No More Learning

I recognised Socrates and Plato as symptoms of de-
cline, as instruments in the disintegration of Hellas,
as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek (“ The Birth of
Tragedy,” 1872). That consensus sapientium, as I
perceived ever more and more clearly, did not in
the least prove that they were right in the matter on
which they agreed. It proved rather that these sages
themselves must have been alike in some physiologi-
cal particular, in order to assume the same negative
attitude towards life—in order to be bound to assume
that attitude. After all, judgments and valuations
of life, whether for or against, cannot be true: their
only value lies in the fact that they are symptoms;
they can be considered only as symptoms,-per se
such judgments are nonsense. You must therefore
endeavour by all means to reach out and try to grasp
this astonishingly subtle axiom, that the value of life
cannot be estimated. A living man cannot do so,
because he is a contending party, or rather the very
object in the dispute, and not a judge; nor can a
dead man estimate it-for other reasons.
philosopher to see a problem in the value of life, is
almost an objection against him, a note of interro-
gation set against his wisdom-a lack of wisdom.
What? Is it possible that all these great sages were
not only decadents, but that they were not even
wise? Let me however return to the problem of
Socrates.
3
To judge from his origin, Socrates belonged to
the lowest of the low: Socrates was mob. You
know, and you can still see it for yourself, how ugly
For a


## p. 11 (#31) ##############################################

THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES
11
he was.
But ugliness, which in itself is an objec-
tion, was almost a refutation among the Greeks.
Was Socrates really a Greek? Ugliness is not infre-
quently the expression of thwarted development, or
of development arrested by crossing. In other cases
it
appears as a decadent development. The anthro-
pologists among the criminal specialists declare that
the typical criminal is ugly: monstrum in fronte,
monstrum in animo. But the criminal is a decadent. *
Was Socrates a typical criminal ? --At all events this
would not clash with that famous physiognomist's
judgment which was so repugnant to Socrates
friends. While on his way through Athens a cer-
tain foreigner who was no fool at judging by looks,
told Socrates to his face that he was a monster, that
his body harboured all the worst vices and passions.
And Socrates replied simply: “You know me
sir ! "-
4 4
Not only are the acknowledged wildness and
anarchy of Socrates' instincts indicativeof decadence,
but also that preponderance of the logical faculties
and that malignity of the mis-shapen which was
his special characteristic. Neither should we forget
those aural delusions which were religiously inter-
preted as “the demon of Socrates. ” Everything in
him is exaggerated, buffo, caricature, his nature is
also full of concealment, of ulterior motives, and
* It should be borne in mind that Nietzsche recognised two
types of criminals,-the criminal from strength, and the
criminal from weakness. This passage alludes to the latter,
Aphorism 45, p. 103, alludes to the former. - TR.


## p. 12 (#32) ##############################################

12
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
=
of underground currents. I try to understand the
idiosyncrasy from which the Socratic equation
Reason=Virtue Happiness, could have arisen:
the weirdest equation ever seen, and one which was
essentially opposed to all the instincts of the older
Hellenes.
5
With Socrates Greek taste veers round in favour
of dialectics : what actually occurs? In the first
place a noble taste is vanquished: with dialectics
the mob comes to the top. Before Socrates' time,
dialectical manners were avoided in good society:
they were regarded as bad manners, they were com-
promising. Young men were cautioned against
them. All such proffering of one's reasons was
looked upon with suspicion. Honest things like
honest men do not carry their reasons on their sleeve
in such fashion. It is not good form to make a
show of everything. That which needs to be proved
cannot be worth much. Wherever authority still
belongs to good usage, wherever men do not prove
but command, the dialectician is regarded as a sort
of clown. People laugh at him, they do not take
him seriously. Socrates was a clown who succeeded
in making men take him seriously: what then was
the matter?
6
A man resorts to dialectics only when he has no
other means to hand. People know that they excite
suspicion with it and that it is not very convincing.
Nothing is more easily dispelled than a dialectical
effect: this is proved by the experience of every


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THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES
13
gathering in which discussions are held. It can be
only the last defence of those who have no other
weapons. One must require to extort one's right,
.
otherwise one makes no use of it. That is why the
Jews were dialecticians. Reynard the Fox was a
dialectician : what? —and was Socrates one as well?
7
Is the Socratic irony an expression of revolt, of
mob resentment? Does Socrates, as a creature
suffering under oppression, enjoy his innate ferocity
in the knife-thrusts of the syllogism? Does he wreak
his revenge on the noblemen he fascinates ? -As a
dialectician a man has a merciless instrument to
wield; he can play the tyrant with it: he compro-
mises when he conquers with it. The dialectician
leaves it to his opponent to prove that he is no idiot :
he infuriates, he likewise paralyses. The dialectician
cripples the intellect of his opponent. Can it be that
dialectics was only a form of revenge in Socrates ?
8
I have given you to understand in what way
Socrates was able to repel : now it is all the more
necessary to explain how he fascinated. -One reason
is that he discovered a new kind of Agon, and that
he was the first fencing-master in the best circles in
Athens. He fascinated by appealing to the com-
bative instinct of the Greeks,-he introduced a
variation into the contests between men and youths.
Socrates was also a great erotic.


