No More Learning

They may depend upon the
happy issue of certain undertakings (-an ingenuous
mistake: the happy issue of an undertaking certainly
does not give a hypochondriac or a Pascal any
general sensation of pleasure). They may depend
upon faith, love and hope,--the Christian virtues.
As a matter of fact all these pretended explanations
are but the results of certain states, and as it were
translations of feelings of pleasure and pain into a
false dialect: a man is in a condition of hopefulness
because the dominant physiological sensation of his
being is again one of strength and wealth ; he trusts
in God because the feeling of abundance and power
gives him a peaceful state of mind. Morality and
religion are completely and utterly parts of the psy-
chology of error: in every particular case cause and
effect are confounded; as truth is confounded with
the effect of that which is believed to be true; or a
certain state of consciousness is confounded with the
chain of causes which brought it about.
7
The Error of Free-Will. At present we no longer
have any mercy upon the concept “free-will”: we
know only too well what it is—the most egregious
theological trick that has ever existed for the purpose
of making mankind "responsible” in a theological
manner,—that is to say, to make mankind dependent
upon theologians. I will now explain to you only


## p. 42 (#62) ##############################################

42
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
the psychology of the whole process of inculcating
the sense of responsibility. Wherever men try to
trace responsibility home to anyone, it is the instinct
of punishment and of the desire to judge which is
active. Becoming is robbed of its innocence when
any particular condition of things is traced to a
will, to intentions and to responsible actions. The
doctrine of the will was invented principally for the
purpose of punishment,—that is to say, with the
intention of tracing guilt. The whole of ancient
psychology, or the psychology of the will, is the
outcome of the fact that its originators, who were
the priests at the head of ancient communities,
wanted to create for themselves a right to administer
punishments-or the right for God to do so. Men
were thought of as "free" in order that they might
be judged and punished-in order that they might
be held guilty: consequently every action had to be
regarded as voluntary, and the origin of every action
had to be imagined as lying in consciousness(-in this
way the most fundamentally fraudulent character of
psychology was established as the very principle of
psychology itself). Now that we have entered upon
the opposite movement, now that we immoralists are
trying with all our power to eliminate the concepts of
guilt and punishment from the world once more, and
to cleanse psychology, history, nature and all social
institutions and customs of all signs of those two
concepts, we recognise no more radical opponents
than the theologians, who with their notion of “a
moral order of things,” still continue to pollute the
innocence of Becoming with punishment and guilt.
Christianity is the metaphysics of the hangman.


## p. 43 (#63) ##############################################

THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS
43
Studyn
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What then, alone, can our teaching be? —That
no one gives man his qualities, neither God, society
his parents, his ancestors, nor himself (this non-
sensical idea which is at last refuted here, was
taught as “intelligible freedom” by Kant, and per-
haps even as early as Plato himself). No one is
responsible for the fact that he exists at all, that he
is constituted as he is, and that he happens to be in
certain circumstances and in a particular environ-
ment. The fatality of his being cannot be divorced Cars
from the fatality of all that which has been and will
be. This is not the result of an individual intention,
of a will, of an aim, there is no attempt at attaining
to any “ideal man," or "ideal happiness” or “ideal
morality” with him,-it is absurd to wish him to
be careering towards some sort of purpose. We in-
vented the concept“purpose"; in reality purpose is
altogether lacking. One is necessary, one is a piece
of fate, one belongs to the whole,
one is in the whole,
- there is nothing that could judge, measure, com-
pare, and condemn our existence, for that would
mean judging, measuting, comparing and condemn-
ing the whole. But there is nothing outside the whole!
The fact that no one shall any longer be made re-
sponsible, that the nature of existence may not be
traced to a causa prima, that the world is an entity
neither as a sensorium nor as a spirit-this alone is
the great deliverance,—thus alone is the innocence
of Becoming restored. . . . The concept “God” has
.
been the greatest objection to existence hitherto. . . .
We deny God, we deny responsibility in God : thus
alone do we save the world. -
خوری ورگ


## p. 44 (#64) ##############################################

THE “IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND
I
You are aware of my demand upon philosophers,
that they should take up a stand Beyond Good and
Evil,—that they should have the illusion of the moral
judgment beneath them. This demand is the result
of a point of view which I was the first to formulate:
that there are no such things as moral facts. Moral
judgment has this in common with the religious one,
that it believes in realities which are not real. Mor-
ality is only an interpretation of certain phenomena:
or, more strictly speaking, a misinterpretation of
them. Moral judgment, like the religious one, be-
longs to a stage of ignorance in which even the con-
cept of reality, the distinction between real and im-
agined things, is still lacking : so that truth, at such
a stage, is applied to a host of things which to-day
we call “imaginary. ” That is why the moral judg-
ment must never be taken quite literally: as such
it is sheer nonsense. As a sign code, however, it is
invaluable: to him at least who knows, it reveals the
most valuable facts concerning cultures and inner
conditions, which did not know enough to "under-
stand” themselves. Morality is merely a sign-
language, simply symptomatology: one must already
know what it is all about in order to turn it to any
use.


