No More Learning

In this state we cannot listen to music without
weeping.
115.
The so-called "Ego. "—Language and the
prejudices upon which language is based very often
act as obstacles in our paths when we proceed to
explore internal phenomena and impulses: as one
example, we may instance the fact that theie are
only words to express the superlative degrees of
these phenomena and impulses. Now, it is our
habit no longer to observe accurately when words
fail us, since it is difficult in such cases to think
with precision: in former times, even, people in-
voluntarily came to the conclusion that where the
domain of words ceased, the domain of existence
ceased also. Wrath, hatred, love, pity, desire,
recognition, joy, pain: all these are names indi-
cating extreme conditions; the milder and middle
stages, and even more particularly the ever active
lower stages, escape our attention, and yet it is they
which weave the warp and woof of our character
and destiny. It often happens that these extreme
outbursts—and even the most moderate pleasure
or displeasure of which we are actually conscious,
whether in partaking of food or listening to a sound,
is possibly, if properly estimated, merely an extreme
outburst,—destroy the texture and are then violent
exceptions, in most cases the consequences of some
congestions,—and how easily as such can they


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120 THE DAWN OF DAY.
mislead the observer! as indeed they mislead the
person acting! We are all of us not what we
appear to be according to the conditions for which
alone we have consciousness and words, and con-
sequently praise and blame. We fail to recognise
ourselves after these coarse outbursts which are
known to ourselves alone, we draw conclusions from
data where the exceptions prove stronger than the
rules; we misinterpret ourselves in reading our own
ego's pronouncements, which appeared to be so
clear. But our opinion of ourselves, this so-called
ego which we have arrived at by this wrong method,
contributes henceforth to form our character and
destiny.
116.
The Unknown World of the " Subject. "
—What men have found it so difficult to under-
stand from the most ancient times down to the
present day is their ignorance in regard to them-
selves, not merely with respect to good and evil,
but something even more essential. The oldest of
illusions lives on, namely, that we know, and know
precisely in each case, how human action is origi-
nated. Not only " God who looks into the heart,"
not only the man who acts and reflects upon his
action, but everybody does not doubt that he under-
stands the phenomena of action in every one else.
"I know what I want and what I have done, I am
free and responsible for my act, and I make others
responsible for their acts; I can mention by its
name every moral possibility and every internal
movement which precedes an act,—ye may act as


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 121
ye will, I understand myself and I understand
you all! " Such was what every one thought once
upon a time, and almost every one thinks so even
now. Socrates and Plato, who in this matter were
great sceptics and admirable innovators,were never-
theless intensely credulous in regard to that fatal
prejudice, that profound error, which holds that
"The right knowledge must necessarily be followed
by the right action. " In holding this principle they
were still the heirs of the universal folly and pre-
sumption that knowledge exists concerning the
essence of an action.
"It would indeed be dreadful if the compre-
hension of the essence of a right action were not
followed by that right action itself"—this was the
only manner in which these great men thought it
necessary to demonstrate this idea, the contrary
seemed to them to be inconceivable and mad; and
nevertheless this contrary corresponds to the naked
reality which has been demonstrated daily and
hourly from time immemorial. Is it not a " dread-
ful" truth that all that we know about an act is never
sufficient to accomplish it, that the bridge connect-
ing the knowledge of the act with the act itself has
never yet been built? Acts are never what they
appear to us to be. We have taken great pains
to learn that external things are not as they
appear to us. —Well! It is the same with internal
phenomena. All moral acts are in reality " some-
thing different,"—we cannot say anything more
about them, and all acts are essentially unknown
to us. The general belief, however, has been and
still is quite the contrary: the most ancient realism


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122 THE DAWN OF DAY.
is against us: up to the present humanity has
thought, "An action is what it appears to be. "
(In re-reading these words a very expressive passage
from Schopenhauer occurs to me, and I will quote
it as a proof that he, too, without the slightest
scruple, continued to adhere to this moral realism:
"Each one of us is in reality a competent and
perfect moral judge, knowing exactly good and
evil, made holy by loving good and despising evil,
—such is every one of us in so far as the acts of
others and not his own are under consideration, and
when he has merely to approve or disapprove, whilst
the burden of the performance of the acts is borne
by other shoulders. Every one is therefore justified
in occupying as confessor the place of God. ")
117.
In PRISOn. —My eye, whether it be keen or
weak, can only see a certain distance, and it is
within this space that I live and move: this
horizon is my immediate fate, greater or lesser,
from which I cannot escape. Thus, a concentric
circle is drawn round every being, which has a centre
and is peculiar to himself. In the same way our
ear encloses us in a small space, and so likewise
does our touch. We measure the world by these
horizons within which our senses confine each of
us within prison walls. We say that this is near
and that is far distant, that this is large and that is
small, that one thing is hard and another soft; and
this appreciation of things we call sensation—but
it is all an error per se! According to the number


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 123
of events and emotions which it is on an average
possible for us to experience in a given space of
time, we measure our lives; we call them short or
long, rich or poor, full or empty; and according to
the average of human life we estimate that of other
beings,—and all this is an error per se\
If we had eyes a hundred times more piercing
to examine the things that surround us, men would
seem to us to be enormously tall; we can even
imagine organs by means of which men would ap-
pear to us to be of immeasurable stature. On the
other hand, certain organs could be so formed as to
permit us to view entire solar systems as if they were
contracted and brought close together like a single
cell: and to beings of an inverse order a single cell
of the human body could be made to appear in its
construction, movement, and harmony as if it were
a solar system in itself. The habits of our senses
have wrapped us up in a tissue of lying sensations
which in their turn lie at the base of all our judg-
ments and our " knowledge,"—there are no means
of exit or escape to the real world! We are like
spiders in our own webs, and, whatever we may
catch in them, it will only be something that our
web is capable of catching.
118.
What is our Neighbour? —What do we con-
ceive of our neighbour except his limits: I mean
that whereby he, as it were, engraves and stamps
himself in and upon us? We can understand
nothing of him except the changes which take place