## p. 14 (#34) ##############################################

14
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
9
But Socrates divined still more. He saw right
through his noble Athenians; he perceived that his
case, his peculiar case, was no exception even in his
time. The same kind of degeneracy was silently
preparing itself everywhere: ancient Athens was
dying out. And Socrates understood that the whole
world needed him,-his means, his remedy, his
special artifice for self-preservation. Everywhere
the instincts were in a state of anarchy ; everywhere
people were within an ace of excess: the monstrum
in animo was the general danger. “The instincts
would play the tyrant; we must discover a counter-
tyrant who is stronger than they. ” On the occasion
when that physiognomist had unmasked Socrates,
and had told him what he was—a crater full of evil
desires, the great Master of Irony let fall one or two
words more, which provide the key to his nature.
“This is true,” he said, " but I overcame them all. ”
How did Socrates succeed in mastering himself?
His case was at bottom only the extreme and most
apparent example of a state of distress which was
beginning to be general : that state in which no one
was able to master himself and in which the instincts
turned one against the other. As the extreme
example of this state, he fascinated—his terrifying
ugliness made him conspicuous to every eye: it is
quite obvious that he fascinated still more as a reply,
as a solution, as an apparent cure of this case.
IO
When a man finds it necessary, as Socrates did,
to create a tyrant out of reason, there is no small


## p. 15 (#35) ##############################################

THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES
15
»
danger that something else wishes to play the tyrant.
Reason was then discovered as a saviour; neither
Socrates nor his “patients” were at liberty to be
rational or not, as they pleased ; at that time it was
de rigueur, it had become a last shift. The fanaticism
with which the whole of Greek thought plunges into
reason, betrays a critical condition of things : men
were in danger; there were only two alternatives :
either perish or else be absurdly rational. The moral
bias of Greek philosophy from Plato onward, is the
outcome of a pathological condition, as is also its
appreciation of dialectics. Reason=Virtue=Happi-
ness, simply means: we must imitate Socrates, and
confront the dark passions permanently with the
light of day—the light of reason. We must at all
costs be clever, precise, clear: all yielding to the
instincts, to the unconscious, leads downwards.
II
I have now explained how Socrates fascinated :
he seemed to be a doctor, a Saviour. Is it necessary
to expose the errors which lay in his faith in “reason
at any price"? - It is a piece of self-deception on the
part of philosophers and moralists to suppose that
they can extricate themselves from degeneration
by merely waging war upon it. They cannot thus
extricate themselves : that which they choose as a
means, as the road to salvation, is in itself again only
an expression of degeneration—they only modify its
mode of manifesting itself: they do not abolish it.
Socrates was a misunderstanding. The whole of the
morality of amelioration—that of Christianity as well
-was a misunderstanding. The most blinding light


## p. 16 (#36) ##############################################

16
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
of day: reason at any price; life made clear, cold,
cautious, conscious, without instincts, opposed to the
instincts, was in itself only a disease, another kind of
disease—and by no means a return to “virtue,” to
“ health,” and to happiness. To be obliged to fight
the instincts—this is the formula of degeneration :
as long as life is in the ascending line, happiness is
the same as instinct.
12
-Did he understand this himself, this most in-
telligent of self-deceivers ? Did he confess this to
himself in the end, in the wisdom of his courage be-
fore death. Socrates wished to die. Not Athens,
but his own hand gave him the draught of hemlock;
he drove Athens to the poisoned cup. “ Socrates is
not a doctor," he whispered to himself,“ death alone
can be a doctor here. Socrates himself has only
been ill a long while. "
a


