No More Learning

biographies can longer endured (Pheno
regarded
history: fatalism, Darwinism;
(a) Likewise
the last attempts reconciling reason and Godli ness fail. Sentimentality regard the past:
? mask; there are facts. )
(e) Likewise Art: romanticism and
counter-stroke (repugnance towards romantic ideals
and lies). The latter, morally, est truthfulness, but pessimistic.
(indifference the "subject").
ology the father-confessor and puritanical psy chology--two forms psychological romanticism: but also their counter-stroke, the attempt main
tain purely artistic attitude towards "men"--but even this respect no one dares make the opposite valuation. )
70.
Against the teaching the influence environ ment and external causes: the power coming from inside infinitely superior; much that appears like
influence acting from without merely the sub jection environment this inner power. Pre
sense great Pure "artists" (The psych
? ? of
is
of
to of is
of a
to of
to
a in
(c)
to
of
of
in no
as to
no
at in
of
in
as a
its
as a
of
*- * *:
:
of
be in
,
? -
NIHILISM.
63
cisely the same environment may be used and '
- interpreted in opposite ways: there are no facts. ** * ? ? ? ?
A genius is not explained by such theories con-| ; )
cerning origins.
~ *
7 I.
"Modernity" regarded in the light of nutrition and digestion.
Sensitiveness is infinitely more acute (beneath moral vestments: the increase of pity), the abund ance of different impressions is greater than ever. The cosmopolitanism of articles of diet, of literature, newspapers, forms, tastes, and even landscapes.
-
? The speed of this affluence is prestissimo; im-. pressions are wiped out, and people instinctively guard against assimilating anything or against taking anything seriously and "digesting" it; the result is a weakening of the powers of digestion. -
There begins a sort of adaptation to this accumula tionofimpressions. Manunlearns theartofdoing,
and all he does is to react to stimuli coming from his environment. He spends his strength, partly in the process of assimilation, partly in defending himself, and again partly in responding to stimuli.
Profound enfeeblement of spontaneity:--the his torian, the critic, the analyst, the interpreter, the observer, the collector, the reader,--all reactive
talents,--all science
-
Artificial modification of one's own nature in order to make it resemble a "mirror"; one is interested, but only epidermally: this is system
atic coolness, equilibrium, a steady low temperature,
? ? ? 64
THE WILL TO POWER.
just beneath the thin surface on which war movement, "storm," and undulations play.
Opposition of external mobility to a certain heaviness and fatigue.
72.
Where must our modern world be classe
73.
Overwork, curiosity and sympathy--our me? vices.
74.
A contribution to the characterisation of "M
under exhaustion or under
Its multiformity and lack of repose are bro about by the highest form of consciousness.
increasing stren;
? nity. "--Exaggerated development
forms; the decay of types; the break-up of t tion, schools; the predominance of the inst (philosophically prepared: the unconscious has
greater value) after the appearance of the enf ment of will power and of the will to an end to the means thereto,
75.
A capable artisan or scholar cuts a good fi if he have his pride in his art, and looks pleasa and contentedly upon life. On the other h there is no sight more wretched than that cobbler or a schoolmaster who, with the air martyr, gives one to understand that he was r
of intermel
? ? ? "represent" grievances. tremely expensive, thanks
that infest it; whereas and many city
where there echo
Our modern life ex
the host middlemen the city antiquity,
Spain and Italy to-day,
the ancient spirit, the
NIHILISM,
65
born for something better. There is nothing better than what is good l and that is: to have a certain kind of capacity and to use This virta` the Italian style the Renaissance.
Nowadays, when the state has nonsensically oversized belly, all fields and branches work there are "representatives" over and above the real workman: for instance, addition the scholars, there are the journalists; addition the suffering masses, there crowd jabbering
and bragging ne'er-do-wells who "represent" that suffering--not speak the professional politi
cians who, though quite satisfied with their lot, stand up Parliament and, with strong lungs,
? man himself comes forward and will have nothing
do with representative an intermediary
the modern style--except perhaps kick him hence
76.
