No More Learning

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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
CC
amount and variety of that which a man could bear
and take upon himself, according to the extent to
which a man could stretch his responsibility. Nowa-
days the taste and virtue of the age weaken and
attenuate the will; nothing is so adapted to the
spirit of the age as weakness of will : consequently,
in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will,
sternness and capacity for prolonged resolution,
must specially be included in the conception of
greatness”; with as good a right as the opposite
doctrine, with its ideal of a silly, renouncing, humble,
selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite age-
such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from
its accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest
,
torrents and floods of selfishness. In the time of
Socrates, among men only of worn-out instincts,
old conservative Athenians who let themselves
go_" for the sake of happiness," as they said; for
the sake of pleasure, as their conduct indicated-
and who had continually on their lips the old
pompous words to which they had long forfeited
the right by the life they led, irony was perhaps
necessary for greatness of soul, the wicked Socratic
assurance of the old physician and plebeian, who
cut ruthlessly into his own flesh, as into the flesh
and heart of the "noble," with a look that said
plainly enough: “Do not dissemble before me!
here-we are equal ! ” At present, on the contrary,
when throughout Europe the herding animal alone
attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when
"equality of right” can too readily be transformed
into equality in wrong : I mean to say into general
war against everything rare, strange, and privileged,
6


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WE SCHOLARS.
155
<
against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher
duty, the higher responsibility, the creative pleni-
potence and lordliness — at present it belongs to
the conception of “greatness" to be noble, to wish
to be apart, to be capable of being different, to
stand alone, to have to live by personal initiative;
and the philosopher will betray something of his ,
own ideal when he asserts: "He shall be the
greatest who can be the most solitary, the most
concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond
good and evil, the master of his virtues, and of
superabundance of wilt ; precisely this shall be
called greatness : as diversified as can be entire, as
ample as can be full. And to ask once more the
question: Is greatness possible—nowadays?
213.
It is difficult to learn what a philosopher is,
because it cannot be taught: one must “know" it
by experience or one should have the pride not
to know it. The fact that at present people all
talk of things of which they cannot have any experi-
ence, is true more especially and unfortunately as
concerns the philosopher and philosophical matters:
the very few know them, are permitted to
know them, and all popular ideas about them are
false. Thus, for instance, the truly philosophical
combination of a bold, exuberant spirituality which
runs at presto pace, and a dialectic rigour and
necessity which makes no false step, is unknown
to most thinkers and scholars from their own
experience, and therefore, should any one speak of
it in their presence, it is incredible to them. They


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156
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
)
-
conceive of every necessity as troublesome, as a
painful compulsory obedience and state of con-
straint; thinking itself is regarded by them as
something slow and hesitating, almost as a trouble,
and often enough as "worthy of the sweat of the
noble”—but not at all as something easy and divine,
closely related to dancing and exuberance! “To
think" and to take a matter “seriously," "ardu-
ously”—that is one and the same thing to them;
such only has been their “experience. ”—Artists
have here perhaps a finer intuition; they who know
only too well that precisely when they no longer
do anything “arbitrarily," and everything of neces-
sity, their feeling of freedom, of subtlety, of power,
of creatively fixing, disposing, and shaping, reaches
its climax-in short, that necessity and “freedom
of will” are then the same thing with them. There
is, in fine, a gradation of rank in psychical states,
to which the gradation of rank in the problems
corresponds; and the highest problems repel ruth-
lessly every one who ventures too near them, with-
out being predestined for their solution by the
loftiness and power of his spirituality. Of what
use is it for nimble, everyday intellects, or clumsy,
honest mechanics and empiricists to press, in their
plebeian ambition, close to such problems, and as
it were into this "holy of holies"-as so often
happens nowadays! But coarse feet must never
tread upon such carpets: this is provided for in
the primary law of things; the doors remain closed
to those intruders, though they may dash and
break their heads thereon! People have always
to be born to a high station, or, more definitely,


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WE SCHOLARS.
157
:
they have to be bred for it: a person has only a
right to philosophy—taking the word in its higher
significance—in virtue of his descent; the ancestors,
the "blood,” decide here also. Many generations
must have prepared the way for the coming of the
philosopher; each of his virtues must have been
separately acquired, nurtured, transmitted, and
embodied ; not only the bold, easy, delicate course
and current of his thoughts, but above all the
readiness for great responsibilities, the majesty of
ruling glance and contemning look, the feeling of
separation from the multitude with their duties and
virtues, the kindly patronage and defence of what-
ever is misunderstood and calumniated, be it God
or devil, the delight and practice of supreme justice,
the art of commanding, the amplitude of will, the
lingering eye which rarely admires, rarely looks up,
rarely loves. . . .


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SEVENTH CHAPTER
OUR VIRTUES.
-
214.
OUR Virtues ? —It is probable that we too have
still our virtues, although naturally they are not
those sincere and massive virtues on account of
which we hold our grandfathers in esteem and also
at a little distance from us. We Europeans of the
day after to-morrow, we firstlings of the twentieth
century — with all our dangerous curiosity, our
multifariousness and art of disguising, our mellow
and seemingly sweetened cruelty in sense and
spirit - we shall presumably, if we must have
virtues, have those only which have come to agree-
ment with our most secret and heartfelt inclinations,
with our most ardent requirements: well, then, let
us look for them in our labyrinths ! -where, as we
know, so many things lose themselves, so many
things get quite lost! And is there anything finer
than to search for one's own virtues ? Is it not
almost to believe in one's own virtues ? But this
"believing in one's own virtues"—is it not practi-
cally the same as what was formerly called one's
"good conscience," that long, respectable pigtail of
an idea, which our grandfathers used to hang behind


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160
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
their heads, and often enough also behind their
understandings ? It seems, therefore, that however
little we may imagine ourselves to be old-fashioned
and grandfatherly respectable in other respects, in
one thing we are nevertheless the worthy grand-
children of our grandfathers, we last Europeans
with good consciences: we also still wear their
pigtail. —Ah! if you only knew how soon, so very
soon-it will be different!
215.
As in the stellar firmament there are sometimes
two suns which determine the path of one planet,
and in certain cases suns of different colours shine
around a single planet, now with red light, now
with green, and then simultaneously illumine and
flood it with motley colours : so we modern men,
owing to the complicated mechanism of our “firma-
ment,” are determined by different moralities; our
actions shine alternately in different colours, and
are seldom unequivocal—and there are often cases,
also, in which our actions are motley-coloured.
216.
To love one's enemies? I think that has been
well learnt: it takes place thousands of times at
present on a large and small scale ; indeed, at
times the higher and sublimer thing takes place :
we learn to despise when we love, and precisely
when we love best; all of it, however, unconsciously,
without noise, without ostentation, with the shame
and secrecy of goodness, which forbids the utter-