## p. 17 (#37) ##############################################

“REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY
I
You ask me what all idiosyncrasy is in philosophers?
. . . For instance their lack of the historical sense,
their hatred even of theidea of Becoming, their Egyp-
tianism. They imagine that they do honour to a
thing by divorcing it from history sub specie æterni,-
when they make a mummy of it. All the ideas that
philosophers have treated for thousands of years,
have been mummied concepts; nothing real has
ever come out of their hands alive. These idolaters
of concepts merely kill and stuff things when they
worship,—they threaten the life of everything they
adore. Death, change, age, as well as procreation
and growth, are in their opinion objections, even re-
futations. That which is cannot evolve; that which
evolves is not. Now all of them believe, and even
with desperation, in Being. But, as they cannot lay
hold of it, they try to discover reasons why this
privilege is withheld from them. “ Some merely
apparent quality, some deception must be the cause
of our not being able to ascertain the nature of Being :
where is the deceiver? ” “We have him,” they cry
rejoicing, “it is sensuality! ” These senses, which
in other things are so immoral, cheat us concerning
the true world. Moral : we must get rid of the de-
ception of the senses, of Becoming, of history, of
-
2
17


## p. 18 (#38) ##############################################

18
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
falsehood. —History is nothing more than the belief
in the senses, the belief in falsehood. Moral: we
must
say "no" to everything in which the senses be-
lieve : to all the rest of mankind : all that belongs
to the “people. ” Let us be philosophers, mummies,
monotono-theists, grave-diggers ! And above all,
away with the body, this wretched idée fixe of the
senses, infected with all the faults of logic that exist,
refuted, even impossible, although it be impudent
enough to pose as if it were real !
2
With a feeling of great reverence I except the
name of Heraclitus. If the rest of the philosophic
gang rejected the evidences of the senses, because
the latter revealed a state of multifariousness and
change, he rejected the same evidence because it re-
vealed things as if they possessed permanence and
unity. Even Heraclitus did an injustice to the senses.
The latter lie neither as the Eleatics believed them
to lie, nor as he believed them to lie,—they do not
lie at all. The interpretations we give to their evi-
dence is what first introduces falsehood into it; for
instance the lie of unity, the lie of matter, of sub-
stance and of permanence. Reason is the cause of
our falsifying the evidence of the senses. In so far
as the senses show us a state of Becoming, of tran-
siency, and of change, they do not lie. But in de-
claring that Being was an empty illusion, Heraclitus
will remain eternally right. The “apparent” world
is the only world: the “true world” is no more than
a false adjunct thereto.


## p. 19 (#39) ##############################################

"REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY
19
3
And what delicate instruments of observation we
have in our senses! This human nose, for instance,
of which no philosopher has yet spoken with rever-
ence and gratitude, is, for the present, the most finely
adjusted instrument at our disposal : it is able to
register even such slight changes of movement as
the spectroscope would be unable to record. Our
scientific triumphs at the present day extend pre-
cisely so far as we have accepted the evidence of
our senses,—as we have sharpened and armed them,
and learned to follow them up to the end. What
remains is abortive and not yet science—that is to
say, metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistem-
ology, or formal science, or a doctrine of symbols,
like logic and its applied form mathematics. In all
these things reality does not come into consideration
at all, even as a problem ; just as little as does the
question concerning the general value of such a
convention of symbols as logic.
»
4
The other idiosyncrasy of philosophers is no less
dangerous; it consists in confusing the last and the
first things. They place that which makes its appear-
ance last-unfortunately! for it ought not to appear
at all. ! —the “highest concept,” that is to say, the
most general, the emptiest, the last cloudy streak of
evaporating reality, at the beginning as the begin-
ning. This again is only their manner of expressing
their veneration : the highest thing must not have
grown out of the lowest, it must not have grown at
all. . . . Moral: everything of the first rank must be


## p. 20 (#40) ##############################################

20
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
causa sui. To have been derived from something
else, is as good as an objection, it sets the value of a
thing in question. All superior values are of the first
rank, all the highest concepts—that of Being, of the
Absolute, of Goodness, of Truth, and of Perfection;
all these things cannot have been evolved, they must
therefore be causa sui. All these things cannot how-
ever be unlike one another, they cannot be opposed
to one another. Thus they attain to their stupend-
ous concept “God. ” The last, most attenuated and
emptiest thing is postulated as the first thing, as the
absolute cause, as ens realissimum. Fancy humanity
having to take the brain diseases of morbid cobweb-
spinners seriously! —And it has paid dearly for
having done so.
5
-Against this let us set the different manner in
which we (-you observe that I am courteous enough
to say “we”) conceive the problem of the error and
deceptiveness of things. Formerly people regarded
change and evolution in general as the proof of
appearance, as a sign of the fact that something
must be there that leads us astray. To-day, on the
other hand, we realise that precisely as far as the
rational bias forces us to postulate unity, identity,
permanence, substance, cause, materiality and being,
we are in a measure involved in error, driven
necessarily to error; however certain we may feel,
as the result of a strict examination of the matter,
that the error lies here. It is just the same here as
with the motion of the sun: In its case it was our
eyes that were wrong; in the matter of the concepts
above mentioned it is our language itself that pleads


