No More Learning

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



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40 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

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



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

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



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42 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

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

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

civilised animal, a domesticatgd animal, it fol lows

indubitably that we must regard as . . the real tools

Vof civilisation all Jhose instincts of reac ti on and

resentment, by the help of which the . Aristocratic.

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



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

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

12.

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



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44 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

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

13.

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



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

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



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46 \ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

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



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

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

14.

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

Here we have a vista opened into these grimy



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

48 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

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

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

Further !

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

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



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

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

Further !

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

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

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

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



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

so THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS,

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

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

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

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

Enough ! Enough !

15.

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



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

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



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52 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

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



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

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

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

16.

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



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

54 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

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



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

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

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



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$6 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

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

17-

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



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

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

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

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

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



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58 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

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



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

SECOND ESSAY.

"GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND
THE LIKE.



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



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

The breeding of an animal that ca« promis&rr^r
is not this just that very paradox of a task which
nature has set it self liT^regard foTnan ? Is^oT
tKisThe very problem of man^r^'The fact that this
problem has been to a great extent solved, must
appear all the more phenomenal to one who can
estimate at its full value that force oi forgetfulness
which works in oppositioiTT orE Forgetfulness
IS no mere vis inerticB, as the superficial believe,
rather is it a power of nhstniction. a rtivp anH in
the strictest sense of the word , positive-; ^— ? , p^^^f .
res nonsible for the fact that what we have lived .
experienced, taken into ourselves, no more enter s
into xoasKigusaess. during the process of digest ion
(it might be called psychic absorption) than all the
whole manifold process by which our physical
nutrition, the so-called " incorporation," is carried
on. Th e temporary shutting of the doors and
windows ~ of cpn ad-QUSneas. the relief from the
clamant alarums and excursions, with which our
subconscious world of servant organs works in
mutual co-operation and antagonism ; a little
quietude,_ a little tabula rasa of the co nsciousness^
so a s to make room aga in for the new, an? ^Bovg
a jOar the moreT Totrlerfg^fions and lunctionariesj
tor ' '



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62 ; THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

is the utility, as I have said, of the a ctive forge tful-
rieSST-which is a very sentinel and nurse of psychic
oFaBTTT^ose, etiquette; and this shows at once
why it is that tfriere ^ can _exist_ no_ha2£iiness, no
gladnessj no hope^no pridfiA_n o real present, withou F
forgetfulness. The man in whom this preventati ve
■apparatus is damaged and discarded, is to be com-
pared~to~ar-d7Spgptte7a'nd" it" Is""s'omething more
than a comparison — he can " get rid of" nothing.
But this very animal who finds it necess ary to be
forgetful, in whom, in fact, forgetfulness represents
a force and a form of robust health, has reared for~
himself an opposition-power, a mem ory, witH
whose help forgetfulness is, in cer tain mstan ces,
kept in check — in the cases, namely, wh ere prom iseg-
have to be made; — so that it is by no means a
mere passive inability to get rid of a once indented
impression, not merely the indigestion occasioned
by a once pledged word, which one cannot dispose
of, but an active refusal to get rid of it, a con-
tin miTg~ana"'a wish to continue what has on ce bee n
willed, an actual rnemory ofihewM}, so that
between the original . "-I- will," " I shalL-dQ,'LaQi_
the actual discharge of the will, its ^ao;. we joap
e asily i nterpose a world_of ne_w strange^phenomena,
circumstances, veritable volitions, without the
snapping of this long chain of the will. But what
is the underlying hypothesis of all this? How
thoroughly, in order to b e able to regulate the
future in this way, must man have first learnt to
dis tinguish between necessitated and accidental
^phenomena, to thi nk causally, to see the distant
as~prg5eiit and to anticipate it, to fix with certainty



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"GUILT," " BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE. 63

what is the end, and what is the means to that
end ; abovS all, lu ifccfeonTlEo^have power to calculate
— ^^Eow thoroughly must matTIGave first become
calculable, disciplined, necessitated even for himself
and his own conception of himself, that, like a man
entering into a promise, he could guarantee himself
as a future.

2.