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124 THE DAWN OF DAY.
upon our own person and of which he is the cause,
what we know of him is like a hollow, modelled
space. We impute to him the feelings which his
acts arouse in us, and thus give him a wrong and
inverted postivity. We form him after our know-
ledge of ourselves into a satellite of our own system,
and if he shines upon us, or grows dark, and we in
any case are the ultimate cause of his doing so, we
nevertheless still believe the contrary! O world
of phantoms in which we live! O world so per-
verted, topsy-turvy and empty, and yet dreamt of
as full and upright!
119.
Experience and Invention. —To however
high a degree a man can attain to knowledge of
himself, nothing can be more incomplete than the
conception which he forms of the instincts constitut-
ing his individuality. He can scarcely name the
more common instincts: their number and force,
their flux and reflux, their action and counteraction,
and, above all, the laws of their nutrition, remain
absolutely unknown to him. This nutrition, there-
fore, becomes a work of chance: the dailyexperiences
of our lives throw their prey now to this instinct and
now to that, and the instincts gradually seize upon
it; but the ebb and flow of these experiences does
not stand in any rational relationship to thenutritive
needs of the total number of the instincts. Two
things, then, must always happen: some cravings
will be neglected and starved to death, while others
will be overfed. Every moment in the life of man
causes some polypous arms of his being to grow and


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 12$
others to wither away, in accordance with the nutri-
ment which that moment may or may not bring with
it. Our experiences, as I have already said, are all
in this sense means of nutriment, but scattered about
with a careless hand and without discrimination
between the hungry and the overfed. As a conse-
quence of this accidental nutrition of each particular
part, the polypus in its complete development will
be something just as fortuitous as its growth.
To put this more clearly: let us suppose that an
instinct or craving has reached that point when it
demands gratification,—either the exercise of its
power or the discharge of it, or the filling up of a
vacuum (all this is metaphorical language),—then
it will examine every event that occurs in the course
of the day to ascertain how it can be utilised with
the object of fulfilling its aim: whether the man
runs or rests, or is angry, or reads or speaks or
fights or rejoices, the unsatiated instinct watches,
as it were, every condition into which the man
enters, and, as a rule, if it finds nothing for itself
it must wait, still unsatisfied. After a little while
it becomes feeble, and at the end of a few days or
a few months, if it has not been satisfied, it will
wither away like a plant which has not been
watered. This cruelty of chance would perhaps be
more conspicuous if all the cravings were as vehe-
ment in their demands as hunger, which refuses to
be satisfied with imaginary dishes; but the great
majority of our instincts, especially those which are
called moral, are thus easily satisfied,—if it be per-
mitted to suppose that our dreams serve as com-
pensation to a certain extent for the accidental


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126 THE DAWN OF DAY.
absence of " nutriment" during the day. Why was
last night's dream full of tenderness and tears, that
of the night before amusing and gay, and the
previous one adventurous and engaged in some
continual obscure search? How does it come about
that in this dream I enjoy indescribable beauties of
music, and in that one I soar and fly upwards with
the delight of an eagle to the most distant heights?
These inventions in which our instincts of tender-
ness, merriment, or adventurousness, or our desire
for music and mountains, can have free play and
scope—and every one can recall striking instances
—are interpretations of our nervous irritations
during sleep, very free and arbitrary interpretations
of the movements of our blood and intestines, and
the pressure of our arm and the bed coverings, or
the sound of a church bell, the weathercocks, the
moths, and so on. That this text, which on the
whole is very much the same for one night as
another, is so differently commented upon, that our
creative reason imagines such different causes for
the nervous irritations of one day as compared with
another, may be explained by the fact that the
prompter of this reason was different to-day from
yesterday—another instinct or craving wished to
be satisfied, to show itself, to exercise itself and be
refreshed and discharged: this particular one being
at its height to-day and another one being at its
height last night. Real life has not the freedom
of interpretation possessed by dream life; it is less
poetic and less unrestrained—but is it necessary for
me to show that our instincts, when we are awake,
likewise merely interpret our nervous irritations and


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 127
determine their "causes " in accordance with their
requirements? that there is no really essential
difference between waking and dreaming! that
even in comparing different degrees of culture, the
freedom of the conscious interpretation of the one
is not in any way inferior to the freedom in dreams
of the other! that our moral judgments and valua-
tions are only images and fantasies concerning
physiological processes unknown to us, a kind of
habitual language to describe certain nervous irrita-
tions? that all our so-called consciousness is a more
or less fantastic commentary of an unknown text,
one which is perhaps unknowable but yet felt?
Consider some insignificant occurrence. Let us
suppose that some day as we pass along a public
street we see some one laughing at us. In accord-
ance with whatever craving has reached its culmin-
ating point within us at that moment, this incident
will have this or that signification for us; and it
will be a very different occurrence in accordance
with the class of men to which we belong. One
man will take it like a drop of rain, another will
shake it off like a fly, a third person will try to pick
a quarrel on account of it, a fourth will examine
his garments to see if there is anything about them
likely to cause laughter, and a fifth will in conse-
quence think about what is ridiculous/^r se, a sixth
will be pleased at having involuntarily contributed
to add a ray of sunshine and mirth to the world,—
in all these cases some craving is gratified, whether
anger, combativeness, meditation, or benevolence.
This instinct, whatever it may be, has seized upon
that incident as its prey: why that particular one?