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QUR VIRTUES.
161
ance of the pompous word and the formula of
virtue. Morality as attitude—is opposed to our
taste nowadays. This is also an advance, as it
was an advance in our fathers that religion as an
attitude finally became opposed to their taste,
including the enmity and Voltairean bitterness
against religion (and all that formerly belonged
to freethinker-pantomime). It is the music in our
conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan
litanies, moral sermons, and goody-goodness won't
chime.
217
Let us be careful in dealing with those who
attach great importance to being credited with
moral tact and subtlety in moral discernment!
They never forgive us if they have once made a
mistake before us (or even with regard to us)—they
inevitably become our instinctive calumniators and
detractors, even when they still remain our "friends. "
-Blessed are the forgetful; for they "get the better”
even of their blunders.
218.
The psychologists of France—and where else are
there still psychologists nowadays ? -have never
yet exhausted their bitter and manifold enjoy-
ment of the bêtise bourgeoise, just as though . . . in
short, they betray something thereby. Flaubert, for
instance, the honest citizen of Rouen, neither saw,
heard, nor tasted anything else in the end ; it was
his mode of self-torment and refined cruelty As
this is growing wearisome, I would now recommend
L


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162
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
for a change something else for a pleasure
namely, the unconscious astuteness with which
good, fat, honest mediocrity always behaves to-
wards loftier spirits and the tasks they have to
perform, the subtle, barbed, Jesuitical astuteness,
which is a thousand times subtler than the taste
and understanding of the middle-class in its best
moments—subtler even than the understanding of
its victims a repeated proof that “instinct” is
:
the most intelligent of all kinds of intelligence
which have hitherto been discovered. In short,
you psychologists, study the philosophy of the
"rule" in its struggle with the "exception": there
you have a spectacle fit for Gods and godlike
malignity! Or, in plainer words, practise vivi-
section on “good people,” on the “homo bonæ
voluntatis," . . . on yourselves !
»
219.
The practice of judging and condemning morally,
is the favourite revenge of the intellectually shallow
on those who are less so; it is also a kind of
indemnity for them being badly endowed by
nature; and finally, it is an opportunity for acquir-
ing spirit and becoming subtle :malice spiritualises.
They are glad in their inmost heart that there is a
standard according to which those who are over-
endowed with intellectual goods and privileges, are
equal to them; they contend for the "equality of all
before God," and almost need the belief in God for
his purpose. It is among them
It is among them that the most
powerful antagonists of atheism are found. If any
one were to say to them: "a lofty spirituality is


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OUR VIRTUES.
163
beyond all comparison with the honesty and
respectability of a merely moral man ”-it would
make them furious ; I shall take care not to say
so. I would rather flatter them with my theory
that lofty spirituality itself exists only as the
ultimate product of moral qualities; that it is a
synthesis of all qualities attributed to the “merely
moral” man, after they have been acquired singly
through long training and practice, perhaps during
a whole series of generations; that lofty spirituality
is precisely the spiritualising of justice, and the
beneficent severity which knows that it is author-
ised to maintain gradations of rank in the world,
even among things—and not only among men.
220.
6
Now that the praise of the " disinterested person
is so popular, one must-probably not without
some danger-get an idea of what people actually
take an interest in, and what are the things
generally which fundamentally and profoundly
concern ordinary men — including the cultured,
even the learned, and perhaps philosophers also, if
appearances do not deceive.
The fact thereby
becomes obvious that the greater part of what
interests and charms higher natures, and more
refined and fastidious tastes, seems absolutely “un-
interesting "to the average man :-if
, notwithstand-
ing, he perceive devotion to these interests, he calls
it désintéressé, and wonders how it is possible to
act “disinterestedly. " There have been philo-
sophers who could give this popular astonishment
a seductive and mystical, other-world expression


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164
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
.
(perhaps because they did not know the higher
nature by experience ? ), instead of stating the naked
and candidly reasonable truth that “disinterested”
action is very interesting and “interested" action,
provided that . “ And love? ”—What! Even
an action for love's sake shall be “unegoistic”? But
you fools—! “And the praise of the self-sacrificer? ”
-But whoever has really offered sacrifice knows
that he wanted and obtained something for it-
perhaps something from himself for something from
himself; that he relinquished here in order to have
more there, perhaps in general to be more, or even
feel himself“ more. "
But this is a realm of ques-
tions and answers in which a more fastidious spirit
does not like to stay: for here truth has to stifle
her yawns so much when she is obliged to answer.
And after all, truth is a woman; one must not use
force with her.
>
a
221.
“It sometimes happens," said a moralistic pedant
and trifle-retailer, “that I honour and respect an
unselfish man: not, however, because he is unselfish,
but because I think he has a right to be useful to
another man at his own expense. In short, the
question is always who he is, and who the other is.
For instance, in a person created and destined for
command, self-denial and modest retirement, instead
of being virtues would be the waste of virtues : so
it seems to me. Every system of unegoistic mor-
ality which takes itself unconditionally and appeals
to every one, not only sins against good taste, but
is also an incentive to sins of omission, an additional


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OUR VIRTUES.
165
seduction under the mask of philanthropy-and
precisely a seduction and injury to the higher,
rarer, and more privileged types of men. Moral
systems must be compelled first of all to bow
before the gradations of rank; their presumption
must be driven home to their conscience-until
they thoroughly understand at last that it is
immoral to say that “what is right for one is
proper for another. ”—So said my moralistic pedant
and bonhomme. Did he perhaps deserve to be
laughed at when he thus exhorted systems of
morals to practise morality? But one should not
be too much in the right if one wishes to have the
laughers on one's own side; a grain of wrong
pertains even to good taste.
")
222.
Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached
nowadays-and, if I gather rightly, no other re-
ligion is any longer preached_let the psycholo-
gist have his ears open: through all the vanity,
through all the noise which is natural to these
preachers (as to all preachers), he will hear a hoarse,
groaning, genuine note of self-contempt. It belongs
to the overshadowing and uglifying of Europe,
which has been on the increase for a century (the
first symptoms of which are already specified
documentarily in a thoughtful letter of Galiani to
Madame d'Epinay)-if it is not really the cause
thereof! The man of "modern ideas," the con-
ceited ape, is excessively dissatisfied with himself-
,
this is perfectly certain. He suffers, and his vanity
wants him only “to suffer with his fellows. "
"