## p. 45 (#65) ##############################################

THE “IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND
45
2
Let me give you one example, quite provisionally.
In all ages there have been people who wished to
“improve" mankind : this above all is what was
called morality. But the most different tendencies
are concealed beneath the same word. Both the
taming of the beast man, and the rearing of a par-
ticular type of man, have been called “improve-
ment”: these zoological termini, alone, represent
real things—real things of which the typical “im-
prover,” the priest, naturally knows nothing, and
will know nothing. To call the taming of an animal
“improving” it, sounds to our ears almost like a
joke. He who knows what goes on in menageries,
doubts very much whether an animal is improved
in such places. It is certainly weakened, it is made
less dangerous, and by means of the depressing in-
fluence of fear, pain, wounds, and hunger, it is con-
verted into a sick animal. And the same holds good
of the tamed man whom the priest has “improved. ”
In the early years of the Middle Ages, during which
the Church was most distinctly and above all a
menagerie, the most beautiful examples of the
“ blond beast” were hunted down in all directions,
-the noble Germans, for instance, were “improved. ”
But what did this “improved ” German, who had
been lured to the monastery look like after the pro-
cess? He looked like a caricature of man, like an
abortion : he had become a “sinner,” he was caged
up, he had been imprisoned behind a host of appal-
ling notions. He now lay there, sick, wretched,
malevolent even toward himself: full of hate for the


## p. 46 (#66) ##############################################

46
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
instincts of life, full of suspicion in regard to all that
is still strong and happy. In short a “Christian. ”
In physiological terms: in a fight with an animal,
the only way of making it weak may be to make it
sick. The Church undersood this : it ruined man,
it made him weak,but it laid claim to having
improved ”him.
3
Now let us consider the other case which is called
morality, the case of the rearing of a particular race
and species. The most magnificent example of this
is offered by Indian morality, and is sanctioned
religiously as the “ Law of Manu. ” In this book the
task is set of rearing no less than four races at once:
a priestly race, a warrior race, a merchant and agri-
cultural race, and finally a race of servants—the
Sudras. It is quite obvious that we are no longer
in a circus watching tamers of wild animals in this
book. To have conceived even the plan of such a
breeding scheme, presupposes the "existence of a
man who is a hundred times milder and more reason-
able than the mere lion-tamer. One breathes more
freely, after stepping out of the Christian atmosphere
of hospitals and prisons, into this more salubrious,
loftier and more spacious world. What a wretched
thing the New Testament is beside Manu, what an
evil odour hangs around it! —But even this organisa-
tion found it necessary to be terrible, not this time
in a struggle with the animal-man, but with his
opposite, the non-caste man, the hotch-potch man,
the Chandala. Andonce again it had no other means
of making him weak and harmless, than by making
him sick,-it was the struggle with the greatest
a


## p. 47 (#67) ##############################################

THE “IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND
47
“number. ” Nothing perhaps is more offensive to
our feelings than these measures of security on the
part of Indian morality. The third edict, for in-
stance (Avadana-Sastra I. ), which treats “of impure
vegetables,” ordains that the only nourishment that
the Chandala should be allowed must consist of
garlic and onions, as the holy scriptures forbid their
being given corn or grain-bearing fruit, water and
fire. The same edict declares that the water which
they need must be drawn neither out of rivers, wells
or ponds, but only out of the ditches leading to
swamps and out of the holes left by the footprints
of animals. They are likewise forbidden to wash
either their linen or themselves, since the water which
is graciously granted to them must only be used for
quenching their thirst. Finally Sudra women are for-
bidden to assist Chandala women at their confine-
ments, while Chandala women are also forbidden to
assist each other at such times. The results of sani-
tary regulations of this kind could not fail to make
themselves felt; deadly epidemics and the most
ghastly venereal diseases soon appeared, and in coni-
sequence of these again “the Law of the Knife,”-
that is to say circumcision, was prescribed for male
children and the removal of the small labia from the
females. Manu himself says: “the Chandala are
the fruit of adultery, incest, and crime (this is the
necessary consequence of the idea of breeding).
Their clothes shall consist only of the rags torn from
corpses, their vessels shall be the fragments of broken
pottery, their ornaments shall be made of old iron,
and their religion shall be the worship of evil spirits;
without rest they shall wander from place to place.


## p. 48 (#68) ##############################################

THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
They are forbidden to write from left to right or to
use their right hand in writing: the use of the right
hand and writing from left to right are reserved to
people of virtue, to people of race. ”
4
These regulations are instructive enough: we
can see in them the absolutely pure and primeval
humanity of the Aryans,—we learn that the notion
"pure blood,” is the reverse of harmless. On the
other hand it becomes clear among which people the
hatred, the Chandala hatred of this humanity has
been immortalised, among which people it has be-
come religion and genius. From this point of view
the gospels are documents of the highest value; and
the Book of Enoch is still more so. Christianity
as sprung from Jewish roots and comprehensible
only as grown upon this soil, represents the counter-
movement against that morality of breeding, of race
and of privilege :-it is essentially an anti-Aryan
religion: Christianity is the transvaluation of all
Aryan values, the triumph of Chandala values,
the proclaimed gospel of the poor and of the low,
the general insurrection of all the down-trodden, the
wretched, the bungled and the botched, against the
"race,"—the immortal revenge of the Chandala as
the religion of love.
5
The morality of breeding and the morality of
taming, in the means which they adopt in order to
prevail, are quite worthy of each other: we may lay
down as a leading principle that in order to create
morality a man must have the absolute will to im-