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128 THE DAWN OF DAY.
Because, hungry and thirsty, it was lying in
ambush.
Not long ago at 11 o'clock in the morning a man
suddenly collapsed and fell down in front of me as
if struck by lightning. All the women who were
near at once gave utterance to cries of horror, while
I set the man on his feet again and waited until
he recovered his speech. During this time no
muscle of my face moved and I experienced no
sensation of fear or pity; I simply did what was
most urgent and reasonable and calmly proceeded
on my way. Supposing some one had told me on
the previous evening that at 11 o'clock on the
following day a man would fall down in front of
me like this, I should have suffered all kinds of
agonies in the interval, lying awake all night, and
at the decisive moment should also perhaps have
fallen down like the man instead of helping him;
for in the meantime all the imaginable cravings
within me would have had leisure to conceive and
to comment upon this incident. What are our ex-
periences, then? Much more what we attribute to
them than what they really are. Or should we
perhaps say that nothing is contained in them?
that experiences in themselves are merely works of
fancy?
120.
To Tranquiluse the Sceptic. —" I don't
know at all what I am doing. I don't know in
the least what I ought to do ! "—You arc right, but
be sure of this: you are being done at every
moment! Mankind has at all times mistaken the



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 129
active for the passive: it is its eternal grammatical
blunder.
121.
Cause and Effect. —On this mirror—and our
intellect is a mirror—something is going on that
indicates regularity: a certain thing is each time fol-
lowed by another certain thing. When we perceive
this and wish to give it a name, we call it cause and
effect,—fools that we are! as if in this we had
understood or could understand anything! For, of
course, we have seen nothing but the images of
causes and effects, and it is just this figurativeness
which renders it impossible for us to see a more
substantial relation than that of sequence!
122.
The Purposes in Nature. —Any impartial
investigator who examines the history of the eye
and its form in the lower creatures, and sees how
the visual organ was slowly developed, cannot help
recognising that sight was not the first purpose of
the eye, but probably only asserted itself when pure
hazard had contributed to bring together the appar-
atus. One single example of this kind, and the
"final purposes" fall from our eyes like scales.
123.
Reason. — How did reason come into the
world? As is only proper, in an irrational manner;
by accident. We shall have to guess at this acci-
dent as a riddle.
I


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130 THE DAWN OF DAY.
124.
What is Volition? —We laugh at a man
who, stepping out of his room at the very minute
when the sun is rising, says, " It is my will that the
sun shall rise"; or at him who, unable to stop a
wheel, says, "I wish it to roll"; or, again, at him who,
thrown in a wrestling match, says, " Here I lie, but
here I wish to lie. " But, joking apart, do we not
act like one of these three persons whenever we use
the expression " I wish "?
125.
On the Domain of Freedom. —We can think
many more things than we can do and experience
—i. e. our faculty of thinking is superficial and is
satisfied with what lies on the surface, it does not
even perceive this surface. If our intellect were
strictly developed in proportion to our power, and
our exercise of this power, the primary principle of
our thinking would be that we can understand only
that which we are able to do—if, indeed, there is
any understanding at all. The thirsty man is
without water, but the creations of his imagination
continually bring the image of water to his sight,
as if nothing could be more easily procured. The
superficial and easily satisfied character of the in-
tellect cannot understand real need, and thus feels
itself superior. It is proud of being able to do more,
to run faster, and to reach the goal almost within the
twinkling of an eye: and in this way the domain
of thought, when contrasted with the domain of



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 131
action, volition, and experience, appears to be the
domain of liberty, while, as I have already stated,
it is nothing but the domain of superficiality and
self-sufficiency.
126.
FORGETFulNESs. —It has never yet been proved
that there is such a thing as forgetfulness: all that
we know is that we have no power over recollection.
In the meantime we have filled up this gap in our
power with the word " forgetfulness," exactly as if
it were another faculty added to our list. But, after
all, what is within our power? If that word fills
up a gap in our power, might not the other words
be found capable of filling up a gap in the know-
ledge which we possess of our power?
127.
For a Definite Purpose. —Of all human ac-
tions probably the least understood are those which
are carried out for a definite purpose, because they
have always been regarded as the most intelligible
and commonplace to our intellect. The great prob-
lems can be picked up in the highways and byways.
128.
Dreaming and Responsibility. —You would
wish to be responsible for everything except your
dreams! What miserable weakness, what lack of
logical courage! Nothing contains more of your


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132 THE DAWN OF DAY.
own work than your dreams! Nothing belongs to
you so much! Substance, form, duration, actor,
spectator—in these comedies you act as your
complete selves! And yet it is just here that you
are afraid and ashamed of yourselves, and even
Oedipus, the wise Oedipus, derived consolation
from the thought that we cannot be blamed for
what we dream. From this I must conclude that
the great majority of men must have some dreadful
dreams to reproach themselves with. If it were
otherwise, to how great an extent would these
nocturnal fictions have been exploited in the
interests of man's pride! Need I add that the
wise Oedipus was right, that we are really not
responsible for our dreams any more than for our
waking hours, and that the doctrine of free will has
as its parents man's pride and sense of power!
Perhaps I say this too often; but that does not
prove that it is not true.
129.
The Alleged Combat of Motives. —People
speak of the " combat of motives," but they desig-
nate by this expression that which is not a com-
bat of motives at all. What I mean is that, in
our meditative consciousness, the consequences of
different actions which we think we are able to
carry out present themselves successively, one after
the other, and we compare these consequences in
our mind. We think we have come to a decision
concerning an action after we have established to
our own satisfaction that the consequences of this