## p. 21 (#41) ##############################################

“REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY
21
most constantly in their favour.
In its origin
language belongs to an age of the most rudimentary
forms of psychology: if we try to conceive of the
first conditions of the metaphysics of language, i. e. ,
in plain English, of reason, we immediately find
ourselves in the midst of a system of fetichism.
For here, the doer and his deed are seen in all cir-
cumstances, will is believed in as a cause in general ;
the ego is taken for granted, the ego as Being, and
as substance, and the faith in the ego as substance
is projected into all things—in this way, alone, the
concept "thing” is created. Being is thought into
and insinuated into everything as cause ; from the
concept “ego,” alone, can the concept“ Being” pro-
ceed. At the beginning stands the tremendously
fatal error of supposing the will to be something
that actuates,-a faculty. Now we know that it
is only a word. * Very much later, in a world a
thousand times more enlightened, the assurance, the
subjective certitude, in the handling of the categories
of reason came into the minds of philosophers as a
surprise. They concluded that these categories could
not be derived from experience,-on the contrary,
the whole of experience rather contradicts them.
Whence do they come therefore ? In India, as in
Greece, the same mistake was made: “we must
already once have lived in a higher world (/instead
of in a much lower one, which would have been the
truth! ), we must have been divine, for we possess
Nietzsche here refers to the concept “free will ” of the
Christians; this does not mean that there is no such thing
as will—that is to say a powerful determining force from
within. -TR.
"


## p. 22 (#42) ##############################################

22
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
reason! ”. . . Nothing indeed has exercised a more
simple power of persuasion hitherto than the error
of Being, as it was formulated by the Eleatics for
instance: in its favour are every word and every
sentence that we utter ! -Even the opponents of
the Eleatics succumbed to the seductive powers
of their concept of Being. Among others there
was Democritus in his discovery of the atom.
Reason” in language ! -oh what a deceptive old
witch it has been! I fear we shall never be rid of
God, so long as we still believe in grammar.
6
People will feel grateful to me if I condense a
point of view, which is at once so important and so
new, into four theses : by this means I shall facilitate
comprehension, and shall likewise challenge con-
tradiction.
Proposition One. The reasons upon which the
apparent nature of “this” world have been based,
rather tend to prove its reality,—any other kind of
reality defies demonstration.
Proposition Two. The characteristics with which
man has endowed the “true Being” of things, are
the characteristics of non-Being, of nonentity. The
“true world” has been erected upon a contradiction
of the real world; and it is indeed an apparent world,
seeing that it is merely a moralo-optical delusion.
Proposition Three. There is no sense in spinning
yarns about another world, provided, of course, that
we do not possess a mighty instinct which urges us
to slander, belittle, and cast suspicion upon this life :
in this case we should be avenging ourselves on


## p. 23 (#43) ##############################################

"REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY
23
this life with the phantasmagoria of “another,” of a
“ better” life.
Proposition Four. To divide the world into a
"true" and an “apparent” world, whether after the
manner of Christianity or of Kant (after all a
Christian in disguise), is only a sign of decadence,
-a symptom of degenerating life. The fact that
the artist esteems the appearance of a thing higher
than reality, is no objection to this statement. For
“appearance" signifies once more reality here, but
in a selected, strengthened and corrected form. The
tragic artist is no pessimist,—he says Yea to every-
thing questionable and terrible, he is Dionysian.
-


## p. 24 (#44) ##############################################

HOW THE “TRUE WORLD” ULTI-
MATELY BECAME A FABLE
-
THE HISTORY OF AN ERROR
1. THE true world, attainable to the sage, the pious
man and the man of virtue,-he lives in it, he is it.
(The most ancient form of the idea was
relatively clever, simple, convincing.
It was
a paraphrase of the proposition “I, Plato, am
the truth. ")
2. The true world which is unattainable for the
moment, is promised to the sage, to the pious man
and to the man of virtue (“to the sinner who
repents”).
(Progress of the idea : it becomes more
subtle, more insidious, more evasive,--it be-
comes a woman, it becomes Christian. )
3. The true world is unattainable, it cannot be
proved, it cannot promise anything; but even as a
thought, alone, it is a comfort, an obligation, a com-
mand.
(At bottom this is still the old sun; but
seen through mist and scepticism : the idea
has become sublime, pale, northern, Königs-
bergian. *)
* Kant was a native of Königsberg and lived there all his
life. Did Nietzsche know that Kant was simply a Scotch
Puritan, whose family had settled in Germany?
24