## p. 49 (#69) ##############################################

THE “IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND
49
"
morality. This is the great and strange problem
with which I have so long been occupied : the
psychology of the “Improvers” of mankind. A
small, and at bottom perfectly insignificant fact,
known as the “pia fraus,” first gave me access to
this problem : the pia fraus, the heirloom of all
philosophers and priests who “improve ” mankind.
Neither Manu, nor Plato, nor Confucius, nor the
teachers of Judaism and Christianity, have ever
doubted their right to falsehood. They have never
doubted their right to quite a number of other things
To express oneself in a formula, one might say :-
all means which have been used heretofore with the
object of making man moral, were through and
through immoral.
1
4


## p. 50 (#70) ##############################################

THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
I
AMONG Germans at the present day it does not
suffice to have intellect; one is actually forced to
appropriate it, to lay claim to it.
Maybe I know the Germans, perhaps I may
tell them a few home-truths. Modern Germany
represents such an enormous store of inherited and
acquired capacity, that for some time it might spendefulne
this accumulated treasure even with some prodi-
(lavish. . essgality. It is no superior culture that has ultimately
become prevalent with this modern tendency, nor is
it by any means delicate taste, or noble beauty of
the instincts; but rather a number of virtues more
manly than any that other European countries can
show. An amount of good spirits and self-respect,
plenty of firmness in human relations and in the re-
ciprocity of duties; much industry and much per-
severance-and a certain inherited soberness which
is much more in need of a spur than of a brake.
Let me add that in this country people still obey
without feeling that obedience humiliates. And no
one despises his opponent.
You observe that it is my desire to be fair to the
Germans: and in this respect I should not like to
be untrue to myself, I must therefore also state
my objections to them. It costs a good deal to
50


## p. 51 (#71) ##############################################

THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
51
caues one to k
attain to a position of power ; for power stultifies: foolish
The Germans—they were once called a people of
I
thinkers : do they really think at all at present?
Nowadays the Germans are bored by intellect,
they mistrust intellect; politics have swallowed up
all earnestness for really intellectual things—“Ger-
many, Germany above all. ”* I fear this was the
death-blow to German philosophy. “Are there
any German philosophers? Are there any German
poets ?
Are there any good German books ? "
people ask me abroad. I blush; but with that
pluck which is peculiar to me, even in moments of
desperation, I reply: “Yes, Bismarck ! "_Could I
I have dared to confess what books are read to-day?
Cursed instinct of mediocrity ?
2
What might not German intellect have been !
who has not thought sadly upon this question !
But this nation has deliberately stultified itself for
almost a thousand years: nowhere else have the
two great European narcotics, alcohol and Chris-
tianity, been so viciously abused as in Germany.
Recently a third opiate was added to the list, one
which in itself alone would have sufficed to complete
the ruin of all subtle and daring intellectual anima-
tion, I speak of music, our costive and constipating
German music. How much peevish ponderous-
ness, paralysis, dampness, dressing-gown languor,
and beer is there not in German intelligence !
How is it really possible that young men who
* The German national hymn : “Deutschland, Deutsch-
land über alles. ”_TR.
cic
I alcoinoi, Christianity
,


## p. 52 (#72) ##############################################

52
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
-
consecrate their whole lives to the pursuit of intel-
lectual ends, should not feel within them the first
instinct of intellectuality, the self-preservative in-
stinct of the intellect—and should drink beer? The
alcoholism of learned youths does not incapacitate
them for becoming scholars--a man quite devoid
of intellect may be a great scholar,—but it is a
problem in every other respect. Where can that
soft degeneracy not be found, which is produced in
the intellect by beer! I once laid my finger upon
a case of this sort, which became almost famous,
—the degeneration of our leading German free-
spirit, the clever David Strauss, into the author of
a suburban gospel and New Faith. Not in vain
had he sung the praises of “the dear old brown
liquor” in verse—true unto death.
It
3
I have spoken of German intellect. I have said
that it is becoming coarser and shallower. Is
that enough? —In reality something very different
frightens me, and that is the ever steady decline
of German earnestness, German profundity, and
German passion in things intellectual. Not only
intellectuality, but also pathos has altered. From
time to time I come in touch with German universi-
ties; what an extraordinary atmosphere prevails
among their scholars! what barrenness! and what
self-satisfied and lukewarm intellectuality! For any
bne to point to German science as an argument
against me would show that he grossly misunder-
stood my meaning, while it would also prove that
he had not read a word of my writings. For seven-
then he
the an
aurreratus
culture


