' as they say, all the
good and righteous on the earth. "

And how do they name that which serves them as
a solace against all the troubles of life — their phan-
tasmagoria of their anticipated future blessedness ?

" How ? Do I hear right ? They call it ' the
last judgment,' the advent of their kingdom, ' the
kingdom of God ' — but in the meanwhile they live
' in faith,' ' in love,' ' in hope. ' "

Enough ! Enough !

15.

In the faith in what? In the love for what?
In the hope of what ? These weaklings ! — they
also, forsooth, wish to be the strong some time;
there is no doubt about it, some time their
kingdom also must come — " the kingdom of God"
is their name for it, as has been mentioned: —



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 51

they are so meek in everything ! Yet in order
to experience that kingdom it is necessary to liv(
long, to live beyond death, — yes, eternal life i;
necessary so that one can make up for ever foi
that earthly life " in faith," " in love," " in hope. '
Make up for what ? Make up by what ? Dante,
as it seems to me, made a crass mistake when with
awe-inspiring ingenuity he placed that inscription
over the gate of his hell, " Me too made eternal
love " : at any rate the following inscription would
have a much better right to stand over the gate
of the Christian Paradise and its " eternal blessed-
ness " — " Me too made eternal hate "—granted of
course that a truth may rightly stand over the
gate to a" lie! For what is the blessedness of
that Paradise ? Possibly we could quickly surmise
it; but it is better that it should be explicitly
attested by an authority who in such matters is
not to be disparaged, Thomas of Aquinas, the
great teacher and saint. " Beati in regno celesti"
says he, as gently as a lamb, " videbunt pcenas
damnatorum, ut beatitude illis magis complaceat. "
Or if we wish to hear a stronger tone, a word
from the mouth of a triumphant father of the
Church, who warned his disciples against the
cruel ecstasies of the public spectacles — But why ?
Faith offers us much more, — says he, de Spectac,
c. 29 ss. , — something much stronger ; thanks to
the redemption, joys of quite another kind stand
at our disposal ; instead of athletes we have our
martyrs; we wish for blood, well, we have the
blood of Christ — but what then awaits us on the
day of his return, of his triumph. And then does he



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52 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

proceed, does this enraptured visionary : " at enim
supersunt alia spectacula, ille ultimus et perpetuus
judicii dies, ille nationibus insperatus, ille derisus,
cum tanta scecuH vetustas et tot ejus nativitates uno
igne haurientur. Quce tunc spectaculi latitude !
Quid admirer! quid rideam ! Ubi gaudeam!
Ubi exultem. , spectans tot et tantos reges, qui in
ccelum recepti nuntiabantur, cum ipso Jove et ipsis
suis testibus in imis tenebris congemescentes ! Item
prcBsides " (the provincial governors) " persecutores
dominici nominis scevioribus quam ipsi flammis
scBvierunt insultantibus contra Christianas liques-
centes ! Quos prceterea sapientes illos pkilosophos
coram discipulis suis una conflagrantibus erubes-,
centes, quibus nihil ad deum, pertinere suadebant,
quibus animas aut nullas aut non in pristina corpora
redituras affirmabant ! Etiam poetas non ad Rhad-
amanti nee ad Minois, sed ad inopinati Christi
tribunal palpitantes I Tunc m^agis tragcedi audiendi,
magis scilicet vocales " (with louder tones and more
violent shrieks) " in sua propria calamitate; tunchis-
triones cognoscendi, solutiores tnulto per ignem ; tunc
spectandus auriga in flammea rota totus rubens,
tunc xystici contemplandi non in gym. nasiis, sed in
igne jaculati, nisi quod ne tunc quidem illos velim
vivos, ut qui malim ad eos potius conspectum in-
satiabilem conferre, qui in dominum scBvierunt,
Hie est ille, dicam fabri aut qucBstuarice filius "
(as is shown by the whole of the following, and
in particular by this well-known description of
the mother of Jesus from the Talmud, Tertullian
is henceforth referring to the Jews), " sabbati
destructor, Samarites et dcemonium habens. Hie