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166
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
223.
The hybrid European-a tolerably ugly plebeian,
taken all in all-absolutely requires a costume:
he needs history as a storeroom of costumes. To
be sure, he notices that none of the costumes fit
him properly-he changes and changes. Let us
look at the nineteenth century with respect to these
hasty preferences and changes in its masquerades
of style, and also with respect to its moments of
desperation on account of "nothing suiting” us,
It is in vain to get ourselves up as romantic, or
classical, or Christian, or Florentine, or barocco, or
"national,” in moribus et artibus : it does not
“clothe us”! But the “spirit,” especially the
“ historical spirit," profits even by this desperation :
once and again a new sample of the past or of
the foreign is tested, put on, taken off, packed up,
and above all studied - we are the first studious
age in puncto of “costumes," I mean as concerns
morals, articles of belief, artistic tastes, and religions;
we are prepared as no other age has ever been for
a carnival in the grand style, for the most spiritual
festival-laughter and carrogance, for the transcen-
dental height of supreme folly and Aristophanic
ridicule of the world. Perhaps we are still dis-
covering the domain of our invention just here, the
domain where even we can still be original, pro-
bably as parodists of the world's history and as
God's Merry-Andrews,-perhaps, though nothing
else of the present have a future, our laughter itself
may have a future!
a
3


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OUR VIRTUES.
167
224.
The historical sense (or the capacity for divining
quickly the order of rank of the valuations accord-
ing to which a people, a community, or an indi-
vidual has lived, the “divining instinct” for the
relationships of these valuations, for the relation of
the authority of the valuations to the authority of
the operating forces),--this historical sense, which
we Europeans claim as our speciality, has come to
us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi-
barbarity into which Europe has been plunged by
the democratic mingling of classes and races--it is
only the nineteenth century that has recognised
this faculty as its sixth sense. Owing to this
mingling, the past of every form and mode of life,
and of cultures which were formerly closely con-
tiguous and superimposed on one another, flows
forth into us “modern souls”; our instincts now
run back in all directions, we ourselves are a kind
of chaos: in the end, as we have said, the spirit
perceives its advantage therein. By means of our
semi-barbarity in body and in desire, we have secret
access everywhere, such as a noble age never had;
we have access above all to the labyrinth of imper-
fect civilisations, and to every form of semi-
barbarity that has at any time existed on earth;
and in so far as the most considerable part of
human civilisation hitherto has just been semi-
barbarity, the “historical sense” implies almost the
sense and instinct for everything, the taste and
tongue for everything: whereby it immediately
proves
itself to be an ignoble sense. For instance,


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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
we enjoy Homer once more: it is perhaps our
happiest acquisition that we know how to appre-
ciate Homer, whom men of distinguished culture
(as the French of the seventeenth century, like
Saint-Evremond, who reproached him for his esprit
vaste, and even Voltaire, the last echo of the cen-
tury) cannot and could not so easily appropriate-
whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy.
The very decided Yea and Nay of their palate,
their promptly ready disgust, their hesitating reluc-
tance with regard to everything strange, their
horror of the bad taste even of lively curiosity, and
in general the averseness of every distinguished
and self-sufficing culture to avow a new desire, a
dissatisfaction with its own condition, or an admira-
tion of what is strange: all this determines and
disposes them unfavourably even towards the best
things of the world which are not their property or
could not become their prey—and no faculty is more
unintelligible to such men than just this historical
sense, with its truckling, plebeian curiosity. The
case is not different with Shakespeare, that mar-
vellous Spanish-Moorish-Saxon synthesis of taste,
over whom an ancient Athenian of the circle of
Æschylus would have half-killed himself with
laughter or irritation: but we-accept precisely this
wild motleyness, this medley of the most delicate,
the most coarse, and the most artificial, with a
secret confidence and cordiality; we enjoy it as a
refinement of art reserved expressly for us, and
allow ourselves to be as little disturbed by the
repulsive fumes and the proximity of the English
populace in which Shakespeare's art and taste lives,
1


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OUR VIRTUES.
169
»
as perhaps on the Chiaja of Naples, where, with all
our senses awake, we go our way, enchanted and
voluntarily, in spite of the drain-odour of the lower
quarters of the town. That as men of the "historical
sense" we have our virtues, is not to be disputed :
we are unpretentious, unselfish, modest, brave,
habituated to self-control and self-renunciation,
very grateful, very patient, very complaisant—but
with all this we are perhaps not very "tasteful. ”
Let us finally confess it, that what is most difficult
for us men of the “historical sense to grasp, feel,
taste, and love, what finds us fundamentally pre-
judiced and almost hostile, is precisely the perfec-
tion and ultimate maturity in every culture and art,
the essentially noble in works and men, their
moment of smooth sea and halcyon self-sufficiency,
the goldenness and coldness which all things show
that have perfected themselves. Perhaps our great
virtue of the historical sense is in necessary contrast
to good taste, at least to the very best taste; and we
can only evoke in ourselves imperfectly, hesitatingly,
and with compulsion the small, short, and happy
godsends and glorifications of human life as they
shine here and there: those moments and mar-
vellous experiences, when a great power has volun-
tarily come to a halt before the boundless and
infinite, -when a superabundance of refined delight
has been enjoyed by a sudden checking and
petrifying, by standing firmly and planting oneself
fixedly on still trembling ground. Proportionate-
ness is strange to us, let us confess it to ourselves;
our itching is really the itching for the infinite,
the immeasurable. Like the rider on his forward