The pre-eminence the merchant and the middleman, even the most intellectual spheres: the journalist, the "representative," the historian
(as an intermediary between the past and the pre sent), the exotic and cosmopolitan, the middleman
between natural science and philosophy, the semi theologians.
WOL.
? ? I,
E
in
of
of
of into
of
is
to |
in
to
of of
a of in
a
an
to
in
of
in is a
or a
in
it.
to
in to in
is
is of
? 66 THE WILL TO POWER.
77.
The men I have regarded with the most loath heretofore, are the parasites of intellect: they
to be found everywhere, already, in our mod
Europe, and as a matter of fact their conscienc as light as it possibly can be. They may b
little turbid, and savour somewhat of Pessimi but in the main they are voracious, dirty, dirty stealthy, insinuating, light-fingered gentry, scal --and as innocent as all small sinners and micro
are. They live at the expense of those who h
intellect and who distribute it liberally: they kr
that it is peculiar to the rich mind to live in a
interested fashion, without taking too much pe
thought for the morrow, and to distribute its we
? prodigally.
mist, and pays no heed whatever to the fact t everything lives on it and devours
78. MODERN MUMMERY
The motleyness modern men and its cha
Essentially mask and sign boredom. The journalist.
The political man (in the "national swindle
ing oneself for them (Fromentin);
Mummery
For intellect is a bad domestic eco
the arts:--
The lack honesty preparing and scho
? ? a of in
a in
of
of
it.
? cealed beneath all kinds of moral
finery. --The
NIHILISM.
67
The Romanticists (their lack of philosophy and science and their excess of literature); The novelists (Walter Scott, but also the monsters of the Nibelung, with their in
ordinately nervous music);
The lyricists. "Scientificality. "
Virtuosos (Jews). -
The popular ideals are overcome, but not yet in the presence of the people:
The saint, the sage, the prophet.
79.
The want of discipline in the modern spirit con
? show-words are: Toleration (for the "incapacity of saying yes or no"); la largeur de sympathie
(= a third of indifference, a third of curiosity, and
susceptibility); "objectivity"
(the lack of personality and of will, and the in ability to "love"); "freedom" in regard to the
rule (Romanticism); "truth" as opposed to false
hood and lying (Naturalism); the "scientific spirit" (the "human document"; or, in plain
English, the serial story which means "addition" --instead of "composition"); "passion" in the
place of disorder and intemperance; "depth" in the place of confusion and the pell-mell of symbols.
8O.
Concerning the criticism of big words. --I am full of mistrust and malice towards what is called
a third of morbid
? ? ? 68 THE WILL TO POWER.
! " ideal": this is my Pessimism, that I have inised to what extent "sublime sentiments"
say, belittling
depreciating
Every time "progress" expected
from an ideal, disappointment invariably follo
the triumph ideal has always been
grade movement.
Christianity, revolution, the abolition slav
equal rights, philanthropy, love peace, just
truth: all these big words are only valuable struggle, banners: not realities, but
words, for something quite different (yea, even opposed what they mean
The kind of man known who has faller
love with the sentence "tout comprendre c'est Pardonner. " the weak and, above all, the
source evil--that
man.
? something pardon everything, there also something conten
the philosophy disappointment, which swathes itself humanly pity, and gazes
sweetly.
They are Romanticists, whose faith has gone
pot: now they least wish look on and
how everything vanishes and fades. They cal l'art pour l'art, "objectivity," etc.
82.
The main symptoms of Pessimism --Dinners Magny's; Russian Pessimism (Tolstoy, Dostoi
illusioned: there
? ? so
It is
a
at
of
is
is
is
in to
8I.
l).
as
of
is to
so
if It is
of
of
h
to to
to
as
of an
of
a
to
qshi rere re.
as
is
a
? NIHILISM.
sky); aesthetic Pessimism, l'art pour l'art, "de
scription"
69
(the romantic and the anti-romantic
Pessimism); Pessimism in the theory of know ledge (Schopenhauer: phenomenalism); anarchical
Pessimism; the "religion of pity," Buddhistic preparation; the Pessimism of culture (exoticness, cosmopolitanism); moral Pessimism, myself.