This is simply the long history of the origin of
respormbttttyT Thai Lask uf breeding^ an animal
whiclf^a n n? ake p romises, includes, as we have
already grasped, as its condition and preliminary,
the more immediate task of first making man to a
certain extent, necessitated, uniform, like among
his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The
immense work of what I have called, " morality of
custom " * (cp. Dawn of Day, Aphs. 9, 14, and 1 6),
the actual work of man on himself during the
longest period of the human race, his whole pre-
historic work, finds its meaning, its great justifica-
tion (in spite of all its innate hardness, despotism,
stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact : man, with the
help of the morality of customs and of social strait-
waistcoats, was made genuinely calculable. If, how-
ever, we place ourselves at the end of this colossal
process, at the point where the tree finally matures
its fruits, when society and its morality of custom
finally bring to light that to which it was only
the means, then do we find as the ripest fruit on its
tree the sovereign individual, that reseliiBles"only
himself, that h as' got' roose~ffonr'the morality of

* The German is : " Sittlichkeit der Sitte. " H. B. S.



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64 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

custom, the autonomous " super-moral " indnddual
(for "autohombus" and "moral" are mutually
exclusive terms), — in short, the man of the personal,
long, and independent will, competent to promuep^
and we find in him a proud consciousness (vibrat-
ing in every fibre), of what has been at last
achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine
consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of
human perfection in general. And this man who
h as grown to freedpm; _^br> jp rpally mmp^fK^f^f »»
promise, thi s lord of the/i^-ge will, this sovereign —
^ low is rtpossibre f or^^trfj nbt to Unow how great
is his su^ eriority^,Qygr_,,eve]ything^tirapahlq_nfJ
binding itself by promises, or of being its own
security, how great is the trust, the awe, the
reverence that he awakes — he " deserves " all three
— not to know that with this mastery over himself
he is necessarily also given the mastery over
circumstances, over nature, over all creatures with
shorter wills, less reliable characters ? rTbeJifree "
man, the o^<rner of a long unbreakable wiU,^dsin_
this possession his^. ri[«»i&r(/ of value: looking out
from himself upon the others, he honours or he
despises, and just as necessarily as he honours his
peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can
bind themselves by promises), — that is, every one
who promises like a sovereign, with difficulty, rarely
and slowly, who is sparing with his trusts but
confers honour by the very fact of trusting, who
gives his word as something that can berelied on,
because he knows himself strong enough to keep it
even in the teeth of disasters, eveiT in'gie '^"SetlT
of fate," — so with equal necessity will he have the



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"GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKf. 65

heel of his foot ready for the lean and empty jack-
as^, who promise when they have no business to
do so^and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar,
who already breaks his word at the very minute when
it is on his lips. The proud knowledge oflhejaxtradi
ordinary pri vilege o f respon sibility, the consci QUSr'
ness of thisjare freedom, of this power ovpr bim-gplf
aiiH^ OTcr fate, Jbas. sunk_right dgwnjta his innermost^
depths, and has become an instinct, a_dominating
instinctrr^what name will he give to it, to this
dominating instinct, iTTie" needfTcT Mve "a worH^ "for"
it ? But there is no doubt about it — the sovereign .
man calls it his conscience. J

His conscience? — One apprehends at once that
the idea " conscience," which is here seen in its
supreme manifestation, supreme in fact to almost
the point of strangeness, should already have
behind it a long history and evolution. The ability
t o guarantee one's self with all due pride, and also
a t the same time to say ves to one's self— -that is, as
hasjbeen said^aripefruit, bi|t also a laie_hm. t : —
How long must needs this fruit hang sour and
bitter on the tree ! And for an even longer
period there was not a glimpse of such a fruit to
to be had — no one had taken it on himself to
promise it, although everything on the tree was
quite ready for it, and everything was maturing
for that very consummation. " How is a memory
to be made for the man-animal ? How is an im-
pression to be so deeply fixed upon this ephemeral
E



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66 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