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170
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
panting horse, we let the reins fall before the infinite,
we modern men, we semi-barbarians—and are only
in our highest bliss when we-are in most danger.
225.
Whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utili-
tarianism, or eudæmonism, all those modes of
thinking which measure the worth of things accord-
ing to pleasure and pain, that is, according to
accompanying circumstances and secondary con-
siderations, are plausible modes of thought and
naïvetés, which every one conscious of creative
powers and an artist's conscience will look down
upon with scorn, though not without sympathy.
Sympathy for you! —to be sure, that is not sympathy
as you understand it: it is not sympathy for social
"distress," for "society” with its sick and mis-
fortuned, for the hereditarily vicious and defective
who lie on the ground around us; still less is it
sympathy for the grumbling, vexed, revolutionary
slave-classes who strive after power--they call it
“ freedom. ” Our sympathy is a loftier and further-
sighted sympathy:-we see how man dwarfs himself,
how you dwarf him! and there are moments when
we view your sympathy with an indescribable
anguish, when we resist it,--when we regard your
seriousness as more dangerous than any kind of
levity. You want, if possible and there is not a
more foolish “if possible”--to do away with suffer-
ing; and we? —it really seems that we would rather
have it increased and made worse than it has
ever been! Well-being, as you understand it-


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OUR VIRTUES.
171
>
is certainly not a goal ; it seems to us an end ; a
condition which at once renders man ludicrous and
contemptible—and makes his destruction desirable !
The discipline of suffering, of great suffering—know
ye not that it is only this discipline that has pro-
duced all the elevations of humanity hitherto?
The tension of soul in misfortune which communi-
cates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack
and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in under-
going, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting mis-
fortune, and whatever depth, mystery, disguise,
spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestowed upon
the soul-has it not been bestowed through suffer-
ing, through the discipline of great suffering ? In
man creature and creator are united : in man there
is not only matter, shred, excess, clay, mire, folly,
chaos; but there is also the creator, the sculptor,
the hardness of the hammer, the divinity of the
,
spectator, and the seventh day-do ye understand
this contrast? And that your sympathy for the
creature in man" applies to that which has to be
fashioned, bruised, forged, stretched, roasted, an-
nealed, refined to that which must necessarily
suffer, and is meant to suffer ? And our sympathy
-do
ye
not understand what our reverse sympathy
applies to, when it resists your sympathy as the
worst of all pampering and enervation ? --So it is
sympathy against sympathy ! -But to repeat it
once more, there are higher problems than the pro-
blems of pleasure and pain and sympathy; and all
systems of philosophy which deal only with these
are naïvetés.
C


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172
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
226.
(6
-
We Immoralists. This world with which we are
concerned, in which we have to fear and love, this
almost invisible, inaudible world of delicate com-
mand and delicate obedience, a world of “ almost
in every respect, captious, insidious, sharp, and
tender — yes, it is well protected from clumsy
spectators and familiar curiosity! We are woven
into a strong net and garment of duties, and cannot
disengage ourselves-precisely here, we are “men
of duty," even we! Occasionally it is true we
dance in our “ chains” and betwixt our "swords ";
it is none the less true that more often we gnash our
teeth under the circumstances, and are impatient at
the secret hardship of our lot. But do what we
will, fools and appearances say of us :
men without duty," —we have always fools and
appearances against us!
o these are
227.
Honesty, granting that it is the virtue from which
we cannot rid ourselves, we free spirits—well, we
will labour at it with all our perversity and love, and
not tire of "perfecting” ourselves in our virtue,
which alone remains : may its glance some day
overspread like a gilded, blue, mocking twilight this
aging civilisation with its dull gloomy seriousness !
And if, nevertheless, our honesty should one day
grow weary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and find
us too hard, and would fain have it pleasanter,
easier, and gentler, like an agreeable vice, let us


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OUR VIRTUES.
173
66
remain hard, we latest Stoics, and let us send to its
help whatever devilry we have in us our disgust
at the clumsy and undefined, our "nitimur in veti-
tum," our love of adventure, our sharpened and
fastidious curiosity, our most subtle, disguised,
intellectual Will to Power and universal conquest,
which rambles and roves avidiously around all the
realms of the future-let us go with all our devils"
to the help of our “God”! It is probable that
people will misunderstand and mistake us on that
account: what does it matter! They will say :
“ Their 'honesty '—that is their devilry, and nothing
else ! ” What does it matter! And even if they
were right-have not all Gods hitherto been such
sanctified, re-baptized devils ? And after all, what
do we know of ourselves ? And what the spirit that
leads us wants to be called ? (It is a question of
names. ) And how many spirits we harbour ? Our
honesty, we free spirits—let us be careful lest it be-
come our vanity, our ornament and ostentation, our
limitation, our stupidity! Every virtue inclines to
stupidity, every stupidity to virtue ; "stupid to the
point of sanctity," they say in Russia,- let us be care-
ful lest out of pure honesty we do not eventually
become saints and bores! Is not life a hundred
times too short for us—to bore ourselves ? One
would have to believe in eternal life in order to. . . .
228.
I hope to be forgiven for discovering that all
moral philosophy hitherto has been tedious and has
belonged to the soporific appliances — and that


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174
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
virtue,” in my opinion, has been more injured by
the tediousness of its advocates than by anything
else ; at the same time, however, I would not wish
to overlook their general usefulness. It is desirable
that as few people as possible should reflect upon
morals, and consequently it is very desirable that
morals should not some day become interesting!
But let us not be afraid! Things still remain to-
day as they have always been: I see no one in
Europe who has (or discloses) an idea of the fact
that philosophising concerning morals might be
conducted in a dangerous, captious, and ensnaring
manner-that calamity might be involved therein.
Observe, for example, the indefatigable, inevitable
English utilitarians : how ponderously and respect-
ably they stalk on, stalk along (a Homeric metaphor
expresses it better) in the footsteps of Bentham,
just as he had already stalked in the footsteps of
the respectable Helvétius! (no, he was not a a
dangerous man, Helvétius, ce sénateur Pococurante,
to use an expression of Galiani). No new thought,
nothing of the nature of a finer turning or better
expression of an old thought, not even a proper
history of what has been previously thought on the
subject : an impossible literature, taking it all in all,
unless one knows how to leaven it with some mis-
chief. In effect, the old English vice called cant,
which is moral Tartuffism, has insinuated itself also
into these moralists (whom one must certainly read
with an eye to their motives if one must read them),
concealed this time under the new form of the
scientific spirit; moreover, there is not absent from
them a secret struggle with the pangs of conscience,