83.
"Without the Christian Faith," said Pascal, "you would yourselves be like nature and history, un monstreet un chaos. " We fulfilled this prophecy: once the weak and optimistic eighteenth century had embellished and rationalised man.
Schopenhauer and Pascal. --Inone essential point, Schopenhauer is the first who takes up Pascal's movement again: un monstre et un chaos, conse quently something that must be negatived . . . history, nature, and man himself!
"Our inability to know the truth is the result of our corruption, of our moral decay," says Pascal. And Schopenhauer says essentially the same.
"The more profound the corruption of reason the more necessary the doctrine salvation"-- or, putting into Schopenhauerian phraseology, negation.
84.
Schopenhauer an epigone (state affairs
? before the eighteenth century.
Revolution):--Pity, sensuality, art,
weakness will, Catholicism the most intel
lectual desires--that bottom, the good old
? ? is, at
of
it
of
as
is
of of
is,
? 7o
THE WILL TO POWER.
Schopenhauer's fundamental misunderstanding of the will (just as though passion, instinct, and
desire were the essential factors of will) is typical:
the depreciation of the will to the extent of mis
taking it altogether. Likewise the hatred of willing: the attempt at seeing something superior
--yea, even superiority itself, and that which really matters, in non-willing, in the "subject-being
without aim or intention. " Great symptom of fatigue or of the weakness of will: for this, in reality, is what treats the passions as master, and
directs them as to the way and to the measure. . . .
85.
The undignified attempt has been made to regard
Wagner and Schopenhauer as types of the mentally
unsound: an infinitely more essential understanding
of the matter would have been gained if the exact
decadent type which each of them represents had been scientifically and a-ccurately defined.
-- * ? 86. )
Henrik Ibsen has become very clear to me.
With all his robust idealism and "Will to Truth,"
he never dared to ring himself free from moral
illusionism which says "freedom," and will not
admit, even to itself, what freedom is: the second stage in the metamorphosis of the "Will to Power,"
in him who lacks the first stage, one
demands justice the hands those who have power. the second, one speaks "freedom,"
? ? ? In
of of
|
at
it.
In
? Christianity And,
NIHILISM.
71
that is to say, one wishes to "shake oneself free" from those who have power. In the third stage, one speaks of "equal rights"--that is to say, so long as one is not a predominant personality one
wishes to prevent one's competitors from growing- 1n power.
87.
The Decline of Protestantism: theoretically and
historically understood as a half-measure. Un
deniable predominance of Catholicism to-day:
Protestant feeling is so dead that the strongest
anti-Protestant movements (Wagner's Parsifal, for
instance) are no longer regarded as such. The
whole of the more elevated intellectuality in France
is Catholic in instinct; Bismarck recognised that
there was no longer any such thing as Protest antism.
88.
Protestantism, that spiritually unclean and
tiresome form of decadence, in which Christianity
has known how to survive in the mediocre North, is something incomplete and complexly valuable
for knowledge, in so far as it was able to bring
experiences of different kinds and origins into the same heads.
89.
What has the German spirit not made out of
and more lounging form of Christian belief be
? to refer to Protestantism again, how much beer is there not still in Pro testant Christianity | Can a crasser, more indolent,
? ? ? 72
THE WILL TO POWER.
imagined, than that of the average German Pro
testant? . . . It is indeed a very humble Christi | anity. I call it the Homoeopathy of Christianity
I am reminded that, to-day, there also exists a less humble sort of Protestantism; it is taught by
royal chaplains and anti-Semitic speculators: but
nobody has ever maintained that any "spirit" "hovers" over these waters. It is merely a less respectable form of Christian faith, not by any
means a more comprehensible one.
90.
Progress. --Let us be on our guard lest we
deceive ourselves! Time flies forward apace,--
we would fain believe that everything flies forward with it,--that evolution is an advancing develop
ment. . . . That is the appearance of things which deceives the most circumspect. But the nineteenth century shows no advance whatever on the six teenth: and the German spirit of 1888 is an example of a backward movement when compared
succeed, while an incalculable number things fail; where all order, logic, co-ordination, and
? with that of 1788.
advance, it does not even exist. The aspect of the whole is much more like that of a huge experi menting workshop where some things in ages
responsibility lacking.