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 133
action will be favourable. Before we arrive at this
conclusion, however, we often seriously worry be-
cause of the great difficulties we experience in
guessing what the consequences are likely to be,
and in seeing them in their full importance, without
exception—and,after all this, we must reckon up any
fortuitous elements that are likely to arise. Then
comes the chief difficulty: all the consequences
which we have with such difficulty determined one
by one must be weighed on some scales against
each other; and it only too often comes about that,
owing to the difference in the quality of all the con-
ceivable consequences, both scales and weights are
lacking for this casuistry of advantage.
Even supposing, however, that in this case we
are able to overcome the difficulty, and that mere
hazard has placed in our scales results which permit
of a mutual balance, we have now, in the idea of
the consequences of a particular action, a motive
for performing this very action, but only one motive!
When we have finally decided to act, however, we
are fairly often influenced by another order of mo-
tives than those of the " image of the consequences. "
What brings this about may be the habitual work-
ing of our inner machinery, or some little encourage-
ment on the part of a person whom we fear or
honour or love, or the love of comfort which prefers
to do that which lies nearest; or some stirring of
the imagination provoked at the decisive moment
by some event of trifling importance; or some
physical influence which manifests itself quite un-
expectedly; a mere whim brings it about; or
the outburst of a passion which, as it accidentally


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134 THE DAWN OF DAY.
happens, is ready to burst forth—in a word, motives
operate which we do not understand very well, or
which we do not understand at all, and which
we can never balance against one another in
advance.
It is probable that a contest is going on among
these motives too, a driving backwards and for-
wards, a rising and lowering of the parts, and it is
this which would be the real "contest of motives,"
something quite invisible and unknown to us. I
have calculated the consequences and the successes,
and in doing so have set a very necessary motive
in the line of combat with the other motives,—but
I am as little able to draw up this battle line as to
see it: the battle itself is hidden from my sight,
as likewise is the victory, as victory; for I certainly
come to know what I shall finally do, but I cannot
know what motive has in the end proved to be the
victor. Nevertheless, we are decidedly not in the
habit of taking all these unconscious phenomena
into account, and we generally conceive of the pre-
liminary stages of an action only so far as they
are conscious: thus we mistake the combat of the
motives for a comparison of the possible con-
sequences of different actions,—a mistake that
brings with it most important consequences, and
consequences that are most fatal to the develop-
ment of morals.
130.
AiMS? WILL ? —We have accustomed ourselves
to believe in two kingdoms, the domain of pur-
poses and volition, and the domain of chance. In



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 135
this latter domain everything is done senselessly,
there is a continual going to and fro without any
one being able to say why or wherefore. We stand
in awe of this powerful realm of the great cosmic
stupidity, for in most instances we learn to know
it when it falls down upon the other world, that
of aims and intentions, like a slate from a roof,
always overwhelming some beautiful purpose of
ours.
This belief in these two kingdoms arises from
ancient romanticism and legend: we clever dwarfs,
with all our will and aims, are interfered with,
knocked down, and very often crushed to death
by those ultra-stupid giants, the accidents,—but
in spite of this we should not like to be deprived
of the fearful poetry of their proximity, for these
monsters very often make their appearance when
life in the spider's web of definite aims has become
too tiresome or too anxious for us, and they some-
times bring about a divine diversion when their
hands for once tear the whole web in pieces,—not
that these irrational beings ever intend to do what
they do, or even observe it. But their coarse and
bony hands rend our web as if it were thin air.
Moira was the name given by the Greeks to
this realm of the incalculable and of sublime and
eternal limitedness; and they set it round their
gods like a horizon beyond which they could neither
see nor act,—with that secret defiance of the gods
which one meets with in different nations: the gods
are worshipped, but a final trump card is held in
readiness to play against them. As instances of
this we may recollect that the Indians and the


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136 THE DAWN OF DAY.
Persians, who conceived all their gods as having
to depend upon the sacrifices of mortals, so that
if it came to the worst the mortals could, at least,
let the gods die of starvation; or the gods of the
stubborn and melancholy Scandinavians, who en-
joyed a quiet revenge in the thought that a twilight
of the gods was to come as some compensation for
the perpetual fear which their evil gods caused them.
The case of Christianity was very different, for its
essential feelings were not those of the Indians,
Persians, Greeks, or Scandinavians. Christianity
commanded its disciples to worship in the dust the
spirit of power, and to kiss the very dust . It gave
the world to understand that this omnipotent "realm
of stupidity" was not so stupid as it seemed, and that
we, on the contrary, were stupid when we could not
perceive that behind this realm stood God Himself:
He who, although fond of dark, crooked, and won-
derful ways, at last brought everything to a "glorious
end.
" This new myth of God, who had hitherto
been mistaken for a race of giants or Moira, and who
was now Himself the spinner and weaver of webs
and purposes even more subtle than those of our
own intellect—so subtle, indeed, that they appear to
be incomprehensible and even unreasonable—this
myth was so bold a transformation and so daring a
paradox that the over-refined ancient world could
not resist it, however extravagant and contradictory
the thing seemed: for, let it be said in confidence,
there was a contradiction in it,—if our intellect can-
not divine the intellect and aims of God, how did
it divine this quality of its intellect and this quality
of God's intellect?


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 137
In more modern times, indeed, the doubt has in-
creased as to whether the slate that falls from the
roof is really thrown by " Divine love," and mankind
again harks back to the old romance of giants and
dwarfs. Let us learn then, for it is time we did
so, that even in our supposed separate domain of
aims and reason the giants likewise rule. And
our aims and reason are not dwarfs, but giants.
And our own webs are just as often and as clumsily
rent by ourselves as by the slate. And not every-
thing is purpose that is called purpose, and still
less is everything will that is called will. And if
you come to the conclusion, "Then there is only
one domain, that of stupidity and hazard? " it must
be added that possibly there is only one domain,
possibly there is neither will nor aim, and we may
only have imagined these things. Those iron hands
of necessity that shake the dice-box of chance con-
tinue their game indefinitely: hence, it must happen
that certain throws perfectly resemble every degree
of appropriateness and good sense. It may be that
our own voluntary acts and purposes are merely
such throws, and that we are too circumscribed
and vain to conceive our extremely circumscribed
state! that we ourselves shake the dice-box with
iron hands, and do nothing in our most deliberate
actions but play the game of necessity. Possibly!
To rise beyond this "possibly" we should indeed
have been guests in the Underworld, playing at dice
and betting with Proserpine at the table of the
goddess herself.