understanding, half dense, and half silly, upon this
incarnate forgetfulness, that it will be perman-
ently present ? " As one may imagine, this primeval
problem was not solved by exactly gentle answers
and gentle means ; perhaps there is nothing more
awful and more sinister in the early history of man
than his system of mnemonics. " Something is burnt
in so as to remain in his memory : only that which
never stops hurting remains in his memory. ''
This is an axiom of the oldest (unfortunately
also the longest) psychology in the world. It
might even be said that wherever solemnity7~~
seriousness, mystery, and gloomy colour's" are ttow->^
found in the life of the men and of nations of the
world, there is some survival of that horror which
was once the universal concomitant of all promises,
pledges, and obligations. The past, th&^JfliLr^^
with all its length, depth, and hardness, wafts
to us its breath, and bubbles up in us again, when
we become " serious. " ' When man thinks it neces-
sary to make for himself a memory, he never
accomplishes it without blood, tortures, and
sacrifice ; the most dreadful sacrifices and for-
feitures (among them the sacrifice of the first-bom),
the most loathsome mutilation (for instance,
castration), the most cruel rituals of all the religious
cults (for all religions are really at bottom systems
of cruelty)- — all these things originate from that
instinct which found in pain its most polenT""
mnemon ics In a certain sense the whole of asceti-
cism is to be ascribed to this : certain ideas have got
to be made inextinguishable, omnipresent, " fixed,"
with the object of hypnotising the whole nervous



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"GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE. ^J

and intellectual system through these " fixed
ideas " — and the ascetic methods and modes of
life are the means of freeing those ideas from the
competition of all other ideas so as to make them
"unforgettable. " The worse memory man had,
the ghastlier the signs presented by his customs ;
the severity of the penal laws affords in particular
a gauge of the extent of man's difficulty in
conquering forgetfulness, and in keeping a few
primal postulates of social intercourse ever present
to the minds of those who were the slaves of
every momentary emotion and every momentary
desire. We Germans do certainly not regard
ourselves as an especially cruel and hard-hearted
nation, still less as an especially casual and happy-
go-lucky one ; but one has only to look at our
old penal ordinances in order to realise what a
lot of trouble it takes in the world to evolve a
" nation of thinkers " (I mean : the European nation
which exhibits at this very day the maximum of
reliability, seriousness, bad taste, and positiveness,
which has on the strength of these qualities a
right to train every kind of European mandarin).
These Germans employed terrible means to make
for themselves a memory, to enable them to
master their rooted plebeian instincts and the
brutal crudity of those instincts : think of the old
German punishments, for instance, stoning (as far
back as the legend, the millstone falls on the head
of the guilty man), breaking on the wheel (the
most original invention and speciality of the
German genius in the sphere of punishment), dart-
throwing, tearing, or trampling by horses (" quarter-



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68 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

ing"), boiling the criminal in oil or wine (still
prevalent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries),
the highly popular flaying (" slicing into strips "),
cutting the flesh out of the breast ; think also of
the evil-doer being besmeared with honey, and
then exposed to the flies in a blazing sun. It
was by the help of such images and precedents
that man eventually kept in his memory five or
six " I will nots " with regard to which he had
already given his promise, so as to be able to
enjoy the advantages of society — and verily with
the help of this kind of memory man eventually
attained " reason " ! Alas ! reason, seriousness,
mastery over the emotions, all these gloomy,
dismal things which are called reflection, all these
privileges and pageantries of humanity : how dear
is the price that they have exacted ! How much
blood and cruelty is the foundation of all " good
things " !

4-

But how is it that that other melancholy object,
the consciousness of sin, the whole "bad conscience,"
came into the world ? And it is here that we turn
back to our genealogists of morals. For the second
time I say — or have I not said it yet ? — that they
are worth nothing. Just their own five-spans-long
limited modern experience ; no knowledge of the
past, and no wish to know it ; still less a historic
instinct, a power of " second sight " (which is what
is really required in this case) — and despite this to
go in for the history of morals. It stands to
reason that this must needs produce results which



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"GUILT," " BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE. 69

are removed from the truth by something more
than a respectful distance.

Have these current genealogists of morals
ever allowed themselves to have even the
vaguest notion, for instance, that the cardinal
moral idea of " ought " * originates from the very
material idea of " owe " ? Or that punishment
developed as a retaliation absolutely independ-
ently of any preliminary hypothesis of the free-
dom or determination of the will ? — And this to
such an extent, that a high degree of civilisation
was always first necessary for the animal man to
begin to make those much more primitive dis-
tinctions of" intentional," " negligent," " accidental,"
" responsible," and their contraries, and apply them
in the assessing of punishment. That idea — " the
wrong-doer deserves punishment because he might
have acted otherwise," in spite of the fact that it
is nowadays so cheap, obvious, natural, and in-
evitable, and that it has had to serve as an
illustration of the way in which the sentiment of
justice appeared on earth, is in point of fact an
exceedingly late, and even refined form of human
judgment and inference ; the placing of this idea
back at the beginning of the world is simply a
clumsy violation of the principles of primitive t
psychology. Throughout the longest period of
human history punishment was never based on
the responsibility of the evil-doer for his action,
and was consequently not based on the hypothesis

* The German world " schuld " means both debt and
guilt. Cp. the English "owe" and "ought," by which I
occasionally render the double meaning. — H. B. S.