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OUR VIRTUES.
175
>
from which a race of former Puritans must natur-
ally suffer, in all their scientific tinkering with
morals. (Is not a moralist the opposite of a Puritan?
That is to say, as a thinker who regards morality as
questionable, as worthy of interrogation, in short,
as a problem? Is moralising not-immoral ?
) In
the end, they all want English morality to be re-
cognised as authoritative, inasmuch as mankind, or
the "general utility,” or “the happiness of the
greatest number,"—no! the happiness of England,
will be best served thereby. They would like, by
all means, to convince themselves that the striving
after English happiness, I mean after comfort and
fashion (and in the highest instance, a seat in Parlia-
ment), is at the same time the true path of virtue ;
in fact, that in so far as there has been virtue in the
world hitherto, it has just consisted in such striving.
Not one of those ponderous, conscience-stricken
ñerding-animals (who undertake to advocate the
cause of egoism as conducive to the general wel-
fare) wants to have any knowledge or inkling of
the facts that the “general welfare” is no ideal, no
goal, no notion that can be at all grasped, but is
only a nostrum,—that what is fair to one may not at
all be fair to another, that the requirement of one
morality for all is really a detriment to higher men,
in short, that there is a distinction of rank between
man and man, and consequently between morality
and morality. They are an unassuming and funda-
mentally mediocre species of men, these utilitarian
Englishmen, and, as already remarked, in so far as
they are tedious, one cannot think highly enough of
their utility. One ought even to encourage them,


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176
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
as has been partially attempted in the following
rhymes :
Hail, ye worthies, barrow-wheeling,
“Longer-better," aye revealing,
Stiffer aye in head and knee;
Unenraptured, never jesting,
Mediocre everlasting,
Sans genie et sans esprit!
229.
In these later ages, which may be proud of their
humanity, there still remains so much fear, so much
superstition of the fear, of the “cruel wild beast," the
mastering of which constitutes the very pride of
these humaner ages—that even obvious truths, as
if by the agreement of centuries, have long remained
unuttered, because they have the appearance of
helping the finally slain wild beast back to life
again. I perhaps risk something when I allow
such a truth to escape ; let others capture it again
and give it so much “milk of pious sentiment”* to
drink, that it will lie down quiet and forgotten, in
its old corner. -One ought to learn anew about
cruelty, and open one's eyes; one ought at last to
learn impatience, in order that such immodest gross
errors--as, for instance, have been fostered by
ancient and modern philosophers with regard to
tragedy-may no longer wander about virtuously
and boldly. Almost everything that we call
“higher culture” is based upon the spiritualising
* An expression from Schiller's William Tell, Act IV. ,
Scene 3.


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OUR VIRTUES.
177
>
-*
a
and intensifying of cruelty—this is my thesis ; the
"wild beast” has not been slain at all, it lives, it
flourishes, it has only been-transfigured.
That
which constitutes the painful delight of tragedy is
cruelty ; that which operates agreeably in so-called
tragic sympathy, and at the basis even of everything
sublime, up to the highest and most delicate thrills
of metaphysics, obtains its sweetness solely from the
intermingled ingredient of cruelty. What the Roman
enjoys in the arena, the Christian in the ecstasies of
the cross, the Spaniard at the sight of the faggot
and stake, or of the bull-fight, the present-day
Japanese who presses his way to the tragedy, the
workman of the Parisian suburbs who has a home-
sickness for bloody revolutions, the Wagnerienne
who, with unhinged will, “undergoes” the perform-
ance of “ Tristan and Isolde”—what all these enjoy,
and strive with mysterious ardour to drink in, is the
philtre of the great Circe "cruelty. " Here, to be
sure, we must put aside entirely the blundering
psychology of former times, which could only teach
with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight
of the suffering of others: there is an abundant,
superabundant enjoyment even in one's own suffer-
ing, in causing one's own suffering—and wherever
man has allowed himself to be persuaded to self-
denial in the religious sense, or to self-mutilation,
as among the Phænicians and ascetics, or in
general, to desensualisation, decarnalisation, and
contrition, to Puritanical repentance-spasms, to
vivisection of conscience and to Pascal-like sacri-
fizio dell' intelleto, he is secretly allured and impelled
forwards by his cruelty, by the dangerous thrill of
M


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178
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL,
cruelty towards himself. –Finally, let us consider
that even the seeker of knowledge operates as an
artist and glorifier of cruelty, in that he compels his
spirit to perceive against its own inclination, and
often enough against the wishes of his heart:-he
forces it to say Nay, where he would like to affirm,
love, and adore ; indeed, every instance of taking
a thing profoundly and fundamentally, is a violation,
an intentional injuring of the fundamental will of
the spirit, which instinctively aims at appearance
and superficiality,-even in every desire for know-
ledge there is a drop of cruelty.
230.
Perhaps what I have here said about a “funda-
mental will of the spirit ” may not be understood
without further details; I may be allowed a word
I
of explanation. —That imperious something which
is popularly called “the spirit,” wishes to be master
internally and externally, and to feel itself master :
it has the will of a multiplicity for a simplicity, a
binding, taming, imperious, and essentially ruling
will. Its requirements and capacities here, are the
same as those assigned by physiologists to every-
thing that lives, grows, and multiplies. The power
of the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals
itself in a strong tendency to assimilate the new to
the old, to simplify the manifold, to overlook or
repudiate the absolutely contradictory; just as it
arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and
falsifies for itself certain traits and lines in the foreign
elements, in every portion of the "outside world. ”
Its object thereby is the incorporation of new "ex-