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I38 THE DAWN OF DAY.
Moral Fashions. —How moral judgments as
a whole have changed! The greatest marvels of
the morality of antiquity, such as Epictetus, knew
nothing of the glorification, now so common, of
the spirit of sacrifice, of living for others: after the
fashion of morality now prevailing we should really
call them immoral; for they fought with all their
strength for their own ego and against all sympathy
for others, especially for the sufferings and moral
imperfections of others. Perhaps they would reply
to us by saying, " If you feel yourselves to be such
dull and ugly people, by all means think of others
more than yourselves. You will be quite right in
doing so! "
132.
The Last Echoes of Christianity in
MORals. —"On n'est bon que par la pitte: il
faut done qu'il y ait quelque pitie" dans tous nos
sentiments"—so says morality nowadays. And
how does this come about? The fact that the
man who performs social, sympathetic,disinterested,
and benevolent actions is now considered as the
moral man: this is perhaps the most general
effect, the most complete transformation, that
Christianity has produced in Europe; perhaps in
spite of itself, and not by any means because this
was part of its essential doctrine. But this was
the residuum of those Christian feelings that pre-
vailed at the time when the contrary and thoroughly
selfish faith in the " one thing needful," the absolute


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 13$
importance of eternal and personal salvation, to-
gether with the dogmas upon which this belief had
rested,'were gradually receding, and when the
auxiliary beliefs in "love" and "love of one's
neighbour," harmonising with the extraordinary
practice of charity by the Church, were thereby
coming to the front. The more people gradually
became separated from the dogmas, the more did
they seek some sort of justification for this separa-
tion in a cult of the love of humanity: not to fall
short in this respect of the Christian ideal, but to
excel it if possible, was the secret stimulus of all
the French free-thinkers from Voltaire to Auguste
Comte; and this latter with his famous moral
formula "vivre pour autrui" has indeed out-
christianised even Christianity!
It was Schopenhauer in Germany and John
Stuart Mill in England who were the means of
bringing into the greatest prominence this doctrine
of sympathetic affections and of pity or utility to
others as a principle of action; but these men
themselves were only echoes. From about the
time of the French Revolution these doctrines
have manifested themselves in various places with
enormous force. Since then they have shown them-
selves in their coarsest as well as their most subtle
form, and all Socialistic principles have almost
involuntarily taken their stand on the common
ground of this doctrine. At the present time there
is perhaps no more widely spread prejudice than
that of thinking that we know what really and
truly constitutes morality. Every one now seems
to learn with satisfaction that society is beginning


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140 THE DAWN OF DAY.
to adapt the individual to the general needs, and
that it is at the same time the happiness and
sacrifice of each one to consider himself as a useful
member and instrument of the whole. They have
still, however, doubts as to the form in which this
whole is to be looked for, whether in a state already
existing, or in one which has yet to be established,
or in a nation, or in an international brotherhood, or
in new and small economic communities. On this
point there is still much reflection, doubt, strug-
gling, excitement, and passion; but it is pleasant
and wonderful to observe the unanimity with which
the " ego" is called upon to practice self-denial,
until, in the form of adaptation to the whole, it
once again secures its own fixed sphere of rights
and duties,—until, indeed, it has become something
quite new and different. Nothing else is being
attempted, whether admitted or not, than the com-
plete transformation, even the weakening and
suppression of the individual: the supporters of
the majority never tire of enumerating and ana-
thematising all that is bad, hostile, lavish, ex-
pensive, and luxurious in the form of individual
existence that has hitherto prevailed; they hope
that society may be administered in a cheaper, less
dangerous, more uniform, and more harmonious
way when nothing is left but large corporations
and their members. All that is considered as good
which in any way corresponds to this desire for
grouping men into one particular society, and to
the minor cravings which necessarily accompany
this desire,—this is the chief moral current of our
time; sympathy and social feelings are working


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 14I
hand in glove. (Kant is still outside of this move-
ment: he expressly teaches that we should be
insensible to the sufferings of others if our ben-
evolence is to have any moral value,—a doctrine
which Schopenhauer, very angrily, as may easily
be imagined, described as the Kantian absurdity. )
1 33-
"NO LONGER THINKING OF ONE'S SELF. "—
Let us seriously consider why we should jump into
the water to rescue some one who has just fallen in
before our eyes, although we may have no particular
sympathy for him. We do it for pity's sake; no
one thinks now but of his neighbour,—so says
thoughtlessness. Why do we experience grief and
uneasiness when we see some one spit blood, al-
though we may be really ill-disposed towards him
and wish him no good? Out of pity; we have
ceased to think of ourselves,—so says thoughtless-
ness again. The truth is thatinourpity—I mean by
this what we erroneously call" pity "—we no longer
think consciously of ourselves, but quite uncon-
sciously, exactly as when slipping we unconsciously
make the best counter-motions possible in order to
recover our balance, and in doing so clearly use all
our intelligence. A mishap to another offends us;
it would bring our impotence, or perhaps our coward-
ice, into strong relief if we could do nothing to help
him ; or in itself it would give rise to a diminution of
our honour in the eyes of others and of ourselves.
Or again, accidents that happen to others act as
finger-posts to point out our own danger,and even as