## p. 25 (#45) ##############################################

HOW THE “TRUE WORLD" BECAME A FABLE 25
4. The true world—is it unattainable? At all
events it is unattained. And as unattained it is
also unknown. Consequently it no longer comforts,
nor saves, nor constrains: what could something
unknown constrain us to?
(The grey of dawn. Reason stretches itself
and yawns for the first time. The cock-crow
of positivism. )
5. The “true world” -an idea that no longer
serves any purpose, that no longer constrains one to
anything,—a useless idea that has become quite
superfluous, consequently an exploded idea: let us
abolish it!
(Bright daylight; breakfast; the return
of common sense and of cheerfulness; Plato
blushes for shame and all free-spirits kick
up a shindy. )
6. We have suppressed the true world: what
world survives? the apparent world perhaps ?
Certainly not! In abolishing the true world we have
also abolished the world of appearance !
(Noon; the moment of the shortest
shadows; the end of the longest error; man-
kind's zenith; Incipit Zarathustra. )


## p. 26 (#46) ##############################################

MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF
NATURE
I
-
THERE is a time when all passions are simply fatal
in their action, when they wreck their victims with
the weight of their folly,—and there is a later period,
a very much later period, when they marry with the
a
,
spirit, when they “spiritualise” themselves. For-
merly, owing to the stupidity inherent in passion, men
waged war against passion itself: men pledged them-
selves to annihilate it,-all ancient moral-mongers
were unanimous on this point, “il faut tuer les
,
passions. ” The most famous formula for this stands
in the New Testament, in that Sermon on the Mount,
where, let it be said incidentally, things are by no
means regarded from a height. It is said there, for
instance, with an application to sexuality: “if thy eye
offend thee, pluck it out”: fortunately no Christian
acts in obedience to this precept. To annihilate
the passions and desires, simply on account of their
stupidity, and to obviate the unpleasant conse-
quences of their stupidity, seems to us to-day merely
an aggravated form of stupidity. We no longer
admire those dentists who extract teeth simply in
order that they may not ache again. On the other
.
hand, it will be admitted with some reason, that on
the soil from which Christianity grew, the idea of
26


## p. 27 (#47) ##############################################

MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE 27
3)
C
the “spiritualisation of passion” could not possibly
have been conceived. The early Church, as every-
one knows, certainly did wage war against the “in-
telligent,” in favour of the “poor in spirit. ” In these
circumstances how could the passions be combated
intelligently? The Church combats passion by means
of excision of all kinds : its practice, its“ remedy," is
castration. It never inquires “how can a desire be
spiritualised, beautified, deified ? ”—In all ages it has
laid the weight of discipline in the process of extir-
pation (the extirpation of sensuality, pride, lust of
dominion, lust of property, and revenge). —But to
attack the passions at their roots, means attacking
life itself at its source: the method of the Church is
hostile to life.
2
The same means, castration and extirpation, are
instinctively chosen for waging war against a passion,
by those who are too weak of will, too degenerate, to
impose some sort of moderation upon it; by those
natures who, to speak in metaphor (and without
metaphor), need la Trappe, or some kind of ultima-
tum of war, a gulf set between themselves and a
passion. Only degenerates find radical methods
indispensable: weakness of will, or more strictly
speaking, the inability not to react to a stimulus, is
in itself simply another form of degeneracy. Radi-
cal and mortal hostility to sensuality, remains a
suspicious symptom: it justifies one in being sus-
picious of the general state of one who goes to such
extremes. Moreover, that hostility and hatred
reach their height only when such natures no longer
possess enough strength of character to adopt the


## p. 28 (#48) ##############################################

28
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
radical remedy, to renounce their inner “Satan. "
Look at the whole history of the priests, the philo-
sophers, and the artists as well: the most poisonous
diatribes against the senses have not been said by
the impotent, nor by the ascetics; but by those im-
possible ascetics, by those who found it necessary
to be ascetics.
3
The spiritualisation of sensuality is called love :
it is a great triumph over Christianity. Another
triumph is our spiritualisation of hostility. It con-
sists in the fact that we are beginning to realise very
profoundly the value of having enemies : in short
that with them we are forced to do and to conclude
precisely the reverse of what we previously did and
concluded. In all ages the Church wished to anni-
hilate its enemies : we, the immoralists and Anti-
christs, see our advantage in the survival of the
Church. Even in political life, hostility has now be-
come more spiritual,—much more cautious, much
more thoughtful, and much more moderate. Almost
every party sees its self-preservative interests in pre-
venting the Opposition from going to pieces; and
the same applies to politics on a grand scale. A
new creation, more particularly, like the new Empire,
has more need of enemies than friends : only as a
contrast does it begin to feel necessary, only as a
contrast does it become necessary. And we behave
in precisely the same way to the winner enemy”:
in this quarter too we have spiritualised enmity, in
this quarter too we have understood its value. А
man is productive only in so far as he is rich in
contrasted instincts ; he can remain young only on