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OUR VIRTUES.
179
periences,” the assortment of new things in the old
arrangements—in short, growth; or more properly,
the feeling of growth, the feeling of increased power
-is its object. This same will has at its service an
apparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly
adopted preference of ignorance, of arbitrary
shutting out, a closing of windows, an inner denial
of this or that, a prohibition to approach, a sort of
defensive attitude against much that is knowable, a
contentment with obscurity, with the shutting-in
horizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance:
as that which is all necessary according to the degree
of its appropriating power, its“ digestive power,” to
speak figuratively (and in fact“ the spirit” resembles
a stomach more than anything else). Here also
belong an occasional propensity of the spirit to let
itself be deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspicion
that it is not so and so, but is only allowed to pass
as such), a delight in uncertainty and ambiguity, an
exulting enjoyment of arbitrary, out-of-the-way
narrowness and mystery, of the too-near, of the
foreground, of the magnified, the diminished, the
misshapen, the beautified—an enjoyment of the
arbitrariness of all these manifestations of power.
Finally, in this connection, there is the not un-
scrupulous readiness of the spirit to deceive other
spirits and dissemble before them—the constant
pressing and straining of a creating, shaping, change-
able power : the spirit enjoys therein its craftiness
and its variety of disguises, it enjoys also its feeling
of security therein—it is precisely by its Protean arts
that it is best protected and concealed ! -Counter to
this propensity for appearance, for simplification, for


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180
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
a disguise, for a cloak, in short, for an outside—for
every outside is a cloak—there operates the sublime
tendency of the man of knowledge, which takes, and
insists on taking things profoundly, variously, and
thoroughly; as a kind of cruelty of the intellectual
conscience and taste, which every courageous thinker
will acknowledge in himself, provided, as it ought
to be, that he has sharpened and hardened his eye
sufficiently long for introspection, and is accustomed
to severe discipline and even severe words. He
will say: “There is something cruel in the tendency
of my spirit”: let the virtuous and amiable try to
convince him that it is not so! In fact, it would sound
nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perhaps our “extrava-
gant honesty" were talked about, whispered about
and glorified—we free, very free spirits—and some
day perhaps such will actually be our--posthumous
glory! Meanwhile—for there is plenty of time
until then--we should be least inclined to deck our-
selves out in such florid and fringed moral verbiage ;
our whole former work has just made us sick of this
taste and its sprightly exuberance. They are
beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words :
honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for
knowledge, heroism of the truthful—there is some-
thing in them that makes one's heart swell with
pride. But we anchorites and marmots have long
ago persuaded ourselves in all the secrecy of an
anchorite's conscience, that this worthy parade of
verbiage also belongs to the old false adornment,
frippery,and gold-dust of unconscious human vanity,
and that even under such flattering colour and
repainting, the terrible original text homo natura


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OUR VIRTUES.
181
must again be recognised. In effect, to translate
man back again into nature; to master the many
vain and visionary interpretations and subordinate
meanings which have hitherto been scratched and
daubed over the eternal original text, homo natura;
to bring it about that man shall henceforth stand
before man as he now, hardened by the discipline
of science, stands before the other forms of nature,
with fearless Edipus-eyes, and stopped Ulysses-
ears, deaf to the enticements of old metaphysical
bird-catchers, who have piped to him far too long :
“ Thou art more! thou art higher thou hast a
different origin ! "—this may be a strange and
foolish task, but that it is a task, who can deny !
Why did we choose it, this foolish task? Or, to
put the question differently: “Why knowledge at
all? " Every one will ask us about this. And thus
pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the question
a hundred times, have not found, and cannot find
any better answer.
231.
Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment 1
does that does not merely “conserve"—as the phy-
siologist knows. But at the bottom of our souls,
quite “ down below," there is certainly something
unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of pre-
determined decision and answer to predetermined,
chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there
speaks an unchangeable"I am this"; a thinker can-
not learn anew about man and woman, for instance,
but can only learn fully-he can only follow to the
end what is “ fixed” about them in himself. Occa-


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182
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
9)
sionally we find certain solutions of problems
which make strong beliefs for us; perhaps they
are henceforth called “convictions. " Later on-
one sees in them only footsteps to self-knowledge,
guide-posts to the problem which we ourselves are
--or more correctly to the great stupidity which
we embody, our spiritual fate, the unteachable in us,
quite "down below. "-In view of this liberal com-
pliment which I have just paid myself, permission
will perhaps be more readily allowed me to utter
some truths about “woman as she is,” provided
that it is known at the outset how literally they
are merely—my truths.
232.
Woman wishes to be independent, and therefore
she begins to enlighten men about “woman as she
is”--this is one of the worst developments of the
general uglifying of Europe. For what must these
clumsy attempts of feminine scientificality and
self-exposure bring to light! Woman has so much
i cause for shame; in woman there is so much
pedantry, superficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty
presumption, unbridledness, and indiscretion con-
cealed-study only woman's behaviour towards
children ! —which has really been best restrained
and dominated hitherto by the fear of man. Alas,
if ever the "eternally tedious in woman"-she has
plenty of it ! —is allowed to venture forth! if she
begins radically and on principle to unlearn her
wisdom and art-of charming, of playing, of
frightening-away-sorrow, of alleviating and taking-
easily; if she forgets her delicate aptitude for


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OUR VIRTUES.
183
agreeable desires !
Female voices are already
raised, which, by Saint Aristophanes! make one
afraid :—with medical explicitness it is stated
in a threatening manner what woman first and
last requires from man. Is it not in the very
worst taste that woman thus sets herself up to be
scientific? Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately
been men's affair, men's gift—we remained there-
with "among ourselves"; and in the end, in view
of all that women write about “woman," we may
well have considerable doubt as to whether woman
really desires enlightenment about herself—and can
desire it. If woman does not thereby seek a new ,
ornament for herself—I believe ornamentation be-
longs to the eternally feminine ? —why, then, she
wishes to make herself feared: perhaps she thereby
wishes to get the mastery. But she does not want
truth-what does woman care for truth! From
the very first nothing is more foreign, more repug-
nant, or more hostile to woman than truth—her
1 great art is falsehood, her chief concern is appear-
ance and beauty. Let us confess it, we men:
we honour and love this very art and this very
instinct in woman: we who have the hard task,
and for our recreation gladly seek the company of
beings under whose hands, glances, and delicate
follies, our seriousness, our gravity, and profundity
appear almost like follies to us. Finally, I ask the
question : Did a woman herself ever acknowledge
profundity in a woman's mind, or justice in a
woman's heart ? And is it not true that on the
whole “woman has hitherto been most despised
by woman herself, and not at all by us ? -Wę men