How dare we blink the
fact that the rise Christianity decadent movement? --that the German Reformation was
recrudescence of Christian barbarism ? --that the Revolution destroyed the instinct for organisa
Mankind does not
? ? - a
is an a
is of
of all
? NIHILISM.
73
tion of society on a large scale? . . . Man is not
an example of progress as compared with animals:
the tender son of culture is an abortion compared
with the Arab or the Corsican; the Chinaman
is a more successful type--that is to say, possess ing more lasting powers than the European.
(b) THE LAST CENTURIES.
9 I.
Gloominess and pessimistic influence necessarily follow in the wake of enlightenment. Towards 177o a falling-off in cheerfulness was already noticeable; women, with that very feminine instinct which always defends virtue, believed that immor
ality was the cause of Galiani hit the bull's
? eye:
quotes Voltaire's verse:
"Un monstre gai vaut mieux
Qu'un sentimental
ennuyeux. "
ahead,
now maintain that am century two enlightenment,
Voltaire and Galiani--who was much more profound, how deeply must have sunk into gloominess! This
also true, and betimes somewhat reluctantly manifested some caution regard the German
and Christian narrowness and
inconsistency
Schopenhauerian or, worse still, Leopardian Pessim
ism, and sought the most characteristic form (Asia).
Tragedy), live alone "without God morality,"
But,
order endure that extreme Pessimism (which here and there peeps out my Birth
? ? to
to
or I I
of or
of
of
by of a
in
in I to
it. I
is
If
he
of
? 74
THE WILL TO POWER.
I was compelled to invent a counter-prop for my
self. Perhaps I know best why man is the only animal that laughs: he alone suffers so excruciat ingly that he was compelled to invent laughter. The unhappiest and most melancholy animal
might have been expected, the most cheerful.
92.
regard German culture, have always had
feeling
know declining form culture has often made
decline. The fact that learned
phenomenon European culture. The Germans always follow some distance behind: they always go the
root things, for instance:--
Dependance upon foreigners; Kant--Rousseau,
sensualists, Hume, Swedenborg. Schopenhauer--the Indians and Romanticism,
Voltaire.
Wagner--the French cult the ugly and grand opera, Paris, and the flight into primitive
barbarism (the marriage brother and sister). The law the laggard (the provinces go
Greek (the more instinct developed, the more tempted run for once into its opposite).
Music the last breath every culture.
93.
Renaissance and Reformation. --What does the Renaissance prove? That the reign the
me unfair towards the whole
? the
Paris, Germany goes
France).
How that precisely Germans discovered the
? ? of
to
toof ofto is,
is
is it
as
of to
of
of is
it is
at a as In
to
of
an
to
of
of
I I
of
a
? NIHILISM.
75
"individual" can be only a short one. The out
put is too great; there is not even the possibility of husbanding or of capitalising forces, and ex
haustion sets in step by step. These are times when everything is squandered, when even the
strength itself with which one collects, capitalises, and heaps riches upon riches, is squandered.
Even the opponents of such movements are driven to preposterous extremes in the dissipation of
their strength: and they too are very soon exhausted, used up, and completely sapped.
In the Reformation we are face to face with
a wild and plebeian counterpart of the Italian Renaissance, generated by similar impulses, except
that the former, in the backward and still vulgar North, had to assume a religious form--there the concept of a higher life had not yet been divorced from that of a religious one.
Even the Reformation was a movement for
individual liberty; "every one his own priest" is really no more than a formula for libertinage. As a
matter of fact, the words "Evangelical freedom" would have sufficed--and all instincts which had
reasons for remaining concealed broke out like wild hounds, the most brutal needs suddenly acquired the courage to show themselves, everything seemed
justified . . . men refused to specify the kind of freedom they had aimed they preferred shut
their eyes. But the fact that their eyes were closed and that their lips were moistened with gushing orations, did not prevent their hands from being ready
? snatch whatever there was
snatch at, that the belly became the god the *
? ? of
to to
to
at
at,
? 76
THE WILL TO POWER.