## p. 53 (#73) ##############################################

THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
53
teen years I have done little else than expose the
de-intellectualising influence of our modern scientific
studies. The severe slavery to which every indi-
vidual nowadays is condemned by the enormous
range covered by the sciences, is the chiei reason
why fuller, richer and profounder natures can find no
education or educators that are fit for them. No-
thing is more deleterious to this
age
than the
super-
fluity of pretentious loafers and fragmentary human
beings; our universities are really the involuntary
forcing houses for this kind of withering-up of the
instincts of intellectuality. And the whole of Europe
is beginning to know this—politics on a large scale
deceive no one. Germany is becoming ever more
and more the Flat-land of Europe. I am still in
search of a German with whom I could be serious
after my own fashion. And how much more am I
in search of one with whom I could be cheerful
-The Twilight of the Idols : ah! what man to-day
would be capable of understanding the kind of
seriousness from which a philosopher is recovering
in this work! It is our cheerfulness that people
understand least.
4
Let us examine another aspect oi the question :
it is not only obvious that German culture is declin-
ing, but adequate reasons for this decline are not
lacking. After all, nobody can spend more than he
has :—this is true of individuals, it is also true of
nations. If you spend your strength in acquiring
power, or in politics on a large scale, or in economy,
or in universal commerce, or in parliamentarism, or
in military interests—if you dissipate the modicum


## p. 54 (#74) ##############################################

54
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
1
of reason, of earnestness, of will, and of self-
control that constitutes your nature in one particular
fashion, you cannot dissipate it in another. Culture
and the state-let no one be deceived on this point
are antagonists: A “culture-state”* is merely a
modern idea. The one lives upon the other, the
one flourishes, at the expense of the other. All
great periods of culture have been periods of politi-
cal decline; that which is great from the stand-
point of culture, was always unpolitical—even anti-
political. Goethe's heart opened at the coming
of Napoleon—it closed at the thought of the “Wars
of Liberation. ” At the very moment when Germany
arose as a great power in the world of politics,
France won new importance as a force in the world
of culture. Even at this moment a large amount
of fresh intellectual earnestness and passion has.
emigrated to Paris ; the question of pessimism, for
instance, and the question of Wagner; in France
almost all psychological and artistic questions are
considered with incomparably more subtlety and
thoroughness than they are in Germany,—the Ger-
mans are even incapable of this kind of earnestness.
In the history of European culture the rise of the
Empire signifies, above all, a displacement of the
centre of gravity. Everywhere people are already
aware of this: in things that really matter—and
these after all constitute culture, the Germans are
no longer worth considering. I ask you, can you
show me one single man of brains who could be
* The word Kultur-Staat “culture-state" has become a
standard expression in the German language, and is applied
to the leading European States. --TR.


## p. 55 (#75) ##############################################

THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
55
mentioned in the same breath with
other European
thinkers, like your Goethe,your Hegel, your Heinrich
Heine, and your Schopenhauer ? —The fact that
there is no longer a single German philosopher
worth mentioning is an increasing wonder.
피
​5
Everything that matters has been lost sight of
by the whole of the higher educational system of
Germany: the end quite as much as the means to
that end. People forget that education, the
pro-
cess of cultivation itself, is the end-and not "the
Empire”--they forget that the educator is required
"for this end—and not the public-school teacher and
university scholar. Educators are needed who are
themselves educated, superior and noble intellects,
who can prove that they are thus qualified, that they
are ripe and mellow products of culture at every
moment of their lives, in word and in gesture ;-not
the learned louts who, like“ superior wet-nurses,"are
now thrust upon the youth of the land by public
schools and universities. With but rare exceptions,
that which is lacking in Germany is the first pre-
requisite of educationthat is to say, the educators;
hence the decline of German culture. One of those
rarest exceptions is my highly respected friend
Jacob Burckhardt of Bâle: to him above all is Bâle
indebted for its foremost position in human culture
What the higher schools of Germany really do ac-
complish is this, they brutally train a vast crowd of
young men, in the smallest amountof time possible, to
become useful and exploitable servants of the state.


## p. 56 (#76) ##############################################

56
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
a
1
I
“Higher education” and a vast crowd—these terms
contradict each other from the start. All superior
.
education can only concern the exception: a man
must be privileged in order to have a right to such
a great privilege. All great and beautiful things
cannot be a common possession: pulchrum est pau-
corum hominum. —What is it that brings about the
decline of German culture? The fact that" higher
education” is no longer a special privilege—the de-
mocracy of a process of cultivation that has become
general," common. Nor must it be forgotten that
the privileges of the military profession by urging
many too many to attend the higher schools, in-
volve the downfall of the latter. In modern Germany
nobody is at liberty to give his children a noble
education: in regard to their teachers, their curricula,
and their educational aims, our higher schools are
one and all established upon a fundamentally doubt-
ful mediocre basis. Everywhere, too, a hastiness
which is unbecoming rules supreme; just as if some-
thing would be forfeited if the young man were not
“ finished” at the age of twenty-three, or did not
know how to reply to the most essential question,
"which calling to choose? ”—The superior kind of
,
you please, does not like "callings,” precisely
because he knows himself to be called. He has time,
he takes time, he cannot possibly think of becom-
ing “finished,”—in the matter of higher culture, a
man of thirty years is a beginner, a child. Our
overcrowded public-schools, our accumulation of
foolishly manufactured public-school masters, are a
scandal :) maybe there are very serious motives for
defending this state of affairs, as was shown quite
-
man, if