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142 THE DAWN OF DAY.
indications of human peril and frailty they can pro-
duce a painful effect upon us. We shake off this
kind of pain and offence, and balance it by an act
of pity behind which may be hidden a subtle form
of self-defence or even revenge. That at bottom
we strongly think of ourselves may easily be divined
from the decision that we arrive at in all cases where
we can avoid the sight of those who are suffering or
starving or wailing. We make up our minds not
to avoid such people when we can approach them
as powerful and helpful ones, when we can safely
reckon upon their applause, or wish to feel the con-
trast of our own happiness, or, again, when we hope
to get rid of our own boredom. It is misleading to
call the suffering that we experience at such a sight,
and which may be of a very different kind, com-
miseration. For in all cases it is a suffering from
which the suffering person before us is free: it is our
own suffering, just as his suffering is his own. It is
thus only this personal feeling of misery that we
get rid of by acts of compassion. Nevertheless, we
never act thus from one single motive: as it is certain
that we wish to free ourselves from suffering thereby,
it is also certain that by the same action we yield to
an impulse of pleasure. Pleasure arises at the sight
of a contrast to our own condition, at the knowledge
that we should be able to help if only we wished to
do so, at the thought of the praise and gratitude
which we should gain if we did help, at the very act
of helping, in so far as this might prove successful
(and because something which is gradually seen to
be successful gives pleasure to the doer); but even
more particularly at the feeling that our interven-


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 143
tion brings to an end some deplorable injustice,
—even the outburst of one's indignation is in-
vigorating.
All this, including even things still more subtle,
comprises "pity. " How clumsily with this one
word does language fall foul of such a complex and
polyphonous organism! That pity, on the other
hand, is identical with the suffering the sight of
which brings it about, or that it has a particularly
subtle and penetrating comprehension of it: this is
in contradiction to experience, and he who has glori-
fied pity under these two heads lacked sufficient
experience in the domain of morals. That is why
I am seized with some doubts when reading of the
incredible things attributed by Schopenhauer to
pity. It is obvious that he thereby wished to
make us believe in the great novelty he brought
forward, viz. , that pity—the pity which he observed
so superficially and described so badly—was the
source of all and every past and future moral action,
—and all this precisely because of those faculties
which he had begun by attributing to it.
What is it in the end that distinguishes men
without pity from men who are really compassion-
ate? In particular, to give merely an approximate
indication, they have not the sensitive feeling for
fear, the subtle faculty for perceiving danger: nor
yet is their vanity so easily wounded if something
happens which they might have been able to pre-
vent,—the caution of their pride commands them
not to interfere uselessly with the affairs of others;
they even act on the belief that every one should
help himself and play his own cards. Again, in


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144 THE DAWN OF DAY.
most cases they are more habituated to bearing pain
than compassionate men, and it does not seem at
all unjust to them that others should suffer, since
they themselves have suffered. Lastly, the state
of soft-heartedness is as painful to them as is the
state of stoical impassability to compassionate men:
they have only disdainful words for sensitive hearts,
as they think that such a state of feeling is danger-
ous to their own manliness and calm bravery,—
they conceal their tears from others and wipe them
off, angry with themselves. They belong to a
different type of egoists from the compassionate
men,—but to call them, in a distinct sense, evil and
the compassionate ones good, is merely a moral
fashion which has had its innings, just as the reverse
fashion had also its innings, and a long innings, too.
134-
To what Extent we must Beware of Pity.
—Pity, in so far as it actually gives rise to suffering
—and this must be our only point of view here—is a
weakness, like every other indulgence in an injuri-
ous emotion. It increases suffering throughout the
world, and although here and there a certain amount
of suffering may be indirectly diminished or removed
altogether as a consequence of pity, we must not
bring forward these occasional consequences, which
are on the whole insignificant, to justify the nature
of pity which, as has already been stated, is pre-
judicial. Supposing that it prevailed, even if only
for one day, it would bring humanity to utter
ruin. In itself the nature of pity is no better than


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 145
that of any other craving; it is only where it is
called for and praised—and this happens when
people do not understand what is injurious in it, but
find in it a sort of joy—that a good conscience be-
comes attached to it; it is only then that we willingly
yield to it, and do not shrink from acknowledging
it. In other circumstances where it is understood
to be dangerous, it is looked upon as a weakness;
or, as in the case of the Greeks, as an unhealthy
periodical emotion the danger of which might be
removed by temporary and voluntary discharges.
If a man were to undertake the experiment of de-
liberately devoting his attention to the opportunities
afforded by practical life for the exercise of pity,
and were over and over again to picture in his own
mind the misery he might meet with in his im-
mediate surroundings, he would inevitably become
melancholy and ill. If, however, he wished in any
sense of the word to serve humanity as a physician,
he would have to take many precautions with respect
to this feeling, as otherwise it would paralyse him
at all critical moments, undermine the foundations
of his knowledge, and unnerve his helpful and
delicate hand.
135.
Arousing Pity. —Among savages men think
with a moral shudder of the possibility of becoming
an object of pity, for such a state they regard as
deprived of all virtue. Pitying is equivalent to de-
spising: they do not want to see a contemptible
being suffer, for this would afford them no enjoy-
K


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146 THE DAWN OF DAY.
ment. On the other hand, to behold one of their
enemies suffering, some one whom they look upon
as their equal in pride, but whom torture cannot
induce to give up his pride, and in general to see
some one suffer who refuses to lower himself by
appealing for pity—which would in their eyes be
the most profound and shameful humiliation—this
is the very joy of joys. Such a spectacle excites
the deepest admiration in the soul of the savage,
and he ends by killing such a brave man when it
is in his power, afterwards according funeral
honours to the unbending one. If he had groaned,
however; if his countenance had lost its expression
of calm disdain ; if he had shown himself to be con-
temptible,—well, in such a case he might have
been allowed to live like a dog: he would no longer
have aroused the pride of the spectator, and pity
would have taken the place of admiration.
136.
Happiness in Pity. —If, as is the case among
the Hindus, we decree the end and aim of all in-
tellectual activity to be the knowledge of human
misery, and if for generation after generation this
dreadful resolution be steadily adhered to, pity in
the eyes of such men of hereditary pessimism comes
to have a new value as a preserver of life, something
that helps to make existence endurable, although
it may seem worthy of being rejected with horror
and disgust. Pity becomes an antidote to suicide,
a sentiment which brings pleasure with it and en-
ables us to taste superiority in small doses. It