"free gospel," and that all lusts of revenge and of hatred were indulged with insatiable fury.
This lasted for a while: then exhaustion super
vened, just as it had done in Southern Europe; and again here, it was a low form of exhaustion,
a sort of general ruere in servitium. . . . Then the disreputable century of Germany dawned.
94.
Chivalry--the position won by power: its
gradual break-up (and partial transference to
broader and more bourgeois spheres). In the case of Larochefoucauld we find a knowledge of the actual impulses of a noble temperament--together
with the gloomy Christian estimate of these impulses.
The protraction of Christianity through the
? French Revolution. The seducer is
Rousseau;
he once again liberates woman, who thenceforward is always represented as ever more interesting--
| suffering.
Then come the slaves and Mrs. Beecher
Stowe. Then the poor and the workmen. Then the vicious and the sick--all this is drawn into
the foreground (even for the purpose of disposing people in favour of the genius, it has been custom
ary for five hundred years to press him forward as
the great sufferer! ). Then comes the cursing of all voluptuousness (Beaudelaire and Schopen
hauer); the most decided conviction that the lust of power is the greatest vice; absolute certainty
that morality and disinterestedness are identical things; that the "happiness of all" is a goal worth
? ? ? NIHILISM.
77
striving after (i. e. , Christ's Kingdom of Heaven).
We are on the best road to it: the Kingdom of Heaven of the poor in spirit has begun. --Inter
mediate stages: the bourgeois (as a result of the
nouveau riche) and the workman (as a result of
the machine).
Greek and French culture of the time of Louis
XIV. compared. A decided belief in oneself.
A leisured class which makes things hard for itself
and exercises a great deal of self-control. The
power of form, the will to form oneself. "Happi ness" acknowledged as a purpose. Much strength
and energy behind all formality of manners. Pleasure at the sight of a life that is seemingly so
The Greeks seemed like children to the
? easy. French.
95.
The Three Centuries.
may
perhaps be best expressed as follows:-- Aristocracy: Descartes, the reign of reason,
evidence showing the sovereignty of the will. Feminism : Rousseau, the reign of feeling, evidence showing the sovereignty of the senses;
all lies.
Animalism : Schopenhauer, the reign of passion,
evidence showing the sovereignty of animality, more honest, but gloomy.
The seventeenth century is aristocratic, all for order, haughty towards everything animal, severe in regard to the heart, "austere," and even free from sentiment, "non-German," averse to all that
Their different kinds of sensitiveness
? ? ? 78
THE WILL TO POWER.
is burlesque and natural, generalising and mai taining an attitude of sovereignty towards t
for it believes in itself. At bottom
past
partakes very much of the beast of prey, ar
practises
It is the century of strength of will, as also that strong passion.
The eighteenth century is dominated by woma it is gushing, spiritual, and flat; but with intelle
at the service of aspirations and of the heart, it
a libertine in the pleasures of intellect, underminin authorities; emotionally intoxicated, cheerfi
clear, humane, and sociable, false itself and bottom very rascally.
The nineteenth century more animal, mo
asceticism in order to remain maste
? subterranean, hateful, realistic, plebeian,
that very account "better," "more honest," mo
submissive "reality" what kind soever,
truer; but weak
and fatalistic. reverence, either the "heart";
will, sad, obscurely exactin has no feeling timidity
the presence "reason" thoroughly convinced
dominion the desires (Schopenhauer said "Will
but nothing more characteristic his philosoph
than that entirely lacks all actual willing). Eve morality reduced instinct ("Pity").
Auguste
eighteenth century (the dominion the heart ov the head, sensuality the theory knowledg
Comte the continuation of
altruistic exaltation).
The fact that science has become
sovereig to-day, proves how the nineteenth centul has emancipated itself from the dominion idea.
and
? ? of
of
t. th anc
as it is
all
of of as
of
of of
is
to
in
an
of
. .
isit of is
to
in It of is to
? NIHILISM.