## p. 29 (#49) ##############################################

MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE
29
-
a
condition that his soul does not begin to take things
easy and to yearn for peace. Nothing has grown
more alien to us than that old desire—the "peace of
the soul,” which is the aim of Christianity. Nothing
could make us less envious than the moral cow and
the plump happiness of a clean conscience. The
man who has renounced war has renounced a grand
life. In many cases, of course,“ peace of the soul”
is merely a misunderstanding,—it is something very
different which has failed to find a more honest name
for itself. Without either circumlocution or prejudice
I will suggest a few cases. “Peace of the soul”
may for instance be the sweet effulgence of rich
animality in the realm of morality (or religion). Or
the first presage of weariness, the first shadow that
evening, every kind of evening, is wont to cast. Or
a sign that the air is moist, and that winds are blow-
ing up from the south. Or unconscious gratitude for
a good digestion (sometimes called “brotherly love").
Or the serenity of the convalescent, on whose lips all
things have a new taste, and who bides his time. Or
the condition which follows upon a thorough grati-
fication of our strongest passion, the well-being of
unaccustomed satiety. Or the senility of our will,
of our desires, and of our vices. Or laziness, coaxed
by vanity into togging itself out in a moral garb.
Or the ending of a state of long suspense and of
agonising uncertainty, by a state of certainty, of even
terrible certainty. Or the expression or ripeness and
mastery in the midst of a task, of a creative work,
of a production, of a thing willed, the calm breathing
that denotes that "freedom of will” has been attained.


## p. 30 (#50) ##############################################

30
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
Who knows ? -maybe The Twilight of the Idols
is only a sort of “peace of the soul. ”
-
-
4
I will formulate a principle. All naturalism in
morality—that is to say, every sound morality is
ruled by a life instinct,—any one of the laws of life
is fulfilled by the definite canon “thou shalt,” “ thou
shalt not,” and any sort of obstacle or hostile element
in the road of life is thus cleared away. Conversely,
the morality which is antagonistic to nature—that
is to say, almost every morality that has been taught,
honoured and preached hitherto, is directed precisely
against the life-instincts,—it is a condemnation, now
secret, now blatant and impudent, of these very
instincts. Inasmuch as it says “God sees into the
heart of man,” it says Nay to the profoundest and
most superior desires of life and takes God as the
enemy of life.
The saint in whom God is well
pleased, is the ideal eunuch. Life terminates where
the “Kingdom of God” begins.
»
5
Admitting that you have understood the villainy
of such a mutiny against life as that which has be-
come almost sacrosanct in Christian morality, you
have fortunately understood something besides; and
that is the futility, the fictitiousness, the absurdity
and the falseness of such a mutiny. For the con-
demnation of life by a living creature is after all but
the symptom of a definite kind of life: the question
as to whether the condemnation is justified or the
reverse is not even raised. In order even to approach
✔ the problem of the value of life, a man would need


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MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE 31
to be placed outside life, and moreover know it as
well as one, as many, as all in fact, who have lived
it. These are reasons enough to prove to us that
this problem is an inaccessible one to us. When we
speak of values, we speak under the inspiration, and
through the optics of life: life itself urges us to
determine values : life itself values through us when
we determine values. From which it follows that
even that morality which is antagonistic to life, and
which conceives God as the opposite and the con-
demnation of life, is only a valuation of life-of
what life? of what kind of life? But I have already
answered this question : it is the valuation of declin-
ing, of enfeebled, of exhausted and of condemned
life. Morality, as it has been understood hitherto
-as it was finally formulated by Schopenhauer in
the words “The Denial of the Will to Life,” is the
instinct of degeneration itself, which converts itself
into an imperative: it says: “Perish ! ” It is the
death sentence of men who are already doomed.
6
a
Let us at last consider how exceedingly simple it
is on our part to say : “Man should be thus and
thus ! ” Reality shows us a marvellous wealth of
types, and a luxuriant variety of forms and changes :
and yet the first wretch of a moral loafer that comes
along cries “No! Man should be different! " He
even knows what man should be like, does this sancti-
monious prig: he draws his own face on the wall and
declares : 'ecce homo ! ” But even when the moralist
addresses himself only to the individual and says
“thus and thus shouldst thou be! ” he still makes