## p. 57 (#77) ##############################################

THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
57
recently by the professors of Heidelberg ; but there
can be no reasons for doing so.
6
In order to be true to my nature, which is affirma-
tive and which concerns itself with contradictions
and criticism only indirectly and with reluctance,
let me state at once what the three objects are for
which we need educators. People must learn to
see; they must learn to think, and they must learn
to speak and to write: the object of all three of
these pursuits is a noble culture. To learn to see-
to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to
allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment,
and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasp-
ing an individual case from all sides. This is the
first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One
must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one
must acquire a command of the obstructing and
isolating instincts. To learn to see, as I under-
stand this matter, amounts almost to that which in
popular language is called "strength of will”: its
essential feature is precisely not to wish to see, to
be able to postpone one's decision. All lack of
intellectuality, all vulgarity, arises out of the inability
to resist a stimulus :-one must respond or react,
every impulse is indulged. In many cases such
necessary action is already a sign of morbidity, of
decline, and a symptom of exhaustion. Almost
everything that coarse popular language character-
ises as vicious, is merely that physiological inability
to refrain from reacting. --As an instance of what it
means to have learnt to see, let me state that a man
1


## p. 58 (#78) ##############################################

58
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
thus trained will as a learner have become generally
slow, suspicious, and refractory. With hostile calm
he will first allow every kind of strange and new
thing to come right up to him,- he will draw back
his hand at its approach. To stand with all the
doors of one's soul wide open, to lie slavishly in the
dust before every trivial fact, at all times of the day
to be strained ready for the leap, in order to deposit
one's self, to plunge one's self, into other souls and
other things, in short, the famous "objectivity" of
modern times, is bad taste, it is essentially vulgar
and cheap.
7
As to learning how to think-our schools no
longer have any notion of such a thing. Even at
the universities, among the actual scholars in philo-
sophy, logic as a theory, as a practical pursuit, and
as a business, is beginning to die out. Turn to any
German book : you will not find the remotest trace
of a realisation that there is such a thing as a
technique, a plan of study, a will to mastery, in
the matter of thinking,—that thinking insists upon
being learnt, just as dancing insists upon being
learnt, and that thinking insists upon being learnt
as a form of dancing. What single German can
still say he knows from experience that delicate
shudder which light footfalls in matters intellectual
cause to pervade his whole body and limbs! Stiff
awkwardness in intellectual attitudes, and the clumsy
fist in grasping—these things are so essentially
German, that outside Germany they are absolutely
confounded with the German spirit.
The German
has no fingers for delicate nuances. The fact that


## p. 59 (#79) ##############################################

THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
59
the people of Germany have actually tolerated
their philosophers, more particularly that most de-
formed cripple of ideas that has ever existed—the
great Kant, gives one no inadequate notion of their
native elegance. For, truth to tell, dancing in all
its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum
of all noble education : dancing with the feet, with
ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must
also be able to dance with the pen—that one must
learn ow to write ? —But at this stage I should
become utterly enigmatical to German readers.


## p. 60 (#80) ##############################################

SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE
AGE
I
! My Impossible People. —Seneca, or the toreador of
virtue. —Rousseau, or the return to nature, in impuris
naturalibus. ---Schiller, or the Moral-Trumpeter of
Säckingen. -Dante, or the hyæna that writes poetry
in tombs. -Kant, or cant as an intelligible character.
-Victor Hugo, or the lighthouse on the sea of non-
sense. —Liszt, or the school of racing—after women.
- George Sand, or lactea ubertas, in plain English :
the cow with plenty of beautiful milk. -Michelet, or
enthusiasm in its shirt sleeves. —Carlyle, or Pessim-
ism after undigested meals. —John Stuart Mill, or
offensive lucidity. —The brothers Goncourt, or the
two Ajaxes fighting with Homer. Music by Offen-
bach. -Zola, or the love of stinking.
2
Renan. —Theology, or the corruption of reason by
original sin (Christianity). Proof of this,—Renan
who, even in those rare cases where he ventures to
say either Yes or No on a general question, invari-
ably misses the point with painful regularity. For
instance, he would fain associate science and nobility:
but surely it must be obvious that science is demo-
cratic. He seems to be actuated by a strong desire
to represent an aristocracy of intellect: but, at the
60