79
A certain absence of "needs" and wishes makes our scientific curiosity and rigour possible--this is
our kind of virtue.
?
Romanticism is the counterstroke of the
eighteenth century; a sort of accumulated longing
for its grand style of exaltation (as a matter of fact,
largely mingled with mummery and self-deception:
the desire was to represent strong nature and strong passion).
The nineteenth century instinctively goes in search of theories by means of which it may feel its fatalistic submission to the empire of facts justified. Hegel's success against sentimentality and romantic idealism was already a sign of fatalistic trend thought, its belief that superior reason belongs the triumphant side,
and justification the actual "state" (in the place "humanity," etc. ). --Schopenhauer: we
are something foolish, and the best self suppressive. The success determinism, the genealogical derivation obligations which were formerly held absolute, the teaching environment and adaptation, the reduction will
process reflex movement, the denial the will "working cause"; finally -- real
? process re-christening:
that the word itself becomes available for another
purpose. Further theories: the teaching objectivity, "will-less" contemplation, the only
road truth, also beauty (also the belief "genius," order have the right
submissive); mechanism, the determinable rigidity the mechanical process; so-called "Naturalism,"
little will observed
? ? of in
to a
in
as
of
to
of
to to
be so
of
of to
in
to
as of a
in of its
of at
be of of its
to
a ofof
as
is
? 8O THE WILL TO POWER.
the elimination of the choosing, directing, inter preting subject, on principle.
Kant, with his "practical reason," with his moral
fanaticism, is quite eighteenth century style; still
completely outside the historical movement, without any notion whatsoever of the reality of his time, for instance, revolution; he is not affected by Greek
philosophy; he is a phantasist of the notion of duty,
a sensualist with a hidden leaning to dogmatic pampering.
The return to Kant in our century means a return to the eighteenth century: people desire to create
themselves a right to the old ideas and to the old exaltation--hence a theory of knowledge which "de scribes limits," that is to say, which admits of the
option of fixing a Beyond to the domain of reason. Hegel's way of thinking is not so very far removed from that of Goethe: see the latter on
the subject of Spinoza, for instance. The will to
deify the All and Life, in order to find both peace and happiness in contemplating them: Hegel looks for reason everywhere--in the presence of
reason man may be submissive and resigned. In
Goethe we find a kind of fatalism which is almost joyous and confiding, which neither revolts nor weakens, which strives to make a totality out of itself, in the belief that only in totality does every
thing seem good and justified, and find itself resolved.
96.
The period of rationalism --followed by a period of sentimentality. To what extent does
? ? ? ? NIHILISM. 81
Schopenhauer come under "sentimentality"? (Hegel under intellectuality ? )
97.
The seventeenth century suffers from humanity
as from a host of contradictions ("l'amas de con
tradictions" that we are ); it endeavours to discover
man, to co-ordinate him, to excavate him: whereas
the eighteenth century tries to forget what is
known of man's nature, in order to adapt him to its Utopia. "Superficial, soft, humane"--gushes
over "humanity. "
The seventeenth century tries to banish all traces of the individual in order that the artist's
work may resemble life as much as possible. The eighteenth century strives to create interest in
the author by means of the work. The seventeenth century seeks art in art, a piece of culture; the eighteenth uses art in its propaganda for political and social reforms.
"Utopia," the "ideal man," the deification of Nature, the vanity of making one's own personality
the centre of interest, subordination to the propa
ganda of social ideas, charlatanism--all this we derive from the eighteenth century.
The style of the seventeenth century: propre exact et libre.
. The strong individual who is self-sufficient, or
who appeals ardently to God--and that obtrusive ness and indiscretion of modern authors--these
things are opposites. "Showing-oneself-off"--what
a contrast to the Scholars of Port-Royal | VOL. I. F
? ? ? ? 82 THE WILL TO POWER.
Alfieri had a sense for the grand style.
The hate of the burlesque (that which lacks dignity), the lack of a sense of Nature belongs to the seventeenth century.
98.