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70 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

that only the guilty should be punished ; — on the
contrary, punishment was inflicted in those days
for the same reason that parents punish their
children even nowadays, out of anger at an injury
that they have suffered, an anger which vents
itself mechanically on the author of the injury —
but this anger is kept in bounds and modified
through the idea that every injury has somewhere
or other its equivalent price, and can really be
paid off, even though it be by means of pain to
the author. Whence is it that this ancient deep-
rooted and now perhaps ineradicable idea has
drawn its strength, this idea of an equivalency
between injury and pain ? I have already re-
vealed its origin, in the contractual relationship
between creditor and ower, that is as old as the
existence of legal rights at all, and in its turn points
back to the primary forms of purchase, sale, barter,
and trade.

5-

The realisation of these contractual relations
excites, of course (as would be already expected
from our previous observations), a great deal of
suspicion and opposition towards the primitive
society which made or sanctioned them. In this
society promises will be made ; in this society the
object is to provide the promiser with a memory;
in this society, so may we suspect, there will
be full scope for hardness, cruelty, and pain: the
" ower," in order to induce credit in his promise
of repayment, in order to give a guarantee of the
earnestness and sanctity of his promise, in order



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" GUILT," " BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE. J I

to drill into his own conscience the duty, the
solemn duty, of repayment, will, by virtue of a
contract with his creditor to meet the contingency
of his not paying, pledge something that he still
possesses, something that he still has in his power,
for instance, his life or his wife, or his freedom
or his body (or under certain religious con-
ditions even his salvation, his soul's welfare, even
his peace in the grave ; so in Egypt, where the
corpse of the ower found even in the grave no rest
from the creditor — of course, from the Egyptian
standpoint, this peace was a matter of particular
importance). But especially has the creditor the
power of inflicting on the body of the ower all
kinds of pain and torture — the power, for instance,
of cutting off from it an amount that appeared
proportionate to the greatness of the debt ; — this
point of view resulted in the universal prevalence
at an early date of precise schemes of valuation,
frequently horrible in the minuteness and meti-
culosity of their application, legally sanctioned
schemes of valuation for individual limbs and parts
of the body. I consider it as already a progress,
as a proof of a freer, less petty, and more Roman
conception of law, when the Roman Code of the
Twelve Tables decreed that it was immaterial how
much or how little the creditors in such a con-
tingency cut off, " si plus minusve secuerunt, ne
fraude esto. " Let us make the logic of the whole
of this equalisation process clear; it is strange
enough. The equivalence consists in this : in-
stead of an advantage directly compensatory of his
injury (that is, instead of an equalisation in money,



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72 / THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

lands, or some kind of chattel), the creditor is
granted by way of repayment and compensation
a certain sensation of satisfaction — the satisfaction
of being able to vent, without any trouble, his
power on one who is powerless, the delight " de
/aire le mal pour le plaisir de le faire" the joy
in sheer violence : and this joy will be relished in
proportion to the lowness and humbleness of the
creditor in the social scale, and is quite apt to
have the effect of the most delicious dainty, and
even seem the foretaste of a higher social position.
Thanks to the punishment of the "ower," the
creditor participates in the rights of the masters.
At last he too, for once in a way, attains the edifying
consciousness of being able to despise and ill-treat
a creature — as an " inferior " — or at any rate of
seeing him being despised and ill-treated, in case
the actual power of punishment, the administration
of punishment, has already become transferred to
the " authorities. " The compensation consequently
consists in a claim on cruelty and a right to draw
thereon.

of the ideas of " guilt, " " conscien ce ," " duty. " t he^
""sacredness ^ dut y,"— their commenceme nt,-like__
tEe~ commen cement of all great things in the
wgrld^is ^thoroughly -an d cont inu ouoly saturate^ZT
^svithrrbleed. And should we not add that this
world has never really lost a certain savour of
blood and torture (not even in old Kant' the