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184
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
desire that woman should not continue to com-
promise herself by enlightening us; just as it was
man's care and the consideration for woman, when
the church decreed : mulier taceat in ecclesia. It
was to the benefit of woman when Napoleon gave
the too eloquent Madame de Staël to understand :
mulier taceat in politicis ! —and in my opinion, he
is a true friend of woman who calls out to women
to-day : mulier taceat de muliere!
233.
It betrays corruption of the instincts-apart from
the fact that it betrays bad taste—when a woman
refers to Madame Roland, or Madame de Staël, or
Monsieur George Sand, as though something were
proved thereby in favour of “woman as she is. ”
Among men, these are the three comical women
as they are nothing more ! --and just the best
involuntary counter - arguments against feminine
emancipation and autonomy.
234.
Stupidity in the kitchen ; woman as cook; the
terrible thoughtlessness with which the feeding of
the family and the master of the house is managed !
Woman does not understand what food means, and
she insists on being cook! If woman had been a
thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook
for thousands of years, have discovered the most
important physiological facts, and should likewise
have got possession of the healing art! Through
bad female cooks—through the entire lack of reason
in the kitchen-the development of mankind has


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OUR VIRTUES.
185
been longest retarded and most interfered with;
even to-day matters are very little better. ----A word
to High School girls.
235.
There are turns and casts of fancy, there are
sentences, little handfuls of words, in which a whole
culture, a whole society suddenly crystallises itself.
Among these is the incidental remark of Madame
de Lambert to her son : “ Mon aini, ne vous per-
mettez jamais que des folies, qui vous feront grand
plaisir"—the motherliest and wisest remark, by the
way, that was ever addressed to a son.
236.
I have no doubt that every noble woman will
oppose what Dante and Goethe believed about
woman—the former when he sang, "ella guardava
suso, ed io in lei," and the latter when he interpreted
it, “the eternally feminine draws us aloft"; for this
is just what she believes of the eternally masculine.
237.
Seven Apophthegms for Women.
How the longest ennui flees,
When a man comes to our knees!
Age, alas! and science staid,
Furnish even weak virtue aid.
Sombre garb and silence meet:
Dress for every dame-discreet.
Whom I thank when in my bliss ?
God ! —and my good tailoress!


## p. 186 (#208) ############################################

186
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
Young, a flower-decked cavern home;
Old, a dragon thence doth roam.
Noble title, leg that's fine,
Man as well : Oh, were he mine!
Speech in brief and sense in mass-
Slippery for the jenny-ass !
237A.
Woman has hitherto been treated by men like
birds, which, losing their way, have come down
among them from an elevation: as something
delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet, and animating
-but as something also which must be cooped up
to prevent it flying away.
238.
To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of
man and woman,” to deny here the profoundest
antagonism and the necessity for an eternally
hostile tension, to dream here perhaps of equal
rights, equal training, equal claims and obligations:
that is a typical sign of shallow-mindedness; and
a thinker who has proved himself shallow at this
dangerous spot-shallow in instinct ! -may gener-
ally be regarded as suspicious, nay more, as betrayed,
as discovered; he will probably prove too "short”
for all fundamental questions of life, future as well
as present, and will be unable to descend into any
of the depths. On the other hand, a man who has
depth of spirit as well as of desires, and has also
the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity


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OUR VIRTUES.
187
and harshness, and easily confounded with them,
can only think of woman as Orientals do: he must
conceive of her as a possession, as confinable pro-
perty, as a being predestined for service and accom-
plishing her mission therein-he must take his
stand in this matter upon the immense rationality
of Asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of Asia,
as the Greeks did formerly; those best heirs and
scholars of Asia—who, as is well known, with their
increasing culture and amplitude of power, from
Homer to the time of Pericles, became gradually
stricter towards woman, in short, more oriental.
How necessary, how logical, even how humanely
desirable this was, let us consider for ourselves!
239.
The weaker sex has in no previous age been
treated with so much respect by men as at present
-this belongs to the tendency and fundamental
taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespect-
fulness to old age—what wonder is it that abuse
should be immediately made of this respect? They
want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute
of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling;
rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife itself, would
be preferred : in a word, woman is losing modesty.
And let us immediately add that she is also losing
taste. She is unlearning to fear, man: but the
woman who “unlearns to fear" sacrifices her most
womanly instincts. That woman should venture
forward when the fear-inspiring quality in man-or
more definitely, the man in man-is no longer either
desired or fully developed, is reasonable enough and


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188
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
)
also intelligible enough ; what is more difficult to
understand is that precisely thereby — woman
deteriorates. This is what is happening nowadays:
let us not deceiye ourselves about it! Wherever
the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military
and aristocratic spirit, woman strives for the
economic and legal independence of a clerk :
woman as clerkess” is inscribed on the portal of
the modern society which is in course of formation.
While she thus appropriates new rights, aspires to
be "master,' and inscribes" progress" of woman on
her Hags and banners, the very opposite realises
itself with terrible obviousness : woman retrogrades.
Since the French Revolution the influence of woman
in Europe has declined in proportion as she has
increased her rights and claims; and the "emancipa-
tion of woman," in so far as it is desired and de-
manded by women themselves (and not only by
masculine shallow-pates), thus proves to be a re-
markable symptom of the increased weakening and
deadening of the most womanly instincts. There
is stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine
stupidity, of which a well-reared woman—who is
always a sensible woman-might be heartily
ashamed. To lose the intuition as to the ground
upon which she can most surely achieve victory;
to neglect exercise in the use of her proper weapons ; ;
to let-herself-go before man, perhaps even "to the
book," where formerly she kept herself in control
and in refined, artful humility; to neutralise with
her virtuous audacity man's faith in a veiled, funda-
mentally different ideal in woman, something
eternally, necessarily feminine; to emphatically


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OUR VIRTUES.
189
а.
12
and loquaciously dissuade man from the idea that
woman must be preserved, cared for, protected, and
indulged, like some delicate, strangely wild, and
often pleasant domestic animal; the clumsy and
indignant collection of everything of the nature of
servitude and bondage which the position of woman
in the hitherto existing order of society has entailed
and still entails (as though slavery were a counter-
argument, and not rather a condition of every higher
culture, of every elevation of culture) :what does
all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly
instincts, a de-feminising ? Certainly, there are
enough of idiotic friends and corrupters of woman
amongst the learned asses of the masculine sex, who
advise woman to de-feminise herself in this manner,
and to imitate all the stupidities from which “man
in Europe, European “manliness," suffers,--who
would like to lower woman to "general culture,”
indeed even to newspaper reading and meddling
with politics. Here and there they wish even to
make women into free spirits and literary workers:
as though a woman without piety would not be
something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a
profound and godless man ;-almost everywhere
her nerves are being ruined by the most morbid
and dangerous kind of music (our latest German
music), and she is daily being made more hysterical
)
and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last
function, that of bearing robust children. They
wish to "cultivate" her in general still more, and
“
intend, as they say, to make the "weaker sex" strong
by culture : as if history did not teach in the most
emphatic manner that the "cultivating” of mankind