Against Rousseau. --Alas / man is no longer sufficiently evil; Rousseau's opponents, who say
that "man is a beast of prey," are unfortunately wrong. Not the corruption of man, but the
softening and moralising of him is the curse. In
the sphere which Rousseau attacked most violently, the relatively strongest and most successful type
of man was still to be found (the type which still possessed the great passions intact: Will to Power,
Will to Pleasure, the Will and Ability to Com
mand). The man of the eighteenth century must
be compared with the man of the Renaissance (also
with the man of the seventeenth century in France) if the matter is to be understood at all: Rousseau
is a symptom of self-contempt and of inflamed vanity--both signs that the dominating will is
? lacking:
own misery after the style of a revengeful man in the ruling classes.
he moralises and seeks the cause ofhis
99.
Voltaire -- Rousseau. -- A state of nature is
terrible; man is a beast of prey: our civilisation is an extraordinary triumph over this beast-of
prey
He was conscious of the mildness, the refinements,
in nature--this was Voltaire's conclusion.
? ? ? NIHILISM.
83
the intellectual joys of the civilised state; he despised obtuseness, even in the form of virtue,
and the lack of delicacy even in ascetics and monks.
The moral depravity of man seemed to pre occupy Rousseau; the words "unjust," "cruel," are
the best possible for the purpose of exciting the
instincts of the oppressed, who otherwise find themselves under the ban of the vetitum and of
disgrace; so that their conscience is opposed to their
indulging any
emancipators seek one thing above all: to give
insurrectional desires. These
their party the great accents and attitudes of higher Nature,
? IOO.
Rousseau : the rule founded on
sentiment;
Nature as the source of justice; man perfects
himself in proportion as he approaches Nature
(according to Voltaire, in proportion as he leaves AVature behind). The very same periods seem to
the one to demonstrate the progress of humanity and, to the other, the increase of injustice and | inequality.
* . . . ,'2-4
--
Voltaire,
sense of the Renaissance, as also virti (as "higher
who still understood umanita in the
culture"), fights
gens," "la bonne compagnie," taste, science, arts,
for the cause of the "honne? tes
and even for the cause of progress and civilisation. The flare-up occurred towards 1760 : On the one hand the citizen of Geneva, on the other le
seigneur de Ferney. It is only from that moment and henceforward that Voltaire was the man of
. "
? ? ? 84
THE WILL TO POWER.
his age, the philosopher, the representative
Toleration and of Disbelief (theretofore he ha
been merely un bel esprit). His envy and hatre
of Rousseau's success forced him upwards. "Pour "la canaille' un dieu re? mune? rateur
vengeur"--Voltaire.
The criticism of both standpoints in regard
the value of civilisation. To Voltaire nothir seems finer than the social invention : there
no higher goal than to uphold and perfect L'honne? tete? consists precisely in respecting soci
usage;
various necessary "prejudices" which favour th maintenance of society. Missionary of Cultu, aristocrat, representative of the triumphant ar ruling
virtue in a certain obedience towar.
? classes and their values. But Roussea remained a plebeian, even as hommes de lettres, th was preposterous; his shameless contempt f everything
that was not himself.
The morbid feature in Rousseau is the or
which happens to have been most admired an
imitated. (Lord Byron resembled him somewha
he too screwed himself up to sublime attitude and to revengeful rage--a sign of vulgarity; lat'
on, when Venice restored his equilibrium, he unde
stood what was more alleviating and did mo,
good . . . l'insouciance. )
In spite of his antecedents, Rousseau is prou
of himself; but he is incensed if he is reminded his origin. . . .
In Rousseau there was undoubtedly some brai
trouble; in Voltaire--rare health and lightsome ness. The revengefulness of the sick; his period
? ? ? NIHILISM.
85
of insanity as also those of his contempt of man, and of his mistrust.
Rousseau's defence of Providence (against Vol
taire's Pessimism): he had need of God in order to be able to curse society and civilisation; every
thing must be good per because God had created it; man alone has corrupted man. The "good man" man Nature was pure fantasy;
but with the dogma God's authorship he became
something probable and even not devoid found ation.
Romanticism Rousseau: passion ("the
?