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 147
gives some diversion to our minds, makes our hearts
full, banishes fear and lethargy, and incites us to
speak, to complain, or to act: it is a relative hap-
piness when compared with the misery of the
knowledge that hampers the individual on every
side, bewilders him, and takes away his breath.
Happiness, however, no matter of what nature it
may be, gives us air and light and freedom of
movement.
137-
Why Double the " Ego " ? —To view our own
experiences in the same light as we are in the habit
of looking at those of others is very comforting
and an advisable medicine. On the other hand, to
look upon the experiences of others and adopt
them as if they were our own—which is called for
by the philosophy of pity—would ruin us in a very
short time: let us only make the experiment without
trying to imagine it any longer! The first maxim
is, in addition, undoubtedly more in accordance with
reason and goodwill towards reason; for we esti-
mate more objectively the value and significance
of an event when it happens to others,—the value,
for instance, of a death, loss of money or slander.
But pity, taking as its principle of action the in-
junction, " Suffer the misfortune of another as much
as he himself," would lead the point of view of the
ego with all its exaggerations and deviations to
become the point of view of the other person, the
sympathiser: so that we should have to suffer at
the same time from our own ego and the other's
ego. In this way we would voluntarily over-


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I48 THE DAWN OF DAY.
load ourselves with a double irrationality, instead of
making the burden of our own as light as possible.
138.
Becoming more Tender. —Whenever we love
some one and venerate and admire him, and after-
wards come to perceive that he is suffering—which
always causes us the utmost astonishment, since
we cannot but feel that the happiness we derive
from him must flow from a superabundant source
of personal happiness—our feelings of love, ven-
eration, and admiration are essentially changed:
they become more tender; that is, the gap that
separates us seems to be bridged over and there
appears to be an approach to equality. It now
seems possible to give him something in return,
whilst we had previously imagined him as being
altogether above our gratitude. Our ability to
requite him for what we have received from him
arouses in us feelings of much joy and pleasure.
We endeavour to ascertain what can best calm the
grief of our friend, and we give it to him; if he
wishes for kind words, looks, attentions, services, or
presents, we give them; but, above all, if he would
like to see us suffering from the sight of his suffer-
ing, we pretend to suffer, for all this secures for us
the enjoyment of active gratitude, which is equiva-
lent in a way to good-natured revenge. If he wants
none of these things, and refuses to accept them
from us, we depart from him chilled and sad, almost
mortified; it appears to us as if our gratitude had
been declined, and on this point of honour even the


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 149
best of men is still somewhat touchy. It results
from all this that even in the best case there is some-
thing humiliating in suffering, and something ele-
vating and superior in sympathy,—a fact which
will keep the two feelings apart for ever and ever.
139-
Higher in Name only. —You say that the
morality of pity is a higher morality than that of
stoicism? Prove it! But take care not to measure
the " higher " and " lower " degrees of morality once
more by moral yardsticks; for there are no absolute
morals. So take your yardstick from somewhere
else, and be on your guard!
140.
Praise and Blame. —When a war has come to
an unsuccessful conclusion we try to find the man
who is to blame for the war; when it comes to a
successful conclusion we praise the man who is re-
sponsible for it. In all unsuccessful cases attempts
are made to blame somebody, for non-success gives
rise to dejection, against which the single possible
remedy isjnvoluntarily applied; a new incitement
of the sense of power; and this incitement is found
in the condemnation of the "guilty" one. This
guilty one is not perhaps the scapegoat of the faults
of others; he is merely the victim of the feeble,
humiliated, and depressed people who wish to prove
upon some one that they have not yet lost all their
power. Even self-condemnation after a defeat may
be the means of restoring the feeling of power.


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ISO THE DAWN OF DAY.
On the other hand, glorification of the originator
is often but an equally blindresultof another instinct
that demands its victim,—and in this case the
sacrifice appears to be sweet and attractive even for
the victim. This happens when the feeling of power
is satiated in a nation or a society by so great and
fascinating a success that a weariness of victory
supervenes and pride wishes to be discharged: a
feeling of self-sacrifice is aroused and looks for its
object. Thus, whether we are blamed or praised
we merely, as a rule, provide opportunities for the
gratification of others, and are only too often caught
up and whirled away for our neighbours to discharge
upon us their accumulated feelings of praise or
blame. In both cases we confer a benefit upon
them for which we deserve no credit and they no
thanks.
141.
More Beautiful but Less Valuable. —
Picturesque morality: such is the morality of those
passions characterised by sudden outbursts, abrupt
transitions; pathetic, impressive, dreadful, and
solemn attitudes and gestures. It is the semi-savage
stage of morality: never let us be tempted to set it
on a higher plane merely on account of its aesthetic
charms.
142.
SYMPATHY. —In order to understand our neigh-
bour, that is, in order to reproduce his sentiments in
ourselves, we often, no doubt, plumb the cause of his
feelings, as, for example, by asking ourselves, Why


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 151
is he sad? in order that we may become sad our
selves for the same reason. But we much more
frequently neglect to act thus, and we produce these
feelings in ourselves in accordance with the effects
which they exhibit in the person we are studying,
—by imitating in our own body the expression of
his eyes, his voice, his gait, his attitude (or, at any
rate, the likeness of these things in words, pictures,
and music), or we may at least endeavour to mimic
the action of his muscles and nervous system. A
like feeling will then spring up in us as the result
of an old association of movements and sentiments
which has been trained to run backwards and for-
wards. We have developed to a very high pitch this
knack of sounding the feelings of others, and when
we are in the presence of any one else we bring this
faculty of ours into play almost involuntarily,—let
the inquirer observe the animation of a woman's
countenance and notice how it vibrates and quivers
with animation as the result of the continual imita-
tion and reflection of what is going on around her.
It is music, however, more than anything else
that shows us what past-masters we are in the rapid
and subtle divination of feelings and sympathy;
for even if music is only the imitation of an imita-
tion of feelings, nevertheless, despite its distance
and vagueness, it often enables us to participate in
those feelings, so that we become sad without any
reason for feeling so, like the fools that we are,
merely because we hear certain sounds and rhythms
that somehow or other remind us of the intonation
and the movements, or perhaps even only of the
behaviour, of sorrowful people. It is related of a