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" GUILT," " BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE. 73

categorical imperative reeks of cruelty). It was
in this sphere likewise that there first became
formed that sinister and perhaps now indissoluble
association of the ideas of " guilt " and " suffering. "
pTo put the question yet again, why can suffering be
a compensation for " owing " ? — Because the inflic-
tion of suffering produces the highest degree of
happiness, because the injured party will get in
exchange for his loss (including his vexation at
his loss) an extraordinary counter-pleasure: the
infliction of suffering — a real feast, something
that, as I have said, was all the more appreciated
the greater the paradox created by the rank and
social status of the creditQjJ These observations
are purely conjectural ; for, apart from the painful
nature of the task, it is hard to plumb such pro-
found depths : the clumsy introduction of the idea
of " revenge " as a connecting-link simply hides
and obscures the view instead of rendering it
clearer (revenge itself simply leads back again to
the identical problem — " How can the infliction of
suffering be a satisfaction ? "). In my opinion it
is repugnant to the delicacy, and still more to
the hypocrisy of tame domestic animals (that is,
modern men ; that is, ourselves), to realise with all
their energy the extent to which cruelty con-
stituted the great joy and delight of ancient man,
was an ingredient which seasoned nearly all his
pleasures, and conversely the extent of the nalvet^
and innocence with which he manifested his need for
cruelty, when he actually made as a matter of prin-
ciple " disinterested malice " (or, to use Spinoza's
expression, the sympathia malevolens) into a normal



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p

74 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

characteristic of man — as consequently something
to which the conscience says a hearty yes. The
more profound observer has perhaps already had
sufficient opportunity for noticing this most
ancient and radical joy and delight of mankind;
m Beyond Good and Evil, Aph. i88 (and even
earlier, in The Dawn of Day, Aphs. i8, TJ, 113),
I have cautiously indicated the continually grow-
ing spiritualisation and " deification " of cruelty,
which pervades the whole history of the higher
civilisation (and in the larger sense even con-
stitutes i. ^ At any rate the time is not so
long past when it was impossible to conceive of
royal weddings and national festivals on a grand
scale, without executions, tortures, or perhaps an
auto-da-f^, or similarly to conceive of an aristocratic
household, without a creature to serve as a butt
for the cruel and malicious baiting of the inmates.
(The reader will perhaps remember Don Quixote
at the court of the Duchess : we read nowadays
the whole of Don Quixote with a bitter taste in
the mouth, almost with a sensation of torture, a
fact which would appear very strange and very
incomprehensible to the author and his con-
temporaries — they read it with the best con-
science in the world as the gayest of books ; they
almost died with laughing at it. ) The sight oil
suffering does one good, the infliction of sufleririg
does one i ' n ore--good^^^iMsTS''a "hard maxim, but
Tione-the less aTTundamehtal maxim, old, powerful,
ati' d " hu man, all -L uu-h tnn^n'^'7 one, moreover, to
which perhaps evenThe^pes'as well would sub-
scribe : for it is said that in in venting bizarre



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"GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE; 75

y

Cj-iioltiffg tlipy arp gnnng ghnnHant pfoniLjif' 4heir

future h um anity, to which, a s_it were, they are

play ing the p relude. VV^ithout cruelty, no feast. :

so teaches the oldest and longest history of man
—and i n punishment too is there so much of the

Entertaining, as I do, these thoughts, I am, let
me say in parenthesis, fundamentally opposed to
helping our pessimists to new water for the dis-
cordant and groaning mills of their disgust with
life; on the contrary, it should be shown specifi-
cally that, at the time when mankind was not yet
ashamed of its cruelty, life in the world was
brighter than it is nowadays when there are
pessimists. The darkening of the heavens over
man has always increased in propoxtloji, ,tp. -- the
growth of man's shame before j^n. Thg^ tired
"pessimistic dutloolc, the mistrust of the riddle
of life, tKg~i(! :y fiegatiiM~of "^^sgusteg~enn'ui, all
thos^ ^re jiot the signs of the most evil age of
the human race : much rather do they come
first to the light of day, as the swamp-flowers,
which they are, when the swamp to which they
belong, comes into existence — I mean the diseased
refinement and moralisation, thanks to which the
" animal man " has at last learnt to be ashamed
of all his instincts. On the road to angel-hood^
(not to use in this context a harder -wDni)-inan
has developed that dyspeptic stomach and coated
tongue. wEicE~have made not j jnjvjthe^jov and
"ioQC^. C£_eLj. he _animd repulsive to him, but