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE
61
same time he grovels on his knees, and not only on
his knees, before the opposite doctrine, the gospel
of the humble. What is the good of all free-spirited-
ness, modernity, mockery and acrobatic suppleness,
if in one's belly one is still a Christian, a Catholic,
and even a priest! Renan's forte, precisely like that
of a Jesuit and Father Confessor, lies in his seduc-
tiveness. His intellectuality is not devoid of that
unctuous complacency of a parson,—like all priests,
he becomes dangerous only when he loves. He is
second to none in the art of skilfully worshipping a
dangerous thing. This intellect of Renan's, which
in its action is enervating, is one calamity the more,
for poor, sick France with her will-power all going
to pieces.
3
Sainte-Beuve. -There is naught of man in him;
he is full of petty spite towards all virile spirits.
He wanders erratically; he is subtle, inquisitive, a
little bored, for ever with his ear to key-holes,-at
bottom a woman, with all woman's revengefulness
and sensuality. As a psychologist he is a genius of
slander ; inexhaustively rich in means to this end;
no one understands better than he how to intro-
duce a little poison into praise. In his fundamental
instincts he is plebeian and next of kin to Rousseau's
resentful spirit: consequently he is a Romanticist-
for beneath all romanticism Rousseau's instinct for
revenge grunts and frets. He is a revolutionary,
but kept within bounds by "funk. ” He is embar-
rassed in the face of everything that is strong (public
opinion, the Academy, the court, even Port Royal).
He is embittered against everything great in men


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62
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
and things, against everything that believes in itself.
Enough of a poet and of a female to be able to feel
greatness as power; he is always turning and twist-
ing, because, like the proverbial worm, he constantly
feels that he is being trodden upon. As a critic he
has no standard of judgment, no guiding principle,
no backbone. Although he possesses the tongue of
the Cosmopolitan libertine which can chatter about
a thousand things, he has not the courage even to
acknowledge his libertinage. As a historian he has
no philosophy, and lacks the power of philosophical
vision,-hence his refusal to act the part of a judge,
and his adoption of the mask of “objectivity” in all
important matters. His attitude is better in regard
to all those things in which subtle and effete taste
is the highest tribunal : in these things he really
does have the courage of his own personality_he
really does enjoy his own nature—he actually is a
master. -In some respects he is a prototype of
Beaudelaire.
4
“ The Imitation of Christ” is one of those books
which I cannot even take hold of without physical
loathing: it exhales a perfume of the eternally
feminine, which to appreciate fully one must be a
Frenchman or a Wagnerite. This saint has a way
of speaking about love which makes even Parisiennes
feel a little curious. -I am told that that most intelli-
gent of Jesuits, Auguste Comte, who wished to lead
his compatriots back to Rome by the circuitous route
of science, drew his inspiration from this book. And
I believe it: “The religion of the heart. ”
»


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 63
5
G. Eliot. They are rid of the Christian God and
therefore think it all the more incumbent upon them
to hold tight to Christian morality: this is an English
way of reasoning; but let us not take it ill in moral
females à la Eliot. In England, every man who
indulges in any trifling emancipation from theology,
must retrieve his honourin the most terrifying manner
by becoming a moral fanatic. That is how they do
penancein thatcountry. -Asfor us, we act differently.
When we renounce the Christian faith, we abandon
all right to Christian morality. This is not by any
means self-evident, and in defianceof English shallow-
pates the point must be made ever more and more
plain. Christianity is a system, a complete outlook
upon the world, conceived as a whole. If its leading
concept, the belief in God, is wrenched from it, the
wholeisdestroyed; nothing vital remainsinour grasp.
Christianity presupposes that man does not and can-
not know what is good or bad for him : the Christian
believes in God who, alone, can know these things.
Christian morality is a command, its origin is tran-
scendental. It is beyond all criticism, all right to
criticism ; it is true only on condition that God is
truth,-it stands or falls with the belief in God. If
the English really believe that they know intuitively,
and of their own accord, what is good and evil; if,
therefore, they assert that they no longer need Chris-
tianity as a guarantee of morality, this in itself is
simply the outcome of the dominion of Christian
valuations, and a proof of the strength and profundity
of this dominion. It only shows that the origin of


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64
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
English morality has been forgotten, and that its
exceedingly relative right to exist is no longer felt.
For Englishmen morality is not yet a problem.
6
George Sand. —I have been reading the first “Lettres
d'un Voyageur”: like everything that springs from
Rousseau's influence it is false, made-up, blown out,
and exaggerated! I cannot endure this bright wall-
paper style, any more than I can bear the vulgar
striving after generous feelings. The worst feature
about it is certainly the coquettish adoption of male
attributes by this female, after the manner of ill-
bred schoolboys. And how cold she must have been
inwardly all the while, this insufferable artist! She
wound herself
up
like a clock and wrote. As cold
as Hugo and Balzac, as cold as all Romanticists are as
soon as they begin to write! And how self-compla-
cently she must have lain there, this prolific ink-
yielding cow. For she had something German in
her (German in the bad sense), just as Rousseau,
her master, had ;-—something which could only have
been possible when French taste was declining ! -
and Renan adores her! . . .
a
.
7
A Moral for Psychologists. Do not go in for any
note-book psychology! Never observe for the sake
of observing! Such things lead to a false point of
view, to a squint, to something forced and exagger-
ated. To experience things on purpose—this is not
a a bit of good. In the midst of an experience a man
should not turn his eyes upon himself; in such cases