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152 THE DAWN OF DAY.
certain Danish king that he was wrought up to such
a pitch of warlike enthusiasm by the song of a
minstrel that he sprang to his feet and killed five
persons of his assembled court: there was neither
war nor enemy; there was rather the exact opposite;
yet the power of the retrospective inference from a
feeling to the cause of it was sufficiently strong in
this king to overpower both his observation and his
reason. Such,however,is almost invariablythe effect
of music (provided that it thrills us), and we have no
need of such paradoxical instances to recognise this,
—the state of feeling into which music transports
us is almost always in contradiction to the appear-
ance of our actual state, and of our reasoning power
which recognises this actual state and its causes.
If we inquire how it happened that this imitation
of the feelings of others has become so common,
there will be no doubt as to the answer: man being
the most timid of all beings because of his subtle
and delicate nature has been made familiar through
his timidity with this sympathy for, and rapid com-
prehension of, the feelings of others, even of animals.
For century after century he saw danger in every-
thing that was unfamiliar to him, in anything that
happened to be alive, and whenever the spectacle
of such things and creatures came before his eyes
he imitated their features and attitude, drawing at
the same time his own conclusion as to the nature
of the evil intentions they concealed. This interpre-
tation of all movements and all facial characteristics
in the sense of intentions, man has even brought to
bear on things inanimate,—urged on as he was by
the illusion that there was nothing inanimate. I


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 153
believe that this is the origin of everything that we
now call a feeling for nature, that sensation of joy
which men experience at the sight of the sky, the
fields, the rocks, the forests, the storms, the stars,
the landscapes, and spring: without our old habits
of fear which forced us to suspect behind everything
a kind of second and more recondite sense, we should
now experience no delight in nature, in the same
way as men and animals do not cause us to rejoice
if we have not first been deterred by that source of
all understanding, namely, fear. For joy and agree-
able surprise, and finally the feeling of ridicule, are
the younger children of sympathy, and the much
younger brothers and sisters of fear. The faculty
of rapid perception, which is based on the faculty of
rapid dissimulation, decreases in proud and auto-
cratic men and nations, as they are less timid; but,
on the other hand, every category of understanding
and dissimulation is well known to timid peoples,
and among them is to be found the real home of
imitative arts and superior intelligence.
When, proceeding from the theory of sympathy
such as I have just outlined, I turn my attention to
the theory, now so popular and almost sacrosanct,
of a mystical process by means of which pity blends
two beings into one, and thus permits them imme-
diately to understand one another, when I recollect
that even so clear a brain as Schopenhauer's de-
lighted in such fantastic nonsense, and that he in
his turn transplanted this delight into other lucid
and semi-lucid brains, I feel unlimited astonishment
and compassion. How great must be the pleasure
we experience in this senseless tomfoolery! How


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154 THE DAWN OF DAY.
near must even a sane man be to insanity as soon
as he listens to his own secret intellectual desires ! —
Why did Schopenhauer really feel so grateful, so
profoundly indebted to Kant? He revealed on one
occasion the undoubted answer to this question.
Some one had spoken of the way in which the
qualitas occulta of Kant's Categorical Imperative
might be got rid of, so that the theory itself might be
rendered intelligible. Whereupon Schopenhauer
gave utterance to the following outburst: "An intel-
ligible Categorical Imperative! Preposterous idea!
Stygian darkness! God forbid that it should ever
become intelligible! The fact that there is actually
something unintelligible, that this misery of the
understanding and its conceptions is limited, condi-
tional, final, and deceptive,—this is beyond question
Kant's great gift. " Let any one consider whether
a man can be in possession of a desire to gain an
insight into moral things when he feels himself
comforted from the start by a belief in the incon-
ceivableness of these things! one who still honestly
believes in illuminations from above, in magic, in
ghostly appearances, and in the metaphysical ugli-
ness of the toad!
143-
Woe to us if this Impulse should Rage!
—Supposing that the impulse towards devotion
and care for others (" sympathetic affection ") were
doubly as strong as it now is, life on earth could
not be endured. Let it only be considered how
many foolish things every one of us does day by
day and hour by hour, merely out of solicitude and


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 155
devotion for himself, and how unbearable he seems
in doing so: and what then would it be like if we
were to become for other people the object of
the stupidities and importunities with which up to
the present they have only tormented themselves!
Should we not then take precipitately to our heels
as soon as one of our neighbours came towards us?
And would it not be necessary to overwhelm this
sympathetic affection with the abuse that we now
reserve for egoism?
144.
Closing our Ears to the Complaints of
OTHERs. —When we let our sky be clouded by the
complaints and suffering of other mortals, who
must bear the consequences of such gloom? No
doubt those other mortals, in addition to all their
other burdens! If we are merely to be the echoes
of their complaints, we cannot accord them either
help or comfort; nor can we do so if we were
continually keeping our ears open to listen to them,
—unless we have learnt the art of the Olympians,
who, instead of trying to make themselves unhappy,
endeavoured to feel edified by the misfortunes of
mankind. But this is something too Olympian for
us, although, in our enjoyment of tragedy, we have
already taken a step towards this ideal divine can-
nibalism.
145.
"UNEgoISTic. "—This man is empty and wishes
to be filled, that one is over-full and wishes to be
emptied: both of them feel themselves urged on


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156 THE DAWN OF DAY.
to look for an individual who can help them. And
this phenomenon, interpreted in a higher sense, is
in both cases known by the same name, " love. "
Well?