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

J6 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

I also lifeitselfii — so that sometimes he stands
with stopped nostrils before his own self, and, like
Pope Innocent the Third, makes a black list of
his own horrors (" unclean generation, loathsome
nutrition when in the maternal body, badness of
the matter out of which man develops, awful
stench, secretion of saliva, urine, and excrement ").
Nowadays, when suffering is always trotted out
as the first argument against existence, as its
most sinister query, it is well to remember the
times when men judged on converse principles
because they could not dispense with the infliction
of suffering, and saw therein a magic of the first
order, a veritable bait of seduction to life.

Perhaps in those days (this is to solace the
weaklings) pain did not hurt so much as it does
nowadays : any physician who has treated negroes
(granted that these are taken as representative of
the prehistoric man) suffering from severe internal
inflammations which would bring a European,
even though he had the soundest constitution,
almost to despair, would be in a position to come
to this conclusion. Pain has not the same effect
with negroes. (The curve of human sensibilities
to pain seems indeed to sink in an extraordinary
and almost sudden fashion, as soon as one has
passed the upper ten thousand or ten millions of
over-civilised humanity, and I personally have no
doubt that, by comparison with one painful night
passed by one single hysterical chit of a cultured
woman, the suffering of all the animals taken
together who have been put to the question of the
knife, so as to give scientific answers, are simply



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

"GUILT," "BAD CONSCIENCE," AND THE LIKE, •jj''

negligible. ) ( We may perhaps be allowed to MftlTir^
the possibility of the craving for cruelty not neces-
sarily having become really extinct: it only requires,
in view of the fact that pain hurts more nowadays,
a certain sublimation and subtilisation, it must
especially be translated to the imaginative and
psychic plane, and be adorned with such smug
euphemisms, that even the most fastidious and
hypocritical conscience could never grow sus-
picious of their real nature (" Tragic pity " is one
of these euphemisnis :J another is " les nostalgies de
la croix "). What really raises one's indignation
against sufferingisTiof~stTfiferhig-4tttriiisicaHy743^
thensensete ssncss o f Bu ffertKgT'sucira senselessness,
However, existed neitHer" in Christianity, which
interpreted suffering into a whole mysterious
salvation-apparatus^ fiof^'Tn^the T)eIiefs~'"of l:he
na? ve"ancient man, wBo only knew how to find a
meaning in suffering from the standpoint of the
spectator, or the inflictor of the suffering. In
QT3er~to get the secret, undiscovered, and un-
witnessed suffering out of the world it was almost
compulsory to invent gods and a hierarcKy~of"
i ntermediate beingsp in short, something which
wanders even among secret places, sees even in
the dark, and makes a point of never missing an
interesting and painful spectacle. It w^is^with.
t he help of su ch in ventions that li fe got to learn
\'a& tour de f orce, which hasbecome j)art of its
st ock-in jrade, thefog^r de force of self-justification,
of the justification of evil ; nbwadays™th'is"'would
pertiaps require other Auxiliary devices (for
instance, life as a riddle, life as a problem of



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

yS , THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

knowledge). " Every evil is justified in the sight
ot which a'god finds edification," so rang the logic
of primitive sentiment — and, indeed, was it only
of primitive ? The gods conceived as friends of
spectacles of cruelty — oh how far does this
primeval conception extend even nowadays into
our European civilisation ! One would perhaps
like in this context to consult Luther and Calvin.
It is at any rate certain that even the Greeks
knew no more piquant seasoning for the happiness
of their gods than the joys of cruelty. What, do
you think, was the mood with which Homer
makes his gods look down upon the fates of
men ? What final meaning have at bottom
the Trojan War and similar tragic horrors ? It
is impossible to entertain any doubt on the
point : they were intended as festival games
for the gods, and, in so far as the poet is of
a more godlike breed than other men, as
festival games also for the poets. It was in just
this spirit and no other, that at a later date the
moral philosophers of Greece conceived the eyes
of God as still looking down on the moral struggle,
the heroism, and the self-torture of the virtuous;
the Heracles of duty was on a stage, and was
conscious of the fact ; virtue without witnesses
was something quite unthinkable for this nation
of actors. Must not that philosophic iavention,-
so audacious and^ so fatal, which was then
aBsoIutely new to Europe, the .