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

"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " S3

est quem a Juda redemistis, htc est ille arundine
et colaphis diverberatus, sputamentis de decoratus,
felle et aceto potatus. Hie est, quem clam discentes
subripuerunt, ut resurrexisse dicatur vel hortulanus
detraxit, ne lactucce suce frequentia commeantium.
Icederentur. Ut talia spectes, ut talibus exultes,
quis tibi praetor aut consul aut sacerdos de sua
liberalitate prcestabit f Et tamen hcec jam, habemus
quodammodo per fidem spiritu imaginante re-
prcesentata. Ceterum. qualia ilia sunt, quce nee
oculus vidit nee auris audivit nee in cor hominis
ascenderunt ? " (i Cor. ii. 9. ) "Credo circo et
utraque cavea " (first and fourth row, or, according
to others, the comic and the tragic stage) " et omni
studio gratiora" Per fidem: so stands it written.

16.

Let us come to a conclusion. The two opposing
values, " good and bad," " good and evil," have
fought a dreadful, thousand-year fight in the
world, and though indubitably the second value
has been for a long time in the preponderance,
there are not wanting places where the fortune
of the fight is still undecisive. It can almost
be said that in the meariiw^e_the_fight_reaches
"Triltgher and higherTevel, and that in the meaii^
while it has become more and more intense, anE~
always more and more psychological ; so that
TTow^'ays there is perhaps no more decisive m ark
of the higher nature, of the more psychological
nature, than to Be in that ^ense self-contra-5
dictory, and toSe actually still a battleground'



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

54 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

for those two opposites. The symbol of this
fight, written in a writing which has remained
worthy of perusal throughout the course of history
up to the present time, is called " Rome against
Judaea, Judaea against Rome. " H itherto there
^as been no greater e vent than that hgtit, t he~
I'puttmg ol T^^K 5^^^^RiJE91J ^^^^^^ a n. ta ^ni. si^
Rome found in the Jew the incarnation of the
unnatural, as though it were its diametrically
opposed monstrosity, and in Rome the Jew was
held to be convicted of hatred of the whole human
race: and rightly so, in so far as it is right
to link the well-being and the future of the
human race to the unconditional mastery of the
aristocratic values, of the Roman values. What,
conversely, did the Jews feel against Rome ? One
can surmise it from a thousand symptoms, but
it is sufficient to carry one's mind back to the
Johannian Apocalypse, that most obscene of all
the written outbursts, which has revenge on its
conscience. (One should also appraise at its full
value the profound logic of the Christian instinct,
when over this very book of hate it wrote the name
of the Disciple of Love, that self-same disciple
to whom it attributed that impassioned and
ecstatic Gospel — therein lurks a portion of truth,
however much literary forging may have been
necessary for this purpose. ) The Romans were
the strong and aristocratic ; a nation stronger and
more aristocratic has never existed in the world,
has never even been dreamed of; every relic of
them, every inscription enraptures, granted that
one can divine what it is that writes the inscrip-



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " 55

tion. The Jews, conversely, were that priestly-
nation of resentment /«>• excellence, possessed by
a unique genius for popular morals : just compare
with the Jews the nations with analogous gifts,
such as the Chinese or the Germans, so as to
realise afterwards what is first rate, and what is
fifth rate.

Which of them has been provisionally victorious,
Rome or Judaea? but there is not a shadow of
doubt ; just consider to whom in Rome itself
nowadays you bow down, as though before the
quintessence of all the highest values — and not
only in Rome, but almost over half the world,
everywhere where man has been tamed or is
about to be tamed — to three Jews, as we know,
and one Jewess (to Jesus of Nazareth, to Peter
the fisher, to Paul the tent-maker, and to the
mother of the aforesaid Jesus, named Mary).
This is very remarkable : Rome is undoubtedly
defeated. At any rate there took place in the
Renaissance a brilliantly sinister revival of the
classical ideal, of the aristocratic valuation of all
things: Rome herself, like a man waking up from
a trance, stirred beneath the burden of the new
Judaised Rome that had been built over her,
which presented the appearance of an oecumenical
synagogue and was called the " Church " : but
immediately Judsea triumphed again, thanks to
that fundamentally popular (German and English)
movement of revenge, which is called the Reform-
ation, and taking also into account its inevitable
corollary, the restoration of the Church — the
restoration also of the ancient graveyard peace