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32
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
an ass of himself. The individual in his past and
future is a piece of fate, one law the more, one neces-
sity the more for all that is to come and is to be.
To say to him “change thyself,” is tantamount to
saying that everything should change, even back-
wards as well. Truly these have been consistent
moralists, they wished man to be different, i. e. , virtu-
ous; they wished him to be after their own image,
that is to say sanctimonious humbugs. And to this
end they denied the world! No slight form of in-
sanity! No modest form of immodesty! Morality,
in so far it condemns per se, and not out of any
aim, consideration or motive of life, is a specific
error, for which no one should feel any mercy, a de-
generate idiosyncrasy, that has done an unutterable
amount of harm. We others, we immoralists, on the
contrary, have opened our hearts wide to all kinds
of comprehension, understanding and approbation. *
We do not deny readily, we glory in saying yea to
things. Our
eyes have opened ever wider and wider
to that economy which still employs and knows how
to use to its own advantage all that which the sacred
craziness of priests and the morbid reason in priests,
rejects; to that economy in the law of life which
draws its own advantage even out of the repulsive
race of bigots, the priests and the virtuous,—what
advantage? —But we ourselves, we immoralists, are
the reply to this question.
* Cf. Spinoza, who says in the Tractatus politicus (1677),
Chap. I, § 4: “Sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere,
non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere” (“I have carefully
endeavoured not to deride, or deplore, or detest human ac-
tions, but to understand them. ”). - TR.


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THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS
I
))
The error of the confusion of cause and effect. -
There is no more dangerous error than to confound
the effect with the cause : I call this error the in-
trinsic perversion of reason. Nevertheless this error
is one of the most ancient and most recent habits of
mankind. In one part of the world it has even been
canonised; and it bears the name of “Religion”
and “Morality. ” Every postulate formulated by
religion and morality contains it. Priests and the
promulgators of moral laws are the promoters of this
perversion of reason. —Let me give you an example.
Everybody knows the book of the famous Cornaro,
in which he recommends his slender diet as the recipe
for a long, happy and also virtuous life. Few books
have been so widely read, and to this day many
thousand copies of it are still printed annually in
England. I do not doubt that there is scarcely a
single book (the Bible of course excepted) that has
worked more mischief, shortened more lives, than
this well-meant curiosity. The reason of this is the
confusion of effect and cause. This worthy Italian
saw the cause of his long life in his diet : whereas
the prerequisites of long life, which are exceptional
slowness of molecular change, and a low rate of ex-
penditure in energy, were the cause of his meagre
3
33


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34
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
diet. He was not at liberty to eat a small or a great
amount. His frugality was not the result of free
choice, he would have been ill had he eaten more.
He who does not happen to be a carp, however, is
not only wise to eat well, but is also compelled to
do so. A scholar of the present day, with his rapid
consumption of nervous energy, would soon go to
the dogs on Cornaro's diet. Crede experto.
2
.
The most general principle lying at the root of
every religion and morality, is this: “Do this and
that and avoid this and that—and thou wilt be
happy. Otherwise-” Every morality and every
religion is this Imperative-I call it the great ori-
ginal sin of reason,-immortal unreason. In my
mouth this principle is converted into its opposite-
first example of my“ Transvaluation of all Values”:
a well-constituted man, a man who is one of
“Nature's lucky strokes," must perform certain
actions and instinctively fear other actions; he intro-
duces the element of order, of which he is the physi-
ological manifestation, into his relations with men
and things. In a formula : his virtue is the conse-
quence of his good constitution. Longevity and
plentiful offspring are not the reward of virtue, virtue
itself is on the contrary that retardation of the meta-
bolic process which, among other things, results in
a long life and in plentiful offspring, in short in
Cornarism. The Church and morality say: “A race,
a people perish through vice and luxury. " My re-
instated reason says: when a people are going to