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 65
any eye becomes the “evil eye. " A born psycho-
logist instinctively avoids seeing for the sake of see-
ing. And the same holds good of the born painter.
Such a man never works “from nature,”—he leaves
it to his instinct, to his camera obscura to sift and to
define the “ fact,” “nature,” the “experience. ” The
general idea, the conclusion, the result, is the only
thing that reaches his consciousness. He knows no-
thing of that wilful process of deducing from particu-
lar cases. What is the result when a man sets about
this matter differently? —when, for instance, after the
manner of Parisian novelists, he goes in for note-
book psychology on a large and small scale? Such
a man is constantly spying on reality, and every
evening he bears home a handful of fresh curios. . . .
But look at the result ! -a mass of daubs, at best a
piece of mosaic, in any case something heaped to-
gether, restless and garish. The Goncourts are the
greatest sinners in this respect: they cannot put
three sentences together which are not absolutely
painful to the eye — the eye of the psychologist.
From an artistic standpoint, nature is no model. It
exaggerates, distorts, and leaves gaps. Nature is the
accident. To study “ from nature" seems to me a
bad sign : it betrays submission, weakness, fatalism
—this lying in the dust before trivial facts is un-
worthy of a thorough artist. To see what is—is the
function of another order of intellects, the anti-artis-
tic, the matter-of-fact. One must know who one is.
8
Concerning the psychology of the artist. For art to
be possible at all — that is to say, in order that an
5


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66
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
æsthetic mode of action and of observation may ex-
ist, a certain preliminary physiological state is indis-
pensable: ecstasy. * This state of ecstasy must first
have intensified the susceptibility of the whole ma-
chine: otherwise, no art is possible. All kinds of
ecstasy, however differently produced, have this
power to create art, and above all the state depend-
ent upon sexual excitement — this most venerable
and primitive form of ecstasy. The same applies to
that ecstasy which is the outcome of all great desires,
all strong passions; the ecstasy of the feast of the
arena, of the act of bravery, of victory, of all extreme
action; the ecstasy of cruelty ; the ecstasy of de-
struction; the ecstasy following upon certain mete-
orological influences, as for instance that of spring-
time, or upon the use of narcotics; and finally the
ecstasy of will, that ecstasy which results from ac-
cumulated and surging will-power. —The essential
feature of ecstasy is the feeling of increased strength
and abundance. Actuated by this feeling a man
gives of himself to things, he forces them to partake
of his riches, he does violence to them—this proceed-
ing is called idealising. Let us rid ourselves of a pre-
judice here: idealising does not consist, as is gener-
ally believed, in a suppression or an elimination of
detail or of unessential features. A stupendous
accentuation of the principal characteristics is by far
the most decisive factor at work, and in consequence
the minor characteristics vanish.
* The German word Rausch as used by Nietzsche here,
suggests a blend of our two English words “intoxication
and “elation. ”_TR.


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 67
9
In this state a man enriches everything from out
his own abundance: what he sees, what he wills,
he sees distended, compressed, strong, overladen
with power. He transfigures things until they reflect
his power,—until they are stamped with his perfec-
tion. This compulsion to transfigure into the beauti-
ful is—Art. Everything—even that which he is not,
-is nevertheless to such a man a means of rejoicing
over himself; in Art man rejoices over himself as
perfection. —It is possible to imagine a contrary
state, a specifically anti-artistic state of the instincts,
-a state in which a man impoverishes, attenuates,
and draws the blood from everything. And, truth
to tell, history is full of such anti-artists, of such
creatures of low vitality who have no choice but to
appropriate everything they see and to suck its
blood and make it thinner. This is the case with
the genuine Christian, Pascal for instance. There
is no such thing as a Christian who is also an artist.
. . . Let no one be so childish as to suggest Raphael
or any homeopathic Christian of the nineteenth
century as an objection to this statement : Raphael
said Yea, Raphael did Yea,-consequently Raphael
was no Christian.
IO
What is the meaning of the antithetical concepts
Apollonian and Dionysian which I have introduced
into the vocabulary of Æsthetic, as representing
two distinct modes of ecstasy ? —Apollonian ecstasy
acts above all as a force stimulating the eye, so that
it acquires the power of vision. The painter, the


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68
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
sculptor, the epic poet are essentially visionaries.
In the Dionysian state, on the other hand, the whole
system of passions is stimulated and intensified, so
that it discharges itself by all the means of expres-
sion at once, and vents all its power of representa-
tion, of imitation, of transfiguration, of transforma-
tion, together with every kind of mimicry and
histrionic display at the same time. The essential
feature remains the facility in transforming, the in-
ability to refrain from reaction (-a similar state to
that of certain hysterical patients, who at the slightest
hint assume any rôle). It is impossible for the
Dionysian artist not to understand any suggestion;
no outward sign of emotion escapes him, he pos-
sesses the instinct of comprehension and of divina-
tion in the highest degree, just as he is capable of
the most perfect art of communication. He enters
into every skin, into every passion : he is continually
changing himself. Music as we understand it to-
day is likewise a general excitation and discharge
of the emotions; but, notwithstanding this, it is only
the remnant of a much richer world of emotional
expression, a mere residuum of Dionysian histrion-
ism. For music to be made possible as a special
art, quite a number of senses, and particularly the
muscular sense, had to be paralysed (at least re-
latively: for all rhythm still appeals to our muscles
to a certain extent): and thus man no longer imi-
tates and represents physically everything he feels,
as soon as he feels it. Nevertheless that is the
normal Dionysian state, and in any case its primitive
state. Music is the slowly attained specialisatio
of this state at the cost of kindred capacities.