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$6 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

of classical Rome. Judaea proved yet once more
victorious over the classical ideal in the French
Revolution, and in a sense which was even more
crucial and even more profound : the last
political aristocracy that existed in Europe, that
of the French seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
broke into pieces beneath the instincts of a
resentful populace — never had the world heard
a greater jubilation, a more uproarious enthusiasm :
indeed, there took place in the midst of it the
most monstrous and unexpected phenomenon ;
the ancient ideal itself swept before the eyes and
conscience of humanity with all its life and with
unheard-of splendour, and in opposition to resent-
ment's lying war-cry of the prerogative of the most,
in opposition to the will to lowliness, abasement,
and equalisation, the will to a retrogression and
twilight of humanity, there rang out once again,
stronger, simpler, more penetrating than ever,
the terrible and enchanting counter-warcry of
the prerogative of the few ! Like a final sign-
post to other ways, there appeared Napoleon, the
most unique and violent anachronism that ever
existed, and in him the incarnate problem of the
aristocratic ideal in itself — consider well what a
problem it is : — Napoleon, that synthesis of
Monster and Superman.

17-

Was it therewith over ? Was that greatest of all
antitheses of ideals thereby relegated ad acta for
all time ? Or only postponed, postponed for a long



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"GOOD AND EVIL," "GOOD AND BAD. " S7

time? May there not take place at some time
or other a much more awful, much more carefully
prepared flaring up of the old conflagration?
Further ! Should not one wish tkat consumma-
tion with all one's strength? — will it one's self?
demand it one's self? He who at this juncture
begins, like my readers, to reflect, to think further,
will have difficulty in cOming quickly to a con-
clusion, — ground enough for me to come myself
to a conclusion, taking it for granted that for some
time past what I mean has been sufficiently clear,
what I exactly mean by that dangerous motto
which is inscribed on the body of my last book :
( Beyond Good and Evil — at any rate that is not the
same as " Beyond Good and Bad. " I

Note. — I avail myself of the opportunity offered by this
treatise to express, openly and formally, a wish which up
to the present has only been expressed in occasional con-
versations with scholars, namely, that some Faculty of
philosophy should, by means of a series of prize essays,
gain the glory of having promoted the further study of the
history of morals— ■pMhs. ps this book may serve to give a for-
cible impetus in such a direction. With regard to a possibility
of this character, the following question deserves considera-
tion. It merits quite as much the attention of philologists
and historians as of actual professional philosophers.

" What indication of the history of the evolution of the
moral ideas is afforded by philology, and especially by etymo-
logical investigation f "

On the other hand, it is of course equally necessary to
induce physiologists and doctors to be interested in these
problems {of the value of the valuations which have prevailed
up to the present) : in this connection the professional philo-
sophers may be trusted to act as the spokesmen and inter-
mediaries in these particular instances, after, of course, they
have quite succeeded in transforming the relationship between



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58 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

philosophy and physiology and medicine, which is originally
one of coldness and suspicion, into the most friendly and fruit-
ful reciprocity. In point of fact, all tables of values, all the
" thou shalts " known to history and ethnology, need primarily
a physiological, at any rate in preference to a psychological,
elucidation and interpretation ; all equally require a critique
from medical science. The question, "What is the value
of this or that table of ' values ' and morality ? " will be
asked from the most varied standpoints. For instance, the
question of " valuable/()r what " can never be analysed with
sufficient nicety. That, for instance, which would evidently
have value with regard to promoting in a race the greatest
possible powers of endurance (or with regard to increasing
its adaptability to a specific climate, or with regard to the
preservation of the grefatest number) would have nothing
like the same value/ if it were a question of evolving a
stronger species. In gauging values, the good of the
majority and the good of the minority are opposed stand-
points : we leave it to the naivety of English biologists to
regard the former standpoint as intrinsically superior. All
the sciences have now to pave the way for the future task
of the philosopher ; this task being understood to mean, that
he must solve the problem of value, that he has to fix the
hierarchy of values.



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