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THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS
35
the dogs, when they are degenerating physiologi-
cally, vice and luxury (that is to say, the need of ever
stronger and more frequent stimuli such as all ex-
hausted natures are acquainted with) are bound to
result. Such and such a young man grows pale and
withered prematurely. His friends say this or that
illness is the cause of it. I say: the fact that he be-
came ill, the fact that he did not resist illness, was
in itself already the outcome of impoverished life, of
hereditary exhaustion. The newspaper reader says:
such and such a party by committing such an error
will meet its death. My superior politics say: a
party that can make such mistakes, is in its last
agony-it no longer possesses any certainty of in-
stinct. Every mistake is in every sense the sequel
to degeneration of the instincts, to disintegration
of the will. This is almost the definition of evil,
Everything valuable is instinct-and consequently
easy, necessary, free. Exertion is an objection,
the god is characteristically different from the hero
(in my language: light feet are the first attribute
of divinity).
3
The error of false causality. In all ages men have
believed that they knew what a cause was: but
whence did we derive this knowledge, or more ac-
curately, this faith in the fact that we know? Out
of the realm of the famous “inner facts of conscious-
ness,” not one of which has yet proved itself to be
a fact. We believed ourselves to be causes even in
the action of the will; we thought that in this matter
at least we caught causality red-handed. No one


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36
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
-
doubted that all the antecedentia of an action were to
be sought in consciousness, and could be discovered
there — as “motive" -- if only they were sought.
Otherwise we should not be free to perform them,
we should not have been responsible for them. Fin-
ally who would have questioned that a thought is
caused ? that the ego causes the thought? Of these
three “facts of inner consciousness” by means of
which causality seemed to be guaranteed, the first
and most convincing is that of the will as cause; the
conception of consciousness (“spirit") as a cause,
and subsequently that of the ego (the “subject")
as a cause, were merely born afterwards, once the
causality of the will stood established as "given,” as
a fact of experience. Meanwhile we have come to
our senses. To-day we no longer believe a word
of all this. The “inner world” is full of phantoms
and will-o'-the-wisps : the will is one of these. The
will no longer actuates, consequently it no longer
explains anything—all it does is to accompany
processes; it may even be absent. The so-called
“motive" is another error. It is merely a ripple on
the surface of consciousness, a side issue of the action,
which is much more likely to conceal than to reveal
the antecedentia of the latter. And as for the ego! It
has become legendary, fictional, a play upon words:
it has ceased utterly and completely from thinking,
feeling, and willing! What is the result of it all ?
There are no such things as spiritual causes. The
whole of popular experience on this subject went
to the devil! That is the result of it all. For we
had blissfully abused that experience, we had built
the world upon it as a world of causes, as a world


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THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS
37
of will, as a world of spirit. The most antiquated
and most traditional psychology has been at work
here, it has done nothing else: all phenomena were
deeds in the light of this psychology, and all deeds
were the result of will; according to it the world was
a complex mechanism of agents, an agent (a “sub-
ject") lay at the root of all things. Man projected
his three "inner facts of consciousness,” the will, the
spirit, and the ego in which he believed most firmly,
outside himself. He first deduced the concepi Be-
ing out of the concept Ego, he supposed "things” to
exist as he did himself, according to his notion oí
the ego as cause. Was it to be wondered at that
later on he always found in things only that which
he had laid in them? —The thing itself, I repeat, the
I
concept thing was merely a reflex of the belief in
the ego as cause. And even your atom, my dear
good Mechanists and Physicists, what an amount
of error, of rudimentary psychology still adheres to
it! -Not to speak of the “thing-in-itself," of the
horrendum pudendum of the metaphysicians! The
error of spirit regarded as a cause, confounded with
reality! And made the measure of reality! And
called God!
-
4
The Error of imaginary Causes. Starting out
from dreamland, we find that to any definite sensa-
tion, like that produced by a distant cannon shot
for instance, we are wont to ascribe a cause after the
fact (very often quite a little romance in which the
dreamer himself is, of course, the hero). Meanwhile
the sensation becomes protracted like a sort of con-


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38
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
tinuous echo, until, as it were, the instinct of causality
allows it to come to the front rank, no longer however
as a chance occurrence, but as a thing which has
some meaning. The cannon shot presents itself in
a causal manner, by means of an apparent reversal
in the order of time. That which occurs last, the
motivation, is experienced first, often with a hundred
details which flash past like lightning, and the
shot is the result. What has happened? The ideas
suggested by a particular state of our senses, are mis-
interpreted as the cause of that state. As a matter
of fact we proceed in precisely the same manner
when we are awake. The greater number of our
general sensations—every kind of obstacle, pressure,
tension, explosion in the interplay of the organs, and
more particularly the condition of the nervus sym-
pathicus-stimulate our instinct of causality: we will
have a reason which will account for our feeling thus
or thus,- for feeling ill or well. We are never satis-
fied by merely ascertaining the fact that we feel thus
or thus : we admit this fact-we become conscious
of it-only when we have attributed it to some kind
of motivation. Memory, which, in such circum-
stances unconsciously becomes active, adduces for-
mer conditions of a like kind, together with the causal
interpretations with which they are associated,-but
not their real cause.