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190
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
and his weakening—that is to say, the weakening,
dissipating, and languishing of his force of will—
have always kept pace with one another, and that
the most powerful and influential women in the
world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon) had just
to thank their force of will--and not their school-
masters! —for their power and ascendency over men.
That which inspires respect in woman, and often
enough fear also, is her nature, which is more
"natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-
like, cunning flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the
glove, her naïveté in egoism, her untrainableness
and innate wildness, the incomprehensibleness,
extent, and deviation of her desires and virtues. . .
That which, in spite of fear, excites one's sympathy
for the dangerous and beautiful cat, “woman," is
that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more
necessitous of love and more condemned to dis-
illusionment than any other creature. Fear and
sympathy: it is with these feelings that man has
hitherto stood in presence of woman, always with
one foot already in tragedy, which rends while it
delights. -What? And all that is now to be at an
end ? And the disenchantment of woman is in
progress? The tediousness of woman is slowly
evolving? Oh Europe! Europe! We know the
horned animal which was always most attractive
to thee, from which danger is ever again threatening
thee! Thy old fable might once more become
" history”—an immense stupidity might once again
overmaster thee and carry thee away! And no
God concealed beneath it-no! only an “idea," a
modern idea”! . . . .
")


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EIGHTH CHAPTER.
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
240.
I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard
Wagner's overture to the Mastersingers : it is a
piece of magnificent, gorgeous, heavy, latter-day art,
which has the pride to presuppose two centuries of
music as still living, in order that it may be under-
stood :-it is an honour to Germans that such a
pride did not miscalculate! What flavours and
forces, what seasons and climes do we not find
mingled in it! It impresses us at one time as
ancient, at another time as foreign, bitter, and too
modern, it is as arbitrary as it is pompously
traditional, it is not infrequently roguish, still oftener
rough and coarse—it has fire and courage, and at
the same time the loose, dun-coloured skin of fruits
which ripen too late. It flows broad and full: and
suddenly there is a moment of inexplicable hesita-
tion, like a gap that opens between cause and effect,
an oppression that makes us dream, almost a night-
mare; but already it broadens and widens anew, the
old stream of delight—the most manifold delight,
-of old and new happiness; including especially
the joy of the artist in himself, which he refuses to


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192
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
conceal, his astonished, happy cognisance of his
mastery of the expedients here employed, the new,
newly acquired, imperfectly tested expedients of
art which he apparently betrays to us. All in all,
however, no beauty, no South, nothing of the delicate
southern clearness of the sky, nothing of grace, no
dance, hardly a will to logic; a certain clumsiness
even, which is also emphasised, as though the artist
wished to say to us : “ It is part of my intention ";
a cumbersome drapery, something arbitrarily
barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and
venerable conceits and witticisms; something
German in the best and worst sense of the word,
something in the German style, manifold, formless,
and inexhaustible; a certain German potency and
super-plenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide
itself under the raffinements of decadence-which,
perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real,
genuine token of the German soul, which is at the
same time young and aged, too ripe and yet still
too rich in futurity. This kind of music expresses
best what I think of the Germans: they belong to
the day before yesterday and the day after to-
morrow--they have as yet no to-day.
241.
We “good Europeans," we also have hours when
we allow ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism, a
plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views
-I have just given an example of it-hours of
national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all
other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment.
Duller spirits may perhaps only get done with what


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PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
193
confines its operations in us to hours and plays
itself out in hours—in a considerable time : some in
half a year, others in half a lifetime, according to
the speed and strength with which they digest and
“ change their material. ” Indeed, I could think of
sluggish, hesitating races, which, even in our rapidly
moving Europe, would require half a century ere
they could surmount such atavistic attacks of
patriotism and soil-attachment, and return once more
to reason, that is to say, to "good Europeanism. ”
And while digressing on this possibility, I happen
to become an ear-witness of a conversation between
two old patriots—they were evidently both hard of
hearing and consequently spoke all the louder.
“ He has as much, and knows as much, philosophy
as a peasant or a corps-student," said the one-"he
is still innocent. But what does that matter now-
adays! It is the age of the masses : they lie on
their belly before everything that is massive. And
so also in politicis. A statesman who rears up for
them a new Tower of Babel, some monstrosity of
empire and power, they call 'great'-what does it
matter that we more prudent and conservative ones
do not meanwhile give up the old belief that it is
only the great thought that gives greatness to an
action or affair. Supposing a statesman were to
bring his people into the position of being obliged
henceforth to practise 'high politics,' for which they
were by nature badly endowed and prepared, so
that they would have to sacrifice their old and
reliable virtues, out of love to a new and doubtful
mediocrity ;—supposing a statesman were to con-
demn his people generally to 'practise politics,
N


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194
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
when they have hitherto had something better to
do and think about, and when in the depths of their
souls they have been unable to free themselves from
a prudent loathing of the restlessness, emptiness,
and noisy wranglings of the essentially politics-
practising nations ;-supposing such a statesman
were to stimulate the slumbering passions and
avidities of his people, were to make a stigma out
of their former diffidence and delight in aloofness,
an offence out of their exoticism and hidden per-
manency, were to depreciate their most radical pro-
clivities, subvert their consciences, make their minds
narrow, and their tastes 'national'—what! a states-
man who should do all this, which his people would
have to do penance for throughout their whole future,
if they had a future, such a statesman would be great,
would he? "_" Undoubtedly! ” replied the other
old patriot vehemently; “otherwise he could not have
done it! It was mad perhaps to wish such a thing!
But perhaps everything great has just been mad at
its commencement ! "_" Misuse of words ! ” cried
his interlocutor, contradictorily—“strong!