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 69
II
The actor, the inime, the dancer, the musician, and
the lyricist, are in their instincts fundamentally re-
lated; but they have gradually specialised in their
particular branch, and become separated—even to
the point of contradiction. The lyricist remained
united with the musician for the longest period of
time; and the actor with the dancer. The architect
manifests neither a Dionysian nor an Apollonian
state: In his case it is the great act of will, the will
that moveth mountains, the ecstasy of the great will
which aspires to art. The most powerful men have
always inspired architects; the architect has always
been under the suggestion of power. In the archi-
tectural structure, man's pride, man's triumph over
gravitation, man's will to power, assume a visible
form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by
a
means of forms. Now it is persuasive, even flatter-
ing, and at other times merely commanding. The
highest sensation of power and security finds ex-
pression in grandeur of style. That power which no
longer requires to be proved, which scorns to please ;
which responds only with difficulty; which feels no
witnesses around it; which is oblivious of the fact
that it is being opposed; which relies on itself
fatalistically, and is a law among laws:-such power
expresses itself quite naturally in grandeur of style.
12
I have been reading the life of Thomas Carlyle,
that unconscious and involuntary farce, that heroico-
moral interpretation of dyspeptic moods. -Carlyle,
a man of strong words and attitudes, a rhetorician


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70
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
a
by necessity, who seems ever to be tormented by
the desire of finding some kind of strong faith, and
by his inability to do so (-in this respect a typical
Romanticist ! ). To yearn for a strong faith is not
the proof of a strong faith, but rather the reverse.
If a man have a strong faith he can indulge in the
luxury of scepticism; he is strong enough, firm
enough, well-knit enough for such a luxury. Carlyle
stupefies something in himself by means of the
fortissimo of his reverence for men of a strong faith,
and his rage over those who are less foolish : he is
in sore need of noise. An attitude of constant
and passionate dishonesty towards himself—this is
his proprium ; by virtue of this he is and remains
interesting. –Of course, in England he is admired
precisely on account of his honesty. Well, that is
English; and in view of the fact that the English are
the nation of consummate cant, it is not only com-
prehensible but also very natural. At bottom, Carlyle
is an English atheist who makes it a point of honour
not to be one.
13
Emerson. He is much more enlightened, much
broader, more versatile,and more subtle than Carlyle;
but above all, he is happier. He is one who in-
stinctively lives on ambrosia and who leaves the
indigestible parts of things on his plate. Compared
with Carlyle he is a man of taste. -Carlyle, who
was very fond of him, nevertheless declared that
“he does not give us enough to chew. ” This is
perfectly true but it is not unfavourable to Emerson.
-Emerson possesses that kindly intellectual cheer-
fulness which deprecates overmuch seriousness; he


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SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 71
has absolutely no idea of how old he is already,
and how young he will yet be,-he could have said
of himself, in Lope de Vega's words : “yo me sucedo
a mi mismo. " His mind is always finding reasons
for being contented and even thankful; and at times
he gets preciously near to that serene superiority of
theworthy bourgeois who returning from an amorous
rendezvous tamquam re bene gesta, said gratefully
“ Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluptas. ”—
14
Anti-Darwin. —As to the famous “struggle for
existence,” it seems to me, for the present, to be
more of an assumption than a fact. It does occur,
but as an exception. The general condition of life
is not one of want or famine, but rather of riches,
of lavish luxuriance, and even of absurd prodigality,
-where there is a struggle, it is a struggle for power.
We should not confound Malthus with nature. -
Supposing, however, that this struggle exists,-and
it does indeed occur,-its result is unfortunately the
very reverse of that which the Darwinian school
seems to desire, and of that which in agreement with
them we also might desire: that is to say, it is always
to the disadvantage of the strong, the privileged,
and the happy exceptions. Species do not evolve
towards perfection: the weak always prevail over
the strong-simply because they are the majority,
and because they are also the more crafty. Darwin
forgot the intellect (that is English ! ), the weak
have more intellect. In order to acquire intellect,
one must be in need of it. One loses it when one
no longer needs it. He who possesses strength


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Alings intellect to the deuce (“let it go hence! "*
say the Germans of the present day, “the Empire
will remain ”). As you perceive, intellect to me
means caution, patience, craft, dissimulation, great
self-control, and everything related to mimicry (what
is praised nowadays as virtue is very closely related
to the latter).
15
Casuistry of a Psychologist. —This man knows
mankind: to what purpose does he study his fellows?
He wants to derive some small or even great ad-
vantages from them,—he is a politician! . . . That
man yonder is also well versed in human nature:
and ye tell me that he wishes to draw no personal
profit from his knowledge, that he is a thoroughly
disinterested person ? Examine him a